How a grocery store fight fractured a Maryland town along racial lines
SNOW HILL, Md. - A 2.5-ounce bag of cheese puffs appeared to be the final straw for Tarak Patel and his Food Rite supermarket, the only one in this tiny town on the Eastern Shore.
For months, Patel and his store had increasingly become targets of online critics, who had grown tired of the crapshoot that was shopping at the Food Rite, where practically every item, locals claimed, needed to be inspected for mold or an expiration date. The grousing came to a head on Monday, Feb. 12, in a fairly innocuous post to the Neighbors of Snow Hill community on Facebook. A woman by the name of Mary Mac snapped a picture of some Rap Snacks cheese puffs, whose best-by date was Nov. 30, 2023 - or more than two months before she purchased the bag. Mac didn’t say anything sensational about the grocery store or Patel in her post.
She simply wrote: “Good ol foodrite.”
Her comment echoed the general resignation that many in Snow Hill had come to feel about the Food Rite, an independent grocery store that, like others of its kind, faces mounting financial pressures to serve rural communities. Over the years, grumbling about the supermarket had become as common as the loblolly pines in the forests of the lower Eastern Shore where Snow Hill was established in the late 17th century. If folks weren’t accusing Patel of selling expired snacks, sour milk or discolored meat, they were lamenting the sagging infrastructure of the Food Rite itself, a building that’s nearly seven decades old.
What stood out about the cheese puffs post wasn’t the content but people’s reaction to it. The photo and comments, all of which have been deleted, divided members of the online Neighbors community in ways that previous posts about the Food Rite had not, locals said. Black residents who criticized Patel and his store, including Mac, were belittled and sometimes humiliated by White residents, several people said.
A handful of members - Black and White - were suspended or removed from the Neighbors page for not being very neighborly. One booted Black woman started her own Facebook group. She called it We Are “You” People of Snow Hill, a reference to how White Facebook group members had addressed Black ones during the dust-up over the Food Rite.
Patel, a 42-year-old emigrant from India, quickly found himself in the middle of what one resident called a “race war,” fueled by generational wounds on the Eastern Shore but exacerbated by the 21st-century tinderbox known as social media.
By Feb. 16, the tensions were running so high that the Neighbors of Snow Hill group went offline to try to cool things down in a town of about 2,300 residents. Two days later, Patel followed suit: He closed the Food Rite and its adjacent liquor store and gas pumps, sending shock waves throughout the community. Overnight, the most vulnerable residents - the town’s poverty rate hovers around 22 percent while nearly 25 percent of its residents are older than 60 - would have to rely on another store, assuming they had a vehicle to drive the 15 minutes or so to the nearest town with a supermarket or big-box retailer.
Over the course of 10 days in February, Patel’s supermarket would come full circle: It would go from a primary source of sustenance to a social media pariah to a shuttered business to, in the end, something unexpected: a hero of sorts. The experience played out in ways that Food Rite’s critics never expected: Their online remarks - the posts calling out the store’s poor practices, the pledges to shop elsewhere - looked like an act of cancel culture.
But several critics say it was never their intention to shut down the supermarket or run Patel out of town. They weren’t looking to become the latest statistic in a worrisome trend in rural America: just another community with limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
All they wanted was a better supermarket.
Mary Mac is not her real name but a pseudonym she once used on Facebook. Mac, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for her safety, shared the cheese puffs photo only after others had already complained about the Food Rite in the same Neighbors of Snow Hill group. One earlier complaint, posted in January by a White member of the community, included a photo of a recently purchased frozen pizza, whose best-by date was more than a year past. Along with her photo, the White woman wrote, “Come on Food Rite…get it together.” Her post received more than 100 comments, the vast majority of them supportive.
Mac’s post, however, generated a fury of responses, some directed back at her, according to several people familiar with the deleted thread. Mac forwarded some of the comments to The Washington Post. One suggested that “98 percent of the harassment” toward Patel was coming from “people of color.” Another referenced a group of Black female critics of the supermarket: “A bunch of ghetto girls who have bashed them relentlessly online. Sorry if their EBT cards weren’t working . . . They all seem like gems in the community. Haha.”
To Mac and others in the Black community, the contrasting responses to a pair of similar posts reiterated their belief that Snow Hill, like other communities along the Eastern Shore, has not completely shed its racist past. “I just felt like it was a lot of racial profiling, and was very one sided,” Mac told The Post in an exchange on Facebook Messenger. “I hate to say this but some are still racist around here, they won’t admit it but a lot was brought to light since this thing came about.”
The founder of the We Are “You” People of Snow Hill page, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was worried about the safety of her family, said that Mac’s post “just became a race war.”
“All she said was ‘good ol foodrite,’ and that’s how it went,” the founder said. “It just turned into a race thing. You know how quickly it can turn when it comes to race.”
Even though some of Patel’s critics were White, residents recalled that the store owner told them he had been harassed by Black residents. He told The Post the same during interviews.
The owner said he had spotted cars outside his home at night. Someone took photos of him eating at a Subway outlet in nearby Pocomoke City, he claimed, and shopping at a grocery store in Salisbury. The subtext was clear to Patel and others: He wouldn’t even patronize his own store and deli. Some people, Patel alleged, followed him as he checked on his businesses.
“They don’t say nothing,” he said. “They park on the side of me and then just don’t say nothing.”
Patel said he basically stopped eating as the drama unfolded, dropping 21 pounds in the process. He didn’t sleep at night. He decided to move his family into another house they own in Salisbury, some 18 miles northwest of Snow Hill. Despite the fraught atmosphere, however, Patel never filed police reports about the threatening behaviors he alleged, said Andy McGee, Snow Hill’s chief of police.
Patel said he possesses photos of the people responsible, but on the advice of his attorney, he won’t share them. All were Black, he claimed. “All the White people are with me,” Patel said.
Multiple locals contacted for this story doubted Patel’s claims of harassment, including the chief of police. “I think he invented that to people, saying, ‘You know, I’ve been followed,’” McGee said. “As far as I know, there is no evidence.”'
Some, like the founder of the We Are “You” People group, thought Patel was using the harassment claims as excuses to leave Snow Hill and focus on his other businesses, including nearby beer/wine and liquor stores, which are licensed to family members or friends. Others didn’t like his implications about the Black community.
“I felt by him saying that, he attacked our character,” Mac said via Messenger. “We are not monsters we just wanted a decent food store.”
Patel said he didn’t know why anyone from Snow Hill’s Black community would want to intimidate him. At the same time, he didn’t care whether locals believed his stories. “I don’t need to justify to nobody,” he said.
“People have always been jealous,” he added. “I bought two Teslas. Actually, I bought five Teslas. Three of them, I sold them before covid.”
At least one resident never doubted Patel. Shae Von Marsh, co-owner of Chanceford Hall Bed and Breakfast in Snow Hill, said that’s because she felt threatened herself as online conversations turned heated.
In Facebook exchanges, Von Marsh said she offered practical, if self-evident, solutions for how disgruntled Food Rite customers could resolve the problem of an expired product, such as returning it for a refund. In return, she said, her business address, which doubles as her residence, was doxed. A Florida transplant - a “come here” in the parlance of the Eastern Shore - Von Marsh said one person wrote that the community should “give her a real Snow Hill Welcome.” (She forwarded a screenshot to The Post.)
Von Marsh took it as a threat.
“I don’t know how crazy people are,” Von Marsh said in an interview. “It made me contemplate not wanting to be in Snow Hill anymore, because I’ve never gone through anything like this. I’ve never had people talk the way they did here, over something so stupid, over nothing.”
At the town council meeting on Feb. 13, Patel sat in the back of the room, fidgeting. Several people expected him to talk about the charged atmosphere around the Food Rite. He had signed up to speak during the public comments segment, said Councilwoman Diana Walsh. But when his time came, Patel stayed silent.
Instead, Patel talked with Walsh after the meeting, she said. He was distraught. “He said, ‘I don’t know if I can do it anymore. It’s just too much. You know, my kids came home from school crying. I’m upset. My employees are upset,’” Walsh recalled.
To elected officials, the prospect of losing the town’s lone supermarket raised serious concerns. What would it mean for senior citizens who rely on the prepared meals - the pork chop sandwich, the Salisbury steak over mashed potatoes, the meatball sub - available at the Food Rite’s deli counter? How would poorer residents afford to drive to other communities to shop for groceries? And what would happen to property values - or future development - if Snow Hill lost its supermarket?
Others marveled at how the quotidian criticisms of social media could have evolved into such a crisis. To many, Patel is not just a businessman but a neighbor they know as “T.J.” Patel said he moved to Snow Hill when he was 19, not long after he made a wrong turn on the way to Ocean City and discovered the community. He was an entrepreneur from an early age. He purchased the Food Rite from the previous operator, using money he had made from convenience stores he once owned.
Talk to just about anyone in Snow Hill, and they’ll tell you about Patel’s kindnesses during his two-plus decades running the store: the donations to civic events, the free catered food for funerals, the credit extended to cash-strapped residents. Two locals shared the same story: Patel once left a jug of milk outside in the snow for a mother who couldn’t make it there before the store closed ahead of a big winter storm. He didn’t charge her.
“It just really made me angry that I felt like T.J. was being bullied out of town,” said Nick Montfort, one of the administrators for the Neighbors of Snow Hill page. “There’s probably a dozen folks in that town who are just like, ‘Yeah, now we’re going to get something much better,’ and that’s not going to happen.”
Montfort’s wife, Nancy Rapa, a registered nurse who has been part of the community for a decade, also defended Patel. “I honestly feel like he is running this grocery store out of the goodness of his heart because he has a connection to Snow Hill.”
The day after the council meeting, then-Mayor Mike Pruitt left for Texas to help care for an ailing family member. His phone began to blow up. Patel, the mayor learned, was threatening to leave Snow Hill. Pruitt was also hearing rumblings that a proposed residential project near town might be in jeopardy because locals “are having trouble supporting a grocery store,” Pruitt recalled.
Edward Lee, a local real estate agent, contacted the mayor in Texas and encouraged him to hold an emergency meeting so the town could show its support for Patel. Pruitt authorized then-Councilwoman Janet Simpson to hold the meeting. But with tensions running high, Walsh thought the gathering could get out of hand without a professional mediator, conflict-resolution specialists and security.
“This has the potential to explode, and nobody wants that,” Walsh recalled thinking.
While in Texas, Pruitt was getting increasing pressure to take a stand. The mayor called Patel and encouraged him to step back and see the bigger picture.
“I said, ‘You do what you want for your family. It’s your business. It’s your money, and it’s your safety. But if it’s only because five or six people on Facebook are saying stupid-a—things ... you just got to look the other way, swallow it and go on.’”
One of Patel’s most vocal critics was Shonn Williams, a 30-year-old resident who has spent his entire life in Snow Hill. He has been living on disability checks since December 2022 when his kidneys shut down and he suffered congestive heart failure. Williams is also, he says, homeless, often crashing with friends. Back in February, when tempers were running hot, Williams was an administrator for the Neighbors page. Locals say Williams instigated as much of the criticism of the Food Rite as he moderated it.
Williams once suggested that Patel’s approach to running the supermarket - with expired foods and questionable meats - was akin to “biological warfare” against residents. In another post, which Williams acknowledged, he wrote, “Food Rite is bulls— and TJ is full of bulls— and this town is full of bulls— because they keep believing/supporting in a s—ty store & I mean that to the fullest extent.”
Sometime around Feb. 14, Montford said, Williams was removed as administrator as the Neighbors page was spiraling out of control. He quickly joined the We Are “You” People community and started stirring the pot there, its founder said. She had to briefly suspend Williams “because he would not stop with this race stuff,” she added.
The situation escalated when someone with We Are “You” People posted the names and photos of the White administrators and moderators for the Neighbors page, along with the addresses for three of them. Williams acknowledges that he has a brash online demeanor but said he didn’t post the personal information. However, one screenshot sent to The Post showed Williams naming four administrators, though without photos or addresses. He acknowledges that he wrote the post.
The presumption among some locals was that one of the White administrators had booted Williams.
On Feb. 15, after their information went public, the Neighbors administrators began to fret about their safety. They had started a private group chat to discuss the unraveling situation. Montfort sent a copy of the exchange to The Post.
“They’re going after all of us,” one wrote.
Montfort, then just a moderator, suggested everyone remain calm.
“I’m trying. But I just cannot believe this. I’m scared for all of us,” replied an administrator. “They’re posting our photos. Giving locations and such. It’s just … bordering criminal behavior.”
Late in the day on Feb. 16, in an attempt to ease community tensions, the administrators shut down the Neighbors page temporarily. They began resigning from their posts, too.
The folks who are angry about the Food Rite are not wrong, said Amanda Yeadt, a former Neighbors administrator. “I just don’t think that fighting amongst ourselves is going to solve anything.”
Despite all the accusations - and the anxieties and apprehensions generated by them - few if any residents in Snow Hill cited the one authority that could shed some light on the operations at the Food Rite: the Worcester County Health Department.
Unlike a lot of jurisdictions, Worcester County does not make its health inspection reports public. The Post filed public records requests to get reports and consumer complaints dating back to 2019. Over the course of 11 full inspections or more limited follow-up visits, the Food Rite was cited multiple times per visit for poorly maintained equipment; for dirty equipment and facilities; and for not maintaining hot and cold items at proper temperatures, potentially putting customers at risk for food-related illnesses.
Inspectors repeatedly found dirty floors, leaky ceilings, soiled cutting boards, improper cooling techniques, rusted shelving, dented cans in stock, and food held between 41 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the “danger zone” when bacteria can rapidly multiply and cause illness. An Aug. 25, 2021, inspection report was particularly damning. The inspector listed dozens of items - cheeses, yogurts, creamers, bologna, roast beef, sausage and more - that were held in the danger zone.
A health department spokeswoman said the Food Rite has never been closed because of an inspection report. The department did not receive consumer complaints during this period for food-related illnesses, though two people complained about buying expired products at the store.
Despite the repeated violations, dating back years, Patel pointed out that he has always fixed whatever problems inspectors found. “Otherwise,” he said, “they will close me down.” Plus, some distributors, such as those for snack companies, are responsible for removing their own expired products from store shelves, said Amber Smullen, the Food Rite’s longtime manager.
At the same time, Patel acknowledged that the bigger problems are the building itself - a structure erected in 1955 - and much of the equipment inside it. The Food Rite has the look of a grocery store that time forgot: Ceiling tiles are water-stained; others appear ready to collapse. Coolers used for juices, butter, cheese and cream do not have tightly sealed doors but open shelving with heavy plastic strips draped over the front to keep the cold air in. One freezer is rusted and dented, with a layer of ice crystals running from end to end inside the appliance. Discolored and damaged walls, floors and cabinets bear the marks of decades of use.
Patel knows the building and equipment need upgrades, but he figures he’d need to invest $500,000 to update both, money that he wouldn’t recoup for 15 years in this low-margin industry. “I’m not that rich,” he said. “I’d love to, but it’s impossible.”
Town leaders, including the director of economic development, Lorissa McAllister, met with Patel on Feb. 15 to talk over some state incentives to possibly help with improvements, said Walsh, the council member. Patel, she said, seemed interested in a Maryland enterprise zone program that would provide tax credits for a business that makes capital investments. But Patel later told The Post that he doesn’t believe in government handouts.
The conversations led nowhere. On Friday, Feb. 16, Patel informed some council members that he planned to close that weekend. As rumors of the impending closure began circulating, people trickled into the store to confirm them. A few witnessed Patel suddenly collapse in his liquor store, wrenching his back in the process. He said he had eaten nothing that day.
Locals would soon learn the truth: Patel was done with Snow Hill - and the stress of running a small-town grocery store.
“I was upset” at the news, said Smullen, the Food Rite manager. “I was upset over the fact that I had been here 14 years, and this is what I knew. The people, you know, because you build relationships with people when you work somewhere for so long.”
After Snow Hill leaders pulled the plug on the emergency town meeting, Lee continued to press for a public rally. Pruitt agreed to a gathering on Tuesday, Feb. 20, “as long as you make sure that you’re saying that this is not a town council or mayor’s sponsored position, because we don’t want to take sides,” said the former mayor, who ended his term in June.
About two dozen people showed up on a bitter cold evening in a parking lot across from the old fire house to support Patel, who was moved by this public sign of affection. He agreed to reopen the store the following day, becoming an instant town hero. “I don’t want to go down because [people] depend on us,” Patel told the gathering, according to a WBOC clip.
“We won tonight, community,” said a jubilant Lee, who at 89 would soon become the newest member of the Snow Hill Town Council. “We won.”
It’s not clear what kind of victory it is for Snow Hill - or for Patel.
For years, before the pandemic and during it, Patel says, he made a profit from his supermarket. But recently, with the rise of online grocery delivery and the inflationary spikes in food prices, Patel has seen his profits vanish. By the end of the year, he expects to lose between $50,000 and $80,000, or more, on the Food Rite, he said. His other businesses, including the liquor store in Snow Hill, basically underwrite the grocery store, he said.
“I’m just helping the community out” by running the Food Rite, Patel said.
The pressures are real, said Chris Jones, chief government relations officer and counsel at the National Grocers Association. Net profit margins are minuscule for independent grocers in general, around 3 percent, said Jones, but “slimmer in underserved areas” such as Snow Hill. Without a steady volume of customers, he added, it can be difficult to sell fresh fruits and vegetables before they start to rot.
Rural independent grocers are also at a competitive disadvantage to Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Dollar General and other big-box retailers that sell far more than groceries and tend to dominate small towns, Jones said. These retail giants use their scale and buyer power to dictate lower prices and special packaging from manufacturers, which, he said, “leads to higher prices” for independent grocers without the same leverage.
“It’s kind of like a death by a thousand cuts,” Jones said.
According to town leaders, grocery chains such as Food Lion and Aldi won’t give Snow Hill a second look because the community lacks the density to support them. Snow Hill has a Dollar General on the northeastern edge of town, but the store doesn’t carry fruits or vegetables or fresh cuts of meat. On June 10, a larger Dollar General store, branded DG Market, received final approval from the planning commission, said Town Manager Rick Pollitt.
DG Market will offer more food items than a regular Dollar General store, a spokeswoman told The Post in a statement, and its produce section will feature the “top 20 items typically sold in traditional grocery stores.”
There’s already a DG Market in Princess Anne, Md., about 20 miles west of Snow Hill, where the store sports a small island of “fresh produce” bins, 20 percent of which were empty on a recent visit. Other trays and bins offered bananas, bagged potatoes, packaged grape tomatoes, squeeze bottles of lemon and lime juices, and pouches of Blendz fruit puree. A separate cooler contained packaged vegetables, fruits, salads and cuts of beef and chicken.
Rob Hall, 73, is a retiree who has spent most of his life in Snow Hill. He ran for mayor this year, losing to the eventual winner, Janet Simpson, the former council member. Hall has been to the DG Market in Princess Anne. He was not impressed with the produce and meats aisle. “It was not the quantity you get at a place like T.J.’s,” he said.
Regardless of how he feels about his critics, Patel has taken some of their comments to heart. Before reopening the supermarket in February, Smullen and others removed every expired item from the shelves, freezers and refrigerated cases. Smullen shared some photos: There were at least six carts full of product. And even though it creates more work for an understaffed crew, Smullen said, employees now have a rotation for checking the store regularly for expired foods.
The new procedures appear to have had little impact, according to a health inspection from May 1. Inspectors found not only dirty conditions (soiled floors, containers, meat grinder, microwave and more) but also “rotten produce,” “milk offered past sell by date,” “mold growth in meat walk-in,” and hot and cold foods held at improper temperatures. The report cited more than 25 food items - Swiss cheese, German bologna, cooked salami, roast beef, crab meat and more - that had to be destroyed because of high temperatures.
Patel did take a major step toward upgrading the supermarket: He hired a crew to install a new roof at a personal cost of more than $200,000, he said. He refused to accept grant money to help fund the project.
In March, during the first big rainstorms after the roof was installed, the ceiling leaked worse than before. A complaint filed with the health department said there were “30-4o buckets collecting water dripping from ceiling throughout the store.” The roofers, Patel said, didn’t install larger gutters to handle the rainwater that gushed off the new A-frame roof.
New gutters have since been installed, Patel said, and the leaky ceiling is history. Patel will soon be history, too. He told The Post that he has sold the Food Rite, liquor store and gas pumps to a pair of businessmen from out of state. He expects the sale to be complete on Friday.
One recent afternoon, Patel explained why he decided to sell as he walked around his liquor store, not far from the cases of beer and hard cider where he collapsed back in February. As he spoke, Patel occasionally placed a hand on his back to apply pressure to the spot that hasn’t completely healed since his fall. He said he spends too much time on his feet.
He said that his family encouraged him to “do something different.” But he acknowledged that the events of February - and the many months leading up to those critical days - affected his decision, too. As he recalled his winter of discontent, Patel talked about the anger he felt, the stress it put on his family and the 80-hour workweeks he clocked just to reach this untenable moment. Then he mentioned his two school-age daughters.
“I want to make sure that I’m there,” he said. “I want to make sure I’ll be with them.”
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