‘A lot of people cried with me.’ East Durham grocery Los Primos closes over rent hike

For 15 years, Romelia Fabián has made a living selling tamales outside Los Primos, the family-owned Latino supermarket that supplied the very ingredients she needed for her product: corn husks, banana leaves, chicken, pork, poblano peppers.

The grocery store on East Main Street was also where she sent remittances from her sales home to her relatives in Mexico.

But the neighborhood mainstay closed last month after 20 years, leaving behind a gap in food-shopping options for the area, and for the Latino community in particular.

Los Primos, whose storefront included its English translation, “The Cousins,” closed after the landlord sought a rent increase from about $6,500 to $20,000 a month, according to Miguel Collado, the store owner.

The closing, first reported by Indy Week, has reduced East Durham’s food accessibility, but also removed what many saw as a vital part of the community.

“Anything we needed we could find there,” Fabián, 55, said in Spanish. “Now, people without a car are struggling because they have to walk farther, ask for ride or get a taxi, because they went (to Los Primos) by foot. It’s going to affect me, because whoever opens up something there is going to charge me to work there.”

Known affectionately as Don Miguel to his customers, Collado, a Raleigh resident originally from the Dominican Republic, opened the market in 2002.

Los Primos sold goods from across the Americas and the Caribbean, within walking distance of around 8,000 people, according to 2020 U.S. Census tract information.

“A lot of people cried with me about it,” Collado, 62, said in an interview. “It’s tough because it lasted 20 years ... our relationship with the Latino and African American community. I think it’s a great loss for that community, because in reality, there isn’t much nearby. That area needs a (grocery store) that they can walk to.”

Los Primos employees — at least 13 of whom are now without a job — would give customers rides home from the store sometimes, he said.

Rent raise on Los Primos

The end of a 20-year lease, which Collado said started at around $4,500 a month, caught him by surprise, he said.

Collado tried to negotiate a lower rent of around $12,000 per month, which he said was already too much for him. He says if he had known sooner his lease was ending, he would have had more time to find another location.

The supermarket was formerly a convenience store run by the Mustafa family. Ghassan Mustafa owns the property under Khawaja, LLC.

Mustafa and his associate, Husam Mustafa, could not be reached by phone by The News & Observer.

CB Styers Realty confirmed that the 0.9-acre property is available for lease for $20,000 a month and said if sold, it could fetch upwards of $4 million.

“It’s a loss for everyone, but more for the community and the employees that we had, because we have nowhere to work now,” Collado said.

In the meantime, he says he’s not ready to retire and will seek to reopen Los Primos elsewhere if he can.

“It’s not easy to find a place,” he said. “Rent is expensive everywhere.”

The closure of Los Primos comes as Food World, another Latino supermarket just south of downtown, also faces imminent closure.

The store is located in a shopping center in the Hayti district that developers bought for $62.5 million over the summer and plan to transform into a life sciences campus, The N&O reported previously.

Impact on community

“The impact of closing Los Primos is more than twofold,” said Alexandra Valladares, a member of the Durham Public Schools Board of Education.

The supermarket was vital to the community through making fresh produce available and accepting SNAP benefits, the federal food assistance program, she said.

“We’re talking about entrepreneurship of Latinos which is very important ... we’re trying to mitigate food apartheid and food deserts,” Valladares said. “I’m very sad.”

Valladares recalls visiting the supermarket throughout the years to buy plantains to make tajadas, a Central American delicacy of fried plantains, and buying Café El Indio, her favorite ground coffee.

Rony Rodriguez, 28, said Los Primos was a cultural haven in walking distance for him and his mother when they moved to Durham a decade ago from Honduras.

“Los Primos had more Central American groceries,” Rodriguez said n Spanish. “You could find varieties of Salvadoran and Honduran food. We could find everything there.”

He lamented that local residents would have to spend more money and time on transportation to Moroleón, the nearest Latino supermarket on North Miami Boulevard about 10 minutes away by car.

“Obviously, the place has a good location,” Rodriguez said “If the land owners knew that Los Primos was making more money now, clearly they also wanted to make more money off of the property. It’s business.”