Food Depot, a decades-old discount grocery store in Belair-Edison, will close its doors in January.

The closure will lead to the layoff of 80 employees by Jan. 31 of next year, according to a Maryland Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification posted last week. The grocery store is located in the Belair Edison Crossing Shopping Center near a Shoppers World discount department store and a Social Security Administration office.

Food Depot owner B. Green & Co. opened the location in 1996, according to the grocery store’s website. Benjamin Green, a Lithuanian immigrant and wholesaler in the Baltimore area, founded B. Green & Co. in 1915.

B. Green & Co. CEO Rick Rodgers said they had been trying to sell the store for the past year and a half in an effort to keep the grocer in the neighborhood. Rodgers said the company worked with the city, the landlord and a broker to look for potential buyers, but had no success.

“This was the last thing we wanted,” Rodgers said.

Sales at the grocery store have gone down while security costs have gone up, Rodgers said, adding that issues like inflation and decreasing population contributed to the decision to close the store. The business became unsustainable, he said.

“When you’re working in the grocery industry, if you make three cents on the dollar, you are considered very successful,” Rodgers said. “There’s not a lot of room for error.”

Rodgers said between 50% and 60% of the store’s customers used benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Recent changes to SNAP, as well as possible benefit delays amid the government shutdown, mean stores could lose business in communities where SNAP participation rates are high. More than 680,000 Marylanders rely on SNAP to pay for groceries.

The company hopes to retain some employees from the store or connect them with other opportunities, Rodgers said.

B. Green & Co. sold its other Food Depot location, in the Westside Shopping Center, earlier this year to Tiger Mart, another local grocer.