When the private equity firm backing Mother’s Market decided it was time for a new chief executive, Dorothy Carlow believed she had the right recipe to turn around the organic grocery chain.
Mother’s Market, founded in 1978, was acquired by Mill Road Capital in 2016 and became the largest unit in its brand portfolio. Carlow twice asked Mill Road to become CEO, finally winning the job in 2019.
“It was underperforming,” Carlow told the Business Journal. “When you’re underperforming, you have to figure out very, very quickly how to increase cash flow to meet your debt obligation while maintaining and enhancing the customer experience.”
A sign of the company’s health is that the chain has opened three new stores since she took the lead, funded by free cash flow. It plans to open its 12th store in Dana Point in March.
Carlow saw Mother’s as a chance to prove herself as a CEO and moved from New York City to Corona del Mar. She thought that if she failed, she might never get another chance as CEO again.
“It was make or break for me,” she said.
Within two years, Carlow said Mother’s Market turned cash flow positive and revenue grew 10%. The longtime consumer base of Orange County shoppers encouraged her.
“When you have brand affinity that is so strong, you can make anything happen within the four walls,” Carlow said. “I was super excited, because I saw the opportunity inside the P&L to reverse some of the trends that were not favorable to the cash flow of the business.”
The Retail Recruit
Carlow’s career in grocery retail started at North Carolina-based The Fresh Market. She led publicity campaigns for over 20 store openings. She said it was the job that introduced her to the grocery industry and helped convince her that it was her destiny to become a retail CEO.
After two years, she was asked to join Earth Fare, another health-focused supermarket in Fletcher, North Carolina, in a newly created role at the time—chief merchandising officer. It was her first time at a company seeking recovery in sales, profitability and rebranding.
Carlow was responsible for launching the grocer’s first loyalty program and gained 310,000 members in the first year.
After Earth Fare, Carlow moved to New York City and spent the next five years at two companies—OTG Management and Fairway Market. She first spent four years at Fairway as part of another turnaround as chief merchandising and marketing officer, among other executive responsibilities she said were added along the way.
She was then recruited by OTG Management in 2018 to be executive vice president of procurement and head of retail market operations of the firm’s 80-plus airport markets.
After a year, the CEO opportunity at Mother’s Market popped up and Carlow decided to try a new company.
Selling What Others Don’t
During the first two years, “I really looked at what processes and procedures, from a back end of the company, could we improve so that we would never touch the customer experience on the front end because it was so loved,” she said.
One instance was keeping Mother’s Market away from using a central kitchen—which means one grocery location is responsible for cooking the prepared foods served in all local stores. One of Carlow’s early moves included shutting down a central kitchen at the Santa Ana outpost, which her predecessor had spent “seven figures plus” to install.
At the time, she said everyone in the organization was against her decision.
“If I had messed up the customer experience, or if I had introduced something new and it was a disaster, it could have killed the company—and my job was to save the company,” Carlow said.
The markets went back to making all the prepared foods in-house at each respective location, now curated by an executive chef. Carlow added that it was to maintain the strategy of the founders—to deliver a better product to the consumer.
“We developed a strategy of selling what others can’t sell. Our entire team is focused on building categories and experiences where we’re the only people that can do what we do,” she said.
Carlow said that while competitors such as Whole Foods Market have reorganized their product offerings to rely on more conventional brands, Mother’s Market has kept its produce 100% organic.
The company also added over 250 organic, private label products to its shelves to combat the decline of vitamins and supplement sales and sell “the stuff the customer wants and is buying from us.”
“We’re not going into the market and saying we’re going to be the lowest price on the shelf because we want the ‘super quality’ factor and people to remember it,” Carlow added.
By the time the company had the cash flow to open new stores, Carlow made sure to be highly selective when it came to real estate.
“If there are 100 sites that get presented to us on a real estate call, we pass on 99 of them. We’ll take one out of 100,” she said.
After opening three new stores, one in Hollywood and others in Corona del Mar and Sunset Beach, Carlow closed one in Manhattan Beach that was losing money. The Dana Point location is the chain’s newest addition.
The company moved its headquarters to Newport Beach last year and counts almost 1,000 employees companywide. Though Mother’s Market does not disclose financials, the Business Journal estimates that the grocer generates annual revenue approaching $150 million.
“You have to continually remind yourself, because it’s easy to forget this learning—the hard decisions are usually the right ones,” she added.
First Step: Understand the Business
Since Chief Executive Dorothy Carlow started to revive Mother’s Market in 2019, she knew she couldn’t touch the customer experience until the brand was back on its feet.
As a new CEO, she said her first step was to understand the business.
“Ask a lot of questions, spend a lot of time inside the store, and then don’t touch the things that make it special. Do not touch them.”
Next, she looked at how to fix profitability from the back of the house. Carlow said that touching the customer experience first, as a retailer, would “kill something on the brink of being dead.”
“You’re prioritizing those fixes by two key metrics, the first one being—how much time is it gonna take and how much profitability gain am I gonna get from it? And the second one is—do I have the team to execute this?”
She added that once the key performance metrics are identified, the business should measure progress on a regular basis. Only when this phase is completed can she start innovating the customer experience.
One of Carlow’s strategies for 2026 is to foster a community within the local health and wellness industry, for both customers and other executives. In January, she hosted an invite-only dinner with 17 fellow executives based in Orange County to start building that community.
She posted a video on Instagram inviting people to fill out an interest form to attend, and 3,000 people responded. Carlow said the inquiries have become a waitlist for future dinners. She aims to host one per quarter.
