One day after Renwood Opportunities Fund officially assumed ownership of the Andronico’s Community Markets franchise — completing the cycle started when Andronico’s filed for bankruptcy in August — the store on University Avenue closed permanently Saturday.

With its closure impending, the store, one of four in Berkeley, was a husk filled with mostly empty racks and refrigerator cases Saturday afternoon.

Despite the steady flow of customers pleased to get 75 percent off everything except alcohol, only a select few of them were buying with any joy — most brought their handful of items up to the cash register and immediately asked about the cashier’s future.

Their concerns were not about where they would shop — Berkeley Bowl and Trader Joe’s are not far away — but about what would happen to the approximately 40 employees who may or may not have jobs after Saturday.

Shoshana Gizzi, Berkeley resident and customer for 10 years at the University branch, admitted that she had not been shopping there as often as she had before the bakery and deli closed in March, but she kept going because it was her neighborhood market.

“A lot of the staff that works here have been here a long time, and I know them,” Gizzi said. “We didn’t have close relationships, but they knew me and I knew them. It sounds like they don’t know where they’re going yet, so I feel bad for them. It’s a stressful time for this to happen.”

One employee said she and her co-workers had to fill out job applications and be interviewed again, and she only found out Friday that she would be rehired.

She wished to remain anonymous for fear that she would lose her new job, since all of the rehired employees are on a 30-day probation.

“We were afraid since August when we heard about the bankruptcy,” she said. “All these months, we didn’t know if we would have jobs or not, and we got more scared when we found out our store is going to close.”

The 11-year employee at the University location said that even though the store offered a wide variety of high-end and exotic products, the store had barely been breaking even with its costs not including rent.

She also explained that the store did away with its bakery and deli departments in March because the company was losing too much money in employee salary costs, which led to at least 20 people losing their jobs.

However, those changes did not make the store profitable enough to remain open, she said.

“It’s not always about the money,” she said. “This was my second home — sometimes I spent more time here than at home.”

Berkeley resident Russell Bird, an 11-year patron of Andronico’s, felt a particular kinship with the employees there since he was “a blue-collar worker” all his life working for the railroads.

“You go to some places for years and years, and you develop a rapport with the people who work there,” Bird said. “You identify with their labor. Now they’re going, and they don’t know where they’re going. Like a lot of things in this society, it’s up in the air.”

Bird noted that closures like this are a reason the Occupy Movement, which has been going on for about three weeks in Berkeley, has grown so large around the country.

“If you’re not an investment banker or hedge fund manager on Wall Street, you’re screwed in this society,” he said. “I don’t like to see any place close up. They can close up Wall Street any time they want and put the money where the shovels are.”

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