Micro-Grocers Revive the Corner Store, Cater to Food-Obsessed Urbanites

Micro-Grocers Revive the Corner Store, Cater to Food-Obsessed Urbanites

Whole-animal butchery, local produce, spicy condiments attract home cooks in the neighborhood

By Alina Dizik in the Wall Street Journal

Jenny Kendler recently went to check out Plenty Grocery & Deli, a small grocery store that had just opened in her Chicago neighborhood of Wicker Park. A clipboard near the cash register invited customers to write in product requests.

Ms. Kendler, 34, an artist and cofounder of an art website, knew what she wanted: Sophie’s Kitchen Breaded Vegan Calamari, made with Japanese Konjac powder, a thickening ingredient. Ms. Kendler, a vegan, discovered the frozen squid alternative online once when she had a craving for seafood and wanted to try it. To her surprise, after she put in the request at Plenty, “it showed up on the shelf a week later,” she recalls. Ms. Kendler walks or rides her bike to Plenty twice a week to do most of her grocery shopping and visits farmers markets in warmer months.

Small neighborhood grocery stores, or micro-grocers, as some are called, are sprouting up in walkable downtown neighborhoods where many young urbanites are obsessed with food. Known for relaxed but attentive service and a tiny but carefully considered selection of products, the stores want to feel like an extension of their customers’ own kitchens.

Plenty Grocery & Deli opened in Chicago in 2013 after raising more than $15,000 on crowd-funding site Kickstarter. Items associated with paleo, vegan and gluten-free diets have helped the store become a popular place to shop. “We have second-level options for vegans,” says Plenty’s 30-year-old cofounder, David Sommers, such as Phoenix Bean smoked tofu. The store also carries “drinking” vinegars by McClary Bros., which are meant to be mixed into cocktails, and vegan all-natural deodorant from North Coast Organics.

Some call them farmers-market stores or boutique grocers, but they are really upscale convenience stores. Many emphasize whole-animal butchery and small bins of local produce.

In contrast to big supermarkets, which encourage customers to wander around, these urban grocers train employees to know in minute detail what is in stock and where to find it, says Scott Mushkin, managing director at Wolfe Research, in New York. Many stores accept special requests and train employees in suggesting recipes and ingredients.

“The farmers-market style store is very attractive to the [urban] demographic,” Mr. Mushkin said. “People want a story behind their food.”

Many urban grocers also stock soap, toilet paper and other household goods, as well as an assortment of hostess gifts, fresh flowers and tableware, all micro-edited to reflect neighborhood habits and needs.

These new grocers evolved from urban corner stores that even in the early 1800s were catering to an immigrant clientèle, says Cathy Kaufman, a New York culinary historian. Upper-class shoppers wanted to “bring in fashionable goods from the Old Country,” she says. “Even Thomas Jefferson was buying imported olive oil and Parmesan cheese.” As peddlers disappeared, stores added more perishables.

Anna Castellani, who cofounded Foragers City Grocer in 2005, says at her Brooklyn and Manhattan locations customers don’t buy “crazy amounts of food” in a weekly grocery run. “More are shopping in a European style, where you buy little bits every day,” she says. Some might set aside 15 minutes to shop for a few days’ worth of staples.

Foragers wants to be “first to market” with products such as Tarentaise cheese from Vermont and bread from Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Massachusetts, she says. Much of the product comes directly from local makers, including meat picked up from a slaughterhouse rather than a distributor. Foragers also carries garlic hot sauce from by Filfil Foods in Brooklyn, McConnell’s Ice Cream from Santa Barbara, Calif., and Omnom chocolate from Iceland. “We edited down to what people eat every day,” she says.

Ms. Castellani and her husband, Richard Lamb, own a farm in upstate New York that supplies Foragers with eggs and vegetables, like squash and tomatoes.

Rather than the long aisles of a warehouse-style supermarket, Foragers stores are arranged with small islands of products, soft lighting and staff-curated playlists. Specialty counters are on the perimeter, so customers can take in most of the layout as they walk through the door.

Produce displays are intentionally spare; small quantities cut down on waste. “You’re not going to see piles and piles of mangoes,” says Josh Blaine, manager at In.gredients, an Austin grocer that opened last year.

Hunter Hopcroft opened Harvest Grocery & Supply in Richmond, Va., this year to cater to professionals in the city’s historic Fan district. Working with a local meat purveyor, JM Stock Provisions, Harvest sells meat butchered from whole animals and house-made pate and sausages. It sells milk from Old Church Creamery in nearby Manquin, Va., which consumers can’t find in the local Whole Foods. And it offers some old-school house accounts where family members can come in and grab items; the account holder is asked to settle a tab at the end of each week. For another regular customer, Mr. Hopcroft keeps a chilled bottle of wine.

Store staffers know most regulars by name and try to speak to everyone who comes in. Mr. Hopcroft encourages them to share recipes and suggest substitutions. “Our standard [greeting] is, ‘What are you making?” Mr. Hopcroft says.

Tracy Kemp Stallings, 54, a retired hospital executive, visits Harvest once a week, walking to the store for fresh baguettes. Recently she also picked up grenadine made from real pomegranates, sausage with spicy Serrano peppers and beef shanks along with a slow-cooker recipe for them.