MAY/JUNE 2012

specialty food Products • TRENDS • BUSINESS INSIGHTS

magazine®

www.specialtyfood.com

ILLUSTRATION BY JON VALK

From a neighborhood storefront and cafe to a 20,000-square-foot gourmet emporium to a nine-store natural and specialty supermarket chain,

this year’s award recipients are all honored for excellence in premium service, product sourcing, quality assurance and culinary and retailing passion.

by Nicole Potenza Denis and Deborah Moss



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pecialty Food Magazine and the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade present the five Outstanding Retailers of 2012, as nominated and selected by members of the NASFT. Members are asked to recommend stores based on the qualities of a successful specialty food establishment such as uniqueness, customer service and product knowledge. Each of this year’s award-winning stores exemplifies these traits in its community. Read on to learn about their operations, history, and points of distinction.

Kris and M Caviar & argaret Furniss Bananas

Honorable Mentions

Congratulations to these seven retailers, who were runners-up in this year’s competition:

Kristine C o City Feed rtese and David Wa rner and Supp ly

Court Street Grocers courtstreetgrocers.com

Gateway Market gatewaymarket.com

Farm Basket thefarmbasket.com

Parker and Otis parkerandotis.com

Formaggio Kitchen formaggiokitchen.com

Toucan Market toucanmarket.com

Wagshal’s wagshals.com Nicole Potenza Denis is a contributing editor to Specialty Food Magazine. Deborah Moss is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated and Shape.

ta n

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF INDIVIDUAL STORES

Eli Z aba Eli’s Manr ha t

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Dave Ben Mollie S nett and Mike Ston tone’s Mar e k e ts specialtyfood.com

Greg O’N Pastoral A eill and Ken Miller rtisan Chee se, Bread & Wine

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Caviar & Bananas

aviar & Bananas, located in downtown Charleston, S.C., may take its aesthetic cues from New York City’s elite specialty food markets with its sleek, sophisticated space, but its wide-ranging, hard-to-find product mix—from, well, caviar to bananas—and made-from-scratch offerings put this market in a class by itself.

History…When husband-and-wife team Kris and Margaret

Furniss decided to put New York City behind them, they headed to historic downtown Charleston, S.C., to implement a market-andcafé concept for the small but bustling foodie town. No strangers to the area or the specialty food world—Margaret completed her undergraduate degree at the College of Charleston, and Kris spent four years as the general manager of a Dean & Deluca in New York—in 2008 they opened Caviar & Bananas, a gourmet market and café located in the downtown shopping district. “At the time—to our surprise—there was nothing in the area that offered high-end, hard-to-find items and fresh-made on-site food,” says Kris. “We thought it would be the perfect fit.” They were right. Caviar & Bananas was well received for its eclectic delights that had a local bent. “Customers were grateful that they now did not have to drive out of the way to get items like Prosciutto di Parma, Serrano ham or regional specialties like Tate’s Cookies or Jeni’s Ice Cream,” says Margaret. With its exposed ceilings, white subway tile, glass display cases, Carrara marble countertops, steel shelving and an open kitchen, Caviar & Bananas adds Southern hospitality to its stimulating bigcity makeup. “We are more than just a food museum,” Kris declares. “You can dine in, design your own salad to take out or even learn how to roll your own sushi.”

75 bottles ranging from mid-range to higher-end prices. “We wanted our wine area to be special with harder-to-find varieties but still wanted to keep the price line approachable,” she notes. The couple takes pride in the market’s growing gift-basket operation. “Our custom gift baskets are a great opportunity for people to be introduced to some of our unique products,” Kris adds.

How It Keeps Innovating…Last year, Caviar & Bananas’

second storefront opened in downtown Charleston’s newly renovated City Market. A small outpost of the flagship store, it offers a convenient deli counter and a small selection of specialty items such as granola and chocolate bars. “The City Market is one of the busiest tourists areas in Charleston,” Margaret says. “When we were approached by the city to do a possible outpost location, it was a perfect fit—the foot traffic was already built in.” The Furnisses hope to add another outpost by next year and add a wine bar to their flagship store. “Our intention was never to just be a mom-and-pop operation,” Kris remarks. “We always had intentions to grow. The next step would be to take our concept regional.”—N.D.

Year Opened:

Points of Distinction…Part restaurant, part retail, Caviar

& Bananas features an in-house sushi bar, espresso bar with customroasted coffee from Counter Culture in Durham, N.C., and organic teas that are steeped to order. The prepared foods department showcases dishes with local and global influences. “We take pride in serving quality food,” Margaret says. “We make our own mayonnaise for our made-to-order sandwiches, confit our own duck, pull our own mozzarella and use real crab in our California rolls.” Caviar & Bananas’ selection of packaged goods ranges from high-end olive oils and tomato sauces, to more elusive items such as buckwheat honey, pâté and charcuterie. Local standout specialties, including Callie’s Charleston Biscuits and Sweeteeth Chocolates, also line shelves. A boutique wine selection showcases

2008

Type of Business: Gourmet market/café

Outstanding Features: Sushi bar; all prepared foods made on-site

Contact:

Margaret Furniss caviarandbananas.com

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City Feed and Supply

neighborhood natural foods market, café and deli, City Feed and Supply, Jamaica Plain, Mass., pursues retailing as more than just an exchange of high-quality goods. Rather, the retailer looks at it as a way to build relationships, strengthen ties and support communities by integrating and sourcing local and regional products from small farms and artisan producers.

History…When a neighborhood convenience store went out

of business on Boylston Street in the Stony Brook area of Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, residents Kristine Cortese and David Warner fantasized about its replacement. The couple had in mind a mix of healthy and indulgent items as well as a place to get a great cup of coffee, a hearty sandwich and groceries for dinner—even a place to linger and catch up with friends. With no retailing experience (Cortese was a scenic painter for theater, and Warner a restoration carpenter) and failing to convince more qualified friends to take on their crazy idea of opening a specialty food store, they researched what it would take to do it themselves. With the help of local development resources they soon had a solid business plan, a secured lease and financing. In 2000 they opened City Feed and Supply, a moniker that paid homage to the couple’s rural childhood roots. In 2008, riding on the success of the growing Boylston store that had become a destination for more than just locals, another City Feed and Supply opened on Centre Street, just over a mile away. Almost four times the size of the original and including an expanded selection of groceries with an increased emphasis on local, organic and specialty foods (the store boasts more than 600 local products and relationships with some 50 New England area farms) as well as an expanded deli menu, City Feed and Supply reflects and serves the needs of the community that sustains it.

Points of Distinction…City Feed and Supply’s standout

feature is its product mix. “We strive to build an inclusive character for our business,” Warner says. “Making it as inviting as possible with the right mix and staying true to our local economy allows us to win customers across an entire spectrum. It is a sign of the times.” Though the deli and café make up 50 percent of the store’s operations, there is, what Warner calls, a “hybridized” mix of products. The majority of the grocery inventory is big-branded natural food items from companies like Amy’s and Annie’s, with a few conventional items sprinkled about. The store’s cut-to-order cheese case houses only New England Farmstead cheeses. A signature specialty is pickled green tomatoes, a year-round product made by a nearby jam maker. 64 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE ❘ specialtyfood.com

Warner says partnering with the local food community allows for creative sourcing and a product advantage over bigger competitors, while also building the store’s reputation. “Local food producers now come to us because they want City Feed and Supply to be the first place where they can sell their product,” he says. Local fare includes produce from dozens of farmers, tofu, craft beer, soy milk, granola, kimchi and chocolate. City Feed composts all food scraps, coffee grounds, produce waste, to-go coffee cups and soup containers and prints all of its menus and fliers on 100 percent recycled paper.

How It Keeps Innovating…Moving forward, City Feed

will continue to be an active participant in the local food economy. It will also focus on expanding the foodservice and catering side of its business. Warner and Cortese plan to wholesale some of the store’s popular deli options to other local venues, such as cafés that can’t produce sandwiches on-site. Even though Centre Street is not yet at capacity, Warner says another City Feed might be in the cards. “I often ask myself, How do you give yourself a promotion when you own your own business?” he shares. “You look for ways to expand.”—N.D.

Year Opened:

2000 (Boylston St.), 2008 (Centre St.)

Type of Business:

Natural foods grocery, café, deli

Outstanding Features:

More than 600 local items; relationships with 50+ New England area farms, composting program

Contact:

David Warner cityfeedandsupply.com

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Eli’s Manhattan

ounded by Eli Zabar, this 20,000-square-foot food emporium has been a New York City institution since it opened on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1998. Inspired by the food halls of Europe, the two-floor store specializes in gourmet prepared foods, fresh fish, aged meat and cheeses, freshly baked baguettes and pastries, along with a kosher bakery, an adjacent wine store, gelato stand and restaurant.

History…The youngest son of Louis Zabar, who opened New

York City’s historic epicurean emporium Zabar’s in 1934, Eli opened his first food business in the 1970s with restaurant E.A.T. and later an E.A.T. gift boutique. Nearly two decades later, in 1993, he opened Eli’s Vinegar Factory, which features a market, café, commercial bakery and rooftop garden. Zabar later found an opportunity 10 blocks south of his Vinegar Factory to create a specialty food market. In 1998 he opened Eli’s Manhattan, a stylish store with an emphasis on hard-to-find specialty products.

Points of Distinction…

Upon entering the store, shoppers are greeted with classical music and the fragrance of fresh-baked bread from the on-site bakery. For those with too little time to browse the aisles, a vibrant personal-shopping program allows customers to call in their grocery lists over the phone, and Eli’s staff handpicks the items. “We don’t just grab any bananas for a customer,” says Adam Rhein, a buyer for Eli’s. “I shop like I’m shopping for myself.” Eli’s Manhattan goes above and beyond with quality control, too, ensuring every product is in pristine condition before moving it to the shelves or displays. “We sort our blueberries by hand before offering them to customers. Every blueberry will be picture perfect,” Rhein explains. “We buy caviar in original tins and the first thing we do is pop the tin open and taste the caviar.” Offering a unique selection is the goal when selecting products to sell. “We try to source things you can’t find anyplace else, so we import many items from France, Italy and Spain,” Rhein notes. “But we also source cheeses, dairy, meat and produce locally.” Eli’s even offers a small selection of seasonal produce, such as heirloom tomatoes, arugula, micro-greens and figs, which are grown on the Vinegar Factory’s rooftop garden. The market is equally known for its prepared foods. “Much of what we sell, we make,” says Rhein of the acclaimed prepared items, which include salads, one-meal dishes such as mac & cheese, wraps and soup. “We have a 40-foot wall of soups that are made in the nearby Vinegar Factory’s kitchen using the same high-quality ingre-

dients that we sell in our store.” And when looking for new products, Rhein says he always asks for samples that he personally tries. “If it’s on our shelves and we’re selling it, we have tried it,” he says. “Nothing is bought blindly. It is all handpicked and tailored.” Owner Eli Zabar, 69, himself is in the store every day tasting and testing.

How It Keeps Innovating…Expansion is a key part of

growth for Eli’s. A few summers ago Eli’s took over Amagansett Farmers Market on New York’s Long Island. Most recently Eli’s acquired a stall at the Grand Central Station Food Hall, where the team sells breads, pastries, cakes and pies. Later this year, the business will take over two more stalls, which will feature produce, nuts, dried fruits and candies. “We are constantly fine-tuning the things we do best: quality assurance and customer service,” says Rhein. “It’s a tough market and if we want to be in the game, we need to continue to go above and beyond.”—D.M.

Year Opened: 1998

Type of Business:

Specialty food store with adjacent restaurant/café and wine store

Outstanding Features:

Butcher, fish market, house-made breads, house-roasted coffee beans and nuts, imported cheeses and prepared foods

Contact:

Adam Rhein elizabar.com



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Mollie Stone’s Markets

hen college buddies Dave Bennett and Mike Stone went into business, their mission was simple: bring natural foods into a larger market. Since opening its doors more than two decades ago, the original Mollie Stone’s Market has expanded to nine locations in the Bay Area, offering more than 30,000 SKUs in the largest stores, including produce, service meat and deli, specialty food and core grocery items.

History…

In 1986 the two friends opened their first store, a 15,000-square-foot natural foods store in Redwood City, Calif. Two years later, they had—and jumped on—an opportunity to start another store in more northern Sausalito. “It was an 18,000-squarefoot regular supermarket, so we kept core grocery items but added natural and specialty foods,” says Bennett, who describes the duo’s vision as the best of both worlds. “We were early adopters in moving natural foods into a larger arena,” Bennett says, adding that they have always been forwardthinking. Case in point: the San Francisco Mollie’s that opened in 1998 was reportedly the first grocery store in the world to have a Starbucks inside. “That was our smallest store [at the time] with 9,500 square feet but the second highest in sales,” he notes. The latest of the nine Bay Area–spanning stores opened in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood in 2011.

How It Keeps Innovating…

Always keeping an eye on the future, two years ago Bennett and Stone hired a company to educate them on all the possibilities of social networking. “We wanted to look at the ways we could communicate with our customers,” Bennett explains. The consulting led them to hire a full-time staff member last year to manage the Mollie Stone’s website, as well as its Facebook, Twitter and Yelp accounts. “We want to position ourselves to look at search-engine optimization and feedback from customers,” Bennett says. “We’re interested in how people are going to shop using mobile technology. We are committed to building new types of relationships with our customers.” With their dedication to social networking, Bennett adds that Mollie Stone’s is following the social media presence of specialty food companies to find opportunities to partner. The first partnership, still under wraps, is set to roll out this summer.—D.M.

Points of Distinction…

As Mollie’s has expanded over the past two decades, the business has held fast to Bennett and Stone’s original vision to offer the best of both worlds: core grocery items along with natural and specialty food items. From their smallest location (6,500 square feet) to their largest (44,000 square feet), Mollie Stone’s strives to offer shoppers what Bennett calls extreme customer service. “Our mission is to surpass customer expectations with superior service. One of the ways we accomplish that is by recruiting quality employees,” Bennett says of the 600 people the chain employs. Along with a commitment to having a great staff, Mollie Stone’s is dedicated to giving back to the communities that have made it thrive. Over the past 25 years, the business has given more than $2.5 million to local schools and made donations to the Bay Area Food Bank. In stores, the founders concentrate on keeping heavy and complete inventory, with produce holding the title of best-selling department, followed by service deli.

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Year Opened: 1986

Type of Business:

Grocery offering specialty and natural foods with nine Bay Area locations

Outstanding Features:

Introducing specialty and natural foods to widespread group of grocery consumers through education with sampling, in-store demos and cross-merchandising

Contact:

Dave Bennett molliestones.com

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Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine

ith three locations in the Windy City and a booming Artisan Producer Festival at Chicago’s French Market, this 8-year-old business has grown tenfold since opening in 2004. For its second food festival in April 2012, the cheese shop hosted 70 producers and 8,000 food lovers from around the world. Those who attended the festival or have stopped by the store fall in love with Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine’s carefully edited selection of artisanal foods, including more than 150 cheeses.

History…

After years of traveling and living abroad, Greg O’Neill and Ken Miller came back to Chicago to discover a scarcity of market shopping: small, experience-oriented shops where items were cut to order. “We loved to picnic, so we’d try to pull together picnics in our first summer back,” says O’Neill. “We thought we could do better. We did market research and realized there was a lot of interest.” After consulting with experts in the field and attending a Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, the self-described corporate refugees took the plunge and opened a 382-square-foot store in 2004. Since then, they have expanded with two more stores, one in downtown Chicago and another in Chicago’s French Market.

Points of Distinction…

Since opening, Pastoral has expanded but has not wavered from its initial concept: small-producer goods of high quality sold cut-to-order with exemplary service and education. O’Neill describes this education as the “T.L.C.” approach: tasting, learning and converting shoppers to the Pastoral style. More than 150 cheeses are on offer; fresh chevres and mozzarellas sell best in the summer, while peak sales in winter go to alpine-style cheeses such as Comté and cloth-bound cheddars. “We focused on categories [with] only a few degrees of separation from cheese,” such as charcuterie, olives and breads, O’Neill explains. “We are primarily a cheese shop, but we’ve grown into other things. We are a cheese and wine shop, not a wine and cheese shop.” If they had double the space, he adds, the market would only delve deeper into the existing categories, rather than expand to a wider grocery store selection. O’Neill notes that Pastoral’s employees have diverse backgrounds and are as passionate about food as the owners. “If you have an engaged and enthusiastic staff it becomes infectious, and that’s how you create customer advocates,” he says. “We want novices to walk out as delighted as aficionados.”

How It Keeps Innovating…

Pastoral has a new e-commerce website that is gaining an increasing number of visitors, as well as a quickly growing cheese business for foodservice (selling to more than 60 U.S. restaurants). In its downtown location, Pastoral began offering sandwiches to bring in store traffic during low times; this strategy has attracted a whole new crowd of customers. “We take advantage of the lunch crowd by bringing in cheese/wine makers who do tastings while people wait for sandwiches,” explains O’Neill, who has a background in corporate marketing. “We convert sandwich customers who come back for cheese, wine, bread and beer.” The owners recently opened a 4,000-square-foot commissary, with a walk-in and commercial kitchen, where they can prepare food, such as sandwiches and cheese plates, to sell in Pastoral shops or provide for local Intelligentsia coffee shops.—D.M.

Year Opened:

2004 (Lakeview); 2007 (Loop district); 2010 (French Market)

Type of Business:

Specialty food store (cheese, wine & accompaniments) with three locations

Outstanding Features: Cut-to-order, service and education focus

Contact:

Greg O’Neill pastoralartisan.com



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