October 9th, 2008 By Justin Williams
Finally, a Downtown Grocery
Now that I’m living downtown, my east side bias is going to slowly start shifting to the downtown sector. I’m working on a few longer pieces about what’s missing down here, but this looks like it may alleviate one of my major complaints:
Shoppers will soon be able to buy produce, fine cuts of meat, wines, fine cheeses, pastas and other groceries from a new store on Main Street.
Jan and Joe Anglin plan to open the Meridian Market in the Meridian Plaza, a building on the corner of Third and Main streets. The Kunkel Group began building 31 condominiums there in 2007. All but two of them have been sold, a fact that will give the Anglins an immediate opportunity to find customers.
I am really hoping it will be the small town equivalent of a Whole Foods with comparable prices. I currently just drive over to the First Avenue Schnucks to pick up food, but if I could just walk a block next door, that’d be awesome. Let’s just hope they have the prices within the Whole Foods & Target range.
The story also mentions that Strattmans is starting to stock groceries. Unfortunately, the pharmacy is closed at 5PM, so it’s hard to do any sort of real shopping unless you are someone like me who doesn’t have set office hours.
photo courtesy of joeheerdink
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If it ends up being like whole foods, I’ll make the trek downtown to purchase from them.
I hope it is the exact kind of place that doesn’t cater to Joe 6-Pack. :)
I think it’s a great thing too. And Stratman’s said they would be extending their hours, so that should help everybody. But please keep in mind, as you are hoping for Whole Foods and Target pricing, that these are both small independent businesses that likely don’t have the buying power of huge national chains, and thus may not be able to afford to sell at prices you want. On the other hand, they are investing in our fair city, and the profits will remain in our fair city. And I would like to think that people will support them and keep us from being a city that no local entrepreneur will want to do business in. The more business they get when they are new and small, the more they will be able to grow and the more buying power they will get. I wish them both well.
Does the Meridian Plaza have a website? I thought I went to it once, but Google doesn’t have any links.
Can’t wait until this opens because I live downtown. We have needed something like this for a long time. We also have the River City Food Coop – FYI.
I went to the River City Coop and all of the “fresh” veggies and fruit were so old and withered….I wish they had fresher things, because I like to shop the local business.