Goal for downtown grocery is profitability in year one

Pyramid Foods CEO Erick Taylor believes the company’s new urban grocery store, Bistro Market by Price Cutter, will pump $10 million of annual sales into downtown and score profitability in its first year.

After nearly two years of anticipation by residents and workers downtown, the store opening is set for 6 a.m. Aug. 20 at the corner of South Avenue and Walnut Street in the former Wheeler’s Furniture building amid a final flurry of activity.

Taylor said the final week leading up to the opening has been chaotic, and he said the store would open at its set time. The store was buzzing this week, as Starbucks workers set up the coffee shop alongside electrical workers stringing wire while other workers put finishing touches on the 24-foot food bar.

Taylor is hopeful that the store’s amenities will help meet profitability goals.

“The market research came back and said it should be profitable the first year,” Taylor said. “It’ll probably take five to six years to get a return on the money that we have out, but profitable the first year.”

Taylor declined to disclose Price Cutter’s research and renovation costs.

“It’s important to say that we’ve made a significant investment, and we’re confident in the downtown area,” Taylor said.

Visits to urban markets in other cities and two research studies, one by Kansas City, Kan.-based Associated Wholesale Grocers and the other by Minneapolis-based Dakota Worldwide led Taylor and other company officials to believe the market would be successful.
Company visits have included stores such as Cosentino’s Brookside Market in Kansas City; HG Hill urban market in Nashville; and Whole Foods Market in Austin, Texas. Visits also were made to urban markets in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Boston.

The average size of stores in those larger markets, Taylor said, is about 30,000 square feet, making the 10,000-square-foot Bistro Market more in line with Springfield.

The architect for the project is Bates & Associates Inc.

Springfield businessman Morris Dock owns the building and said Price Cutter has signed a long-term lease.

Dock’s company, MoDoCo Inc., is renovating the top two floors of the building as loft apartments. Dock said half of the 12 lofts are vacant, but there are three with contract
reservations, ranging in price from $250,000 to $390,000.

A Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting ceremony for the urban market is scheduled for 5 p.m. Aug. 19.

For full coverage, please see the Aug. 23 Springfield Business Journal issue.[[In-content Ad]]