O'Connell's Center City Grocery to add deli

The couple started to break even on the store at 212 W. McDaniel a couple of months ago and will add a deli in October – both signs, according to Donna O’Connell, that the hard part is over.

“We knew when we opened it was going to be a few years before there would be enough people living downtown to support us,” she said, “but we wanted to get in before all the properties were gone.”

The O’Connells rent the store space from Craig Wagoner, who, according to previous SBJ coverage, spent $300,000 to remodel the grocery store building. There also are three loft apartments.

While downtown remains a trendy place to live with increasingly available loft space, O’Connell said the downtown demographic comprises a lot of young, single occupants who don’t do a lot of grocery shopping or home cooking. So, she said, most of the store’s business comes from area restaurant owners who run out of ingredients or lunchtime patrons seeking a can of soup or a pack of cigarettes.

“All the vices are our best sellers,” O’Connell said of the liquor, cigarettes and candy her customers buy.

The O’Connells, who bought their meat slicer and erected deli walls when they first opened in June 2003, also plan to add a Welch Systems Inc. automated teller machine to their 1,600-square-foot store, another attempt to make the venture a profitable one.

O’Connell, who said the store took a $34,000 loss in 2004, decided not to open the deli earlier to avoid competition with the former Parrino’s Deli, which was located down the block at 301 South Ave., where St. Michael’s Sports Bar & Grille now operates.

Jenny Russo, who owns St. Michael’s with her husband Nick Russo, said she doesn’t expect O’Connell’s deli to hurt her restaurant’s business.

“They’re very nice to us,” said Russo, who added that she shops at O’Connell’s from time to time. “Hopefully, it will help their business.”

Frequent shopper Jared Comer, who lives 11 blocks north of O’Connell’s and works at nearby Patton Alley Pub, 313 S. Patton Ave. also likes the idea of the new deli.

“Downtown’s my little bubble,” he said. “If I don’t have to, I don’t leave it.”