How well has the downtown Heinen's store done in its first year of business as an urban grocer? Owners Tom and Jeff Heinen say they are crawling before they walk, but still think the future is bright. Watch video
CLEVELAND, Ohio - A year after Heinen's Fine Foods opened its first Downtown Cleveland store to standing-room-only crowds, jubilant well-wishers and curious onlookers, the urban grocery store has no special plans to mark its Feb. 25 anniversary.
"We're absolutely thrilled with the store, we love being part of the renaissance of Cleveland," said Tom Heinen, co-president and third-generation owner of Heinen's Fine Foods. "There aren't a lot of chances for a company like ours to do things like this."
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Tom Heinen, left, and his brother, Jeff, whose grandfather opened the first Heinen's butcher shop in 1929, are pleased with the Downtown Cleveland store's first year. Heinen won't say how much he and his twin brother, Jeff, invested in the store, other than that it is surpassing expectations in some areas and performing "about what we expected" in others.
The store employs about 100, including those who have moved downtown from other stores. "Our catering business is continuing to improve. We're crawling before we walk, but we're definitely in the game."
"There simply aren't enough people living downtown yet to truly support the store," Tom Heinen said.
"It's very rare that anybody in our business opens a store and makes money within the first few years. Even as high as our brand awareness is here in Cleveland, you're still dealing with a neighborhood shop," that local residents have to want to support.
Just this week, Constantino's Market, another family-run Cleveland supermarket chain, announced it is shuttering its first out-of-state store at the University of Rochester after only 10 months, because there weren't enough shoppers. "We built a beautiful store, and they did not come," said CEO Andrew Revy.
The Heinen brothers had just agreed to open four stores in suburban Chicago when developers Fred and Greg Geis offered them the chance to set up shop beneath the iconic Cleveland Trust Rotunda and anchor The 9 luxury apartment and hotel complex. The Heinen brothers couldn't resist what they considered a once-in-a-lifetime invitation.
They built the new store with profits from their other locations, and said were making an investment in the rebirth of Downtown Cleveland. The store has exponentially increased its selection of locally made products, for example.
"Have you seen our spaghetti sauces? It's [sauces from] all the local restaurants," Tom Heinen said. "Local is the backbone of Heinen's. It's hard to get it any fresher, and we're all about supporting the local economy."
Strolling through the second-floor Balcony lounge, which hosts private events and cocktail receptions after work, Heinen gestures to the lunch crowd trickling into the tables and booth. "We predicted this would be nice gathering place, and it has become that," he said. "Part of our vision in having events here was to answer the question of 'What's there to do downtown?' That's the investment we're making in becoming a destination."
With the Republican National Convention coming to town in July, the Heinens have offered their store as a venue for after-hours parties and receptions. "We're on their list. We close at 9," when most evening events are just getting started, he said. Even if the parties run until 2, 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, that still leaves time to clean up before the store reopens at 8 a.m.
As far as the day-to-day details, "we always thought that the prepared foods and the meal solutions would be the most popular in this store -- and they have been -- but we just didn't realize how popular they'd be," Tom Heinen said.
From chicken romano to garlic grilled shrimp to freshly-rolled sushi, The Downtown store sells more lunches, takeout and heat-and-eat options than Heinen's 21 other locations in Ohio and Illinois, by a fairly healthy margin. "It seems we're more of a restaurant with groceries than a grocery store with a restaurant inside," he said.
Catered box lunches and mini-sandwich trays, made to order in the in-store kitchens, have found an audience among those looking for something between high-end and fast food. Heinen's has also built a niche catering hotel bridal suites and groom's rooms where the wedding parties get ready.
On the other hand, the Downtown store is slower on the days before major food holidays like Thanksgiving and Memorial Day, when the suburban stores are slammed.
"People here have smaller homes, so they're not doing holiday celebrations; they're not typically entertaining at home," Tom Heinen said. "Some of them don't really use their ovens. It's been an interesting challenge to try to accommodate people's kitchen set-ups."
Instead of suburban parents buying a minivan's worth of groceries at once, downtown shoppers tend to buy only as much as they can carry home, he said. Customers range from downtown office workers to Cleveland State University students to apartment dwellers who don't do much cooking. "We do see people here at lunch buying stuff to put in their refrigerators back at the office," but not much.
"That will change as more people move downtown," Heinen said. "Until then, this is exactly what urban shoppers are looking for."