"I'm there at least two or three times a week," said Downtown Cleveland Heinen's shopper Allison Peltz. "Because I live by myself, I don't shop like my parents do: I buy for a few days at a time."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When Allison Peltz moved to Downtown Cleveland four years ago, her friends and family fretted over how she would cope in her new neighborhood. "I can't tell you how many people asked me, 'Where are you going to go grocery shopping?'" she laughed.
So when Heinen's Fine Foods opened its signature downtown store on Feb. 25 last year, she not only had something to tell them, but an answer to make some of them jealous.
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Allison Peltz shops two or three times a week at the Downtown Cleveland Heinen's Fine Foods, but spends 100-percent of her grocery budget there. "I just went there on Monday, and I'll go again tonight or tomorrow," said Peltz, a partner at Hello LLC engagement agency in Chagrin Falls, who lives minutes from the Cleveland Heinen's.
"I'm there at least two or three times a week. Because I live by myself, I don't shop like my parents do: I buy for a few days at a time."
That's the kind of thing brothers Jeff and Tom Heinen kept hearing when they were weighing opening a store downtown. When they asked residents how they shop and what they buy, they got an earful of suggestions about how city dwellers have different expectations of urban grocery stores.
So when the Heinen brothers finally launched their store inside the former Cleveland Trust building a year ago, they aimed for a new target audience: Younger residents with smaller homes and fewer children who don't necessarily like or have the time to cook.
The Downtown store, with its heavy emphasis on prepared foods, smaller portion sizes, carry-out entrees and ready-to-eat meals, is still experimenting with ways to win over fickle Clevelanders as it tries to build its core audience.
"I love meeting people there for coffee or lunch"
Elizabeth Falco, vice president of partnership at GradSchoolLoans, a Quicken Loans company, walks by the year-old Heinen's on the way to and from work.
"It's a huge asset to the downtown community," she said. "It's a place I go pretty frequently. I don't cook, so I love all the prepared foods, the salad bar, and the sushi station. In terms of food shopping, yeah, that's my spot."
"I love meeting people there for coffee or lunch. I'm there about three times a week, or depending on what's going on, twice a day," Falco said.
"With the wine bar upstairs, and the beers on tap, it really is a community gathering place. People start the night there and head out."
"I tweeted Heinen's about it"
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Heinen's shopper Erica Aber lives and works in Downtown Cleveland. Downtown resident Erica Aber, vice president and portfolio manager at Spero-Smith Investment Advisers Inc., said that when her company was based in Beachwood, she did most of her shopping at Heinen's Shaker Heights and Rocky River stores.
But now that Spero-Smith works out of Terminal Tower and she lives within blocks of the Downtown Heinen's, "I have very little reason to head out of downtown," she said.
"I do 99 percent of my shopping at Heinen's. It has everything that I typically cook with, and very few times have I wanted something they didn't have," she said.
"Once they didn't have any ground white-meat chicken; they only had ground dark-meat chicken, and I was looking to make ground chicken meatballs. So I tweeted Heinen's about it, and next time I went back, it was there."
"I use it as almost my pantry"
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Jeff Sleasman lives right next door to the Downtown Cleveland Heinen's and goes almost every day. Jeff Sleasman, manager of special projects at Arteriocyte Inc., in Midtown Cleveland, lives at 1010 Euclid Ave., the apartment building right next door to Heinen's. He doesn't even have to go outside to dash into the store.
"Everyone I know who lives downtown is there often, and talks about it as a godsend store," he said. "I'm there practically every day buying food. I go all the time when I have coffee. I'll go every day to get sushi. I use it as almost my pantry.
"On the weekends it's always pretty full. Whenever there's a Cavs game there's usually a crowd getting food before they go," Sleasman said. "They get their takeaway stuff rather than getting it at a restaurant."
"They just put in an oyster bar on the first floor. They have it out fairly regularly, and it's kind of a cool little addition," he said.
"Guys, it's a grocery store!"
Peltz and her boyfriend often start their dates at that raw oyster bar, beneath the picturesque Rotunda. "There's this woman who shucks them in front of you. She's so fun and she talks your ear off -- in a good way," she said.
When Peltz goes food shopping, she runs out to Heinen's with two reusable bags and buys only what she can carry home. "I buy everything there. If I need toothpaste or toilet paper, I buy it there," she said. "Could I go to Target and save 59 cents on garbage bags? Yes. But I like the convenience of going to one place."
Peltz gets that people wanted to see the Rotunda when the store first opened, but is grateful that the curiosity factor seems to have died down. "I would be trying to shop, and people would be coming in to look around and take pictures. I'd think, 'Guys, it's a grocery store!'"