The 85-year-old grocer went from opening a store every three to five years to opening three within six months, Tom Heinen said. And they are not finished. The brothers hope to follow up this year's success with two more Cleveland area locations in 2015.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Heinen's Fine Foods' Co-Presidents Jeff and Tom Heinen are in Illinois again Wednesday, introducing themselves to shoppers at their fourth suburban Chicago store, in the Village of Lake Bluff.
The 40,000-square-foot space, transformed in less than three months from a gutted-out Dominick's Finer Foods storefront, is the brothers' third new store this year and 21st companywide in what has been an exceptionally ambitious year.
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View full sizeTom Heinen, left, and his twin brother Jeff Heinen, are in Chicago introducing themselves to shoppers at their newest store in the Village of Lake Bluff, Illinois. In addition to its 17 Cleveland-area stores, Heinen's has opened four stores in Chicago in a little more than two years:
1.) A store in Barrington, Illinois, on Aug. 22, 2012;
2.) a store in Glenview on May 7, 2014;
3.) a store in Bannockburn on Aug. 13
4.) and the Lake Bluff store Wednesday.
The 85-year-old family grocer went from opening a store every three to five years to opening three within six months, Tom Heinen said. And they are not finished.
The brothers hope to follow up this year's success with two more Cleveland area locations in 2015: The long-awaited Downtown Cleveland store in early 2015, inside The 9 building on East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue around March, and a store in a former Giant Eagle in Chagrin Falls sometime late summer or early fall. Tom Heinen said they have signed a letter of intent, but that plans still need to be solidified.
The hiccup with the Cleveland store is that some of the drawings of the building's floorplan were old and not quite accurate. "Some of the dimensions weren't exactly right, and in our business, two feet makes a huge difference," he said. The Metropolitan at the 9 hotel is open, and people have moved into the high-end residences, but he said his team is still working to perfect the details of their store, which will be unlike any they've ever built.
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View full sizeCustomers wait outside Heinen's Bannockburn store on its Aug. 13 opening day. The Cleveland grocer has four stores in Greater Chicago. Having four stores in suburban Chicago gives Heinen's enough of a critical mass to increase its brand awareness, but the Cleveland grocer is still a relatively small player among Chicago supermarkets, Tom Heinen said.
Both the Bannockburn and Lake Bluff stores are former Dominick's locations that became available after parent company Safeway Inc. pulled out of Chicago and closed 72 stores to focus on other markets.
Heinen's has created more than 500 jobs in those four communities, in addition to the two dozen or so Cleveland workers who volunteered to help launch the Chicago stores.
"We're excited about the people who have joined us in all the stores," Tom Heinen said. "We feel we have a real culture of service" that mimics what they stress in their Northeast Ohio stores and surpasses the stores' interior design in importance for branding and loyalty.
The Lake Bluff store is located in a strip mall at 201 S. Waukegan Road, in Lake County, Illinois, about 15 minutes north of the Bannockburn store. It is comparable in size to the Glenview and Barrington stores, and is similar in layout, food departments and services to Cleveland-area Heinen's.
John C. Williams, architect and founder of Process Creative Studios Inc., which has designed all four of Heinen's Chicago stores and is working on the Downtown Cleveland store, said: "Lake Bluff is a nice little community, and it's got a gorgeous beach area."
"Anybody from Cleveland, if you put them in the store blindfolded, they would definitely be able to tell it's a Heinen's," he said. "It's clean, comfortable, and it's a nice little store."
Lake Bluff Village Administrator Drew Irvin said residents have been anxious for Heinen's to open since it took over the Dominick's store that closed Dec. 28. "Before they even opened their doors, they've done a wonderful job weaving themselves into the community," he said. When the Heinen brothers heard about Lake Bluff's Halloween celebration on Friday, which draws thousands of people to the Village Public Safety Building for trick-or-treating, hot dogs, chips and drinks, they offered to supply all the food.
From the owners to the store employees, everyone "loves their store, and their people are very eager to offer good service," Irvin said. "I get asked all the time, 'When are they opening? When are they opening?' Everyone is just so excited, and we are eagerly awaiting the ribbon-cutting."