After years with a limited presence in Central Florida, specialty grocers are beginning to grow again.
Whole Foods Market plans to enter Seminole Countywith an Altamonte Springs supermarket. The Fresh Market intends to build a store in the future Mills Park development just north of downtown Orlando. Meanwhile, struggling Winn-Dixie has tried making some of its mainstream supermarkets more upscale with fancy amenities and more specialty items.
Craving more-healthful, gourmet foods, Americans have begun doing more shopping away from conventional supermarkets, said Eli Portnoy, a Miami-based brand consultant.
“Consumers are going to these stores for more and more of their total food purchases, as opposed to just specialty items,” he said. “That’s been a shift. That’s why you’re seeing an expansion in these given markets.”
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For many years, shoppers who wanted a little oomph in their grocery shopping went to one of 18 Gooding’s stores throughout the region. But the locally based, family-owned grocer struggled throughout the 1990s, and Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie bought most of the stores in 2000. Only one exists now, near Walt Disney World.
Whole Foods and Fresh Market both opened in Orlando more than a decade ago, toward the end of Gooding’s reign. But they have stagnated at two stores apiece for several years now.
Austin-based Whole Foods has supermarkets in Winter Park and on Turkey Lake Road in Orlando. The company said last week it plans to open in the Renaissance Centre on State Road 436, near Altamonte Mall, in 2014 or 2015. Nationwide, Whole Foods said, its goal is to triple the number of stores, ending up with 1,000.
The Fresh Market, which has locations in Altamonte Springs and on Dr. Phillips Boulevard near Orlando, now plans to add one at Mills Avenue and Virginia Drive in north Orlando. It would be almost 21,000 square feet, or less than half the size of today’s average supermarket.
The Fresh Market has long wanted to open somewhere near downtown Orlando and Winter Park, said Stephen Smith, director of real estate for the company’s Southeastern region.
“We’re a pretty patient company when it comes to just waiting for the right real estate,” he said.
The North Carolina-based company, which became a publicly traded corporation in 2010, has aggressive expansion plans.
It has more than 120 stores now but wants to operate more than 500, including, perhaps, additional outlets in Central Florida, Smith said.
“There are just so many parts of Orlando that have the densities that we need,” he said.
With dim lighting, classical music and the smell of freshly brewed coffee permeating the store, the Fresh Market in Altamonte doesn’t feel or look like a conventional supermarket. Wicker baskets and wooden stands artfully display many of the foods and beverages, most of them niche products, with a few mainstream items thrown into the mix. Produce displays tell shoppers the countries of origin for fruits and vegetables. Shelves above the merchandise display a rustic, eclectic mix of decor, including flowerpots, chairs and decorative metal birds.
“I just like coming here. It’s a nice atmosphere,” said Lydia Cassaro, who was sipping a coffee sample recently while pushing a small shopping cart with apples in it. She does much of her shopping at Publix Super Markets but began visiting Fresh Market about a year ago to pick up produce, nuts and chocolates.
“I know the prices are a little higher,” she said of Fresh Market, but “you know how at Publix they say, ‘Shopping is a pleasure’? It’s like that.”
Spreading competition could mean some trouble for Lakeland-based Publix, the region’s dominant grocer.
“They’re going to have to up their game,” Portnoy said. “They have to be smarter and more competitive.”
Publix, which would not comment on Whole Foods’ and Fresh Market’s expansion plans, has recently remodeled some supermarkets — including one in Altamonte Springs near Renaissance Centre. The grocer is also testing a program that will reduce long waits at its stores’ deli counters by allowing customers to order ahead online.
Winn-Dixie, meanwhile has given some stores — including outlets in Fern Park, Longwood andApopka — a few Whole Foods touches when remodeling them. Those features include towering-glass exteriors, Wi-Fi cafes, sushi chefs, deli stations and a wider range of niche products that are more prominently displayed.
Its Central Florida stores began getting the changes last year. The company has since been purchased by Bi-Lo Holdings LLC, a South Carolina-based supermarket chain, and the remodeling has been scaled back. The chain still stocks a wider variety of products, such as organic foods, and some of the newer amenities and design elements continue to be adopted in certain stores, Winn-Dixie spokeswoman Mayra Hernandez said.
Still, Orlando hungers for another grocery chain, one that, while not upscale, appeals to affluent shoppers because of its selection of organic, kosher and unusual products: Trader Joe’s. The California-based chain recently started opening in smaller markets in Florida but said it doesn’t plan Orlando stores for at least two years.
“They really, I think, believed for a long time states like Florida were full of people who didn’t think about organic or health or really cared,” Portnoy said.
But such stores, he said, can do well “in any market with a fairly strong professional population. The consuming public still has an eye toward wanting safer, better food, better quality, more prepared foods. These types of retailers really address these needs better than the standard Publix or other kind of supermarket.”