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Retailer News BRIEFS GOURMET NEWS JANUARY 2020 www.gourmetnews.com RETAILER NEWS 8 Kroger Partnership to Pilot In-Store Produce Farms The Kroger Co. and Infarm, the world's fastest growing urban farming network, have announced a partnership that will bring modular living produce farms to North America, delivering produce picked so fresh you can see the roots. The partnership between Kroger and Infarm marks the first-of-its-kind in the United States. The living produce farms launched in December at two of the 15 stores planned at QFC – a Kroger banner – at locations in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington. Using hydroponic technology, the produce will grow on site at the participating QFC stores, removing the need for extended transportation and storage and producing a more eco-conscious product. The farms are designed to scale and will provide shoppers the freshest and most sustainable living produce options available. Amazon May Use AmazonFresh to Grow Beyond Whole Foods Dropping monthly fees associated with AmazonFresh and instead making it a free benefit for Prime members is not just about reenergizing Amazon's online grocery service. It suggests that Amazon intends to use the brand to grow beyond the limitations imposed by Whole Foods-Prime Now relationship, reports market research firm Packaged Facts, which recently published "Amazon Strategies and the Amazon Shopper, 2nd Edition." Behind the scenes, Amazon has clearly been trying to figure out how to balance AmazonFresh and Prime Now, its 1 to 2-hour delivery service. Since acquiring Whole Foods in 2017, Amazon seems to have given Prime Now more attention, leveraging the upscale natural and organic supermarket leader to build out its Prime Now footprint and put the service into high gear. Already, Amazon has moved to blend existing online grocery strengths with the tantalizing potential of almost 500 Whole Foods locations and millions of loyal customers via Prime Now. And the secret sauce in Prime Northgate González Market Celebrates Grand Opening in Riverside, California Northgate González Market, California's premier family-owned, Latino themed supermarket chain celebrated the grand opening of its newest store located in Riverside on November 20. The new store has a community room available for non-profit organizations needing meeting space and plans to host diabetes classes, cooking classes, yoga classes and more. Additionally, the Riverside store will include a medical clinic, Clinica Bienestar, where residents will be able to receive medical services. The supermarket represents an economic development success story for the city of Riverside. The new Northgate Market employs 224 associates, with 168 of the positions filled by residents of Riverside and its surrounding areas. Southport Grocery & Cafe's Good Food Awards Draw a Community BY LORRIE BAUMANN Southport Grocery & Cafe offers its guests a seat at the table for breakfast and lunch as well as a few shelves of specialty gro- ceries in Chicago, Illinois' Lakeview-South- port Corridor on the north side of the city. The location is just two blocks from Wrigley Field. "That's important because it brings energy to the neighborhood. We have a lot of people who come in before the game because they want breakfast before they go to the afternoon game," said Lisa Santos, Southport Grocery's Owner and Chef. "It's a magnet. When they [the Chicago Cubs] are doing well, you just can't beat it – it's a nice add-on." The 2,500 square foot cafe seats cus- tomers at around 22 tables, which expands to 40 in the summer when an outdoor area is available. The menu emphasizes break- fast, but Southport also serves sandwiches and salads. "We kind of call our food 'com- fort food but with a little bit of a twist,'" Santos said. "It's still approachable but something a little bit different." With a staff of 25, the cafe has full-time bakers who make most of its breads as well as a preservationist who makes the pickles and mustards. The specialty grocery shelves stock a carefully edited selection of candies and chocolates, pastas and sauces, pancake mixes, and some craft beverages. "We make some drink starters," Santos said. "Craft cocktails are really popular right now." Santos curates the products in favor of small, local producers who make products that are different from what her own staff makes to sell. "I have to look at pricing and margin, but I do the first first – the taste, where they're from," she said. "If it's really good and really special, my company will buy it." The neighborhood around Southport Grocery & Cafe is a family-friendly urban center with a mix of independent busi- nesses along with some retail anchors, and Southport Gro- cery draws its clientele mostly from that immedi- ate neighborhood. "Sometimes you look down the row along the banquette, and it'll be all women and their kids," Santos said. "An- other day, it's all men having busi- ness meetings." Santos knows all about that kind of business meet- ing. Two decades ago, she was feeling stuck and out of place as a certified public accountant doing strategic planning for a big corporation when she decided to follow her passion, ditch the 9-5 job and go to culinary school. "I was always in the kitchen with my grandmother, and I always loved the tradi- tions around food," she said. "The tradition around food really brings people together." After she'd finished culinary school, she started drawing up a business plan for a cafe of her own, but she got a little stuck on her first pass through it until her friend Darleen read through it and made a suggestion. "I couldn't fig- ure out how we were going to dif- ferentiate ourselves from other businesses," Santos said. Then Darleen pointed out to her that she had noticed that when the two of them went on business trips to- gether, Santos had wanted to spend some of the time they could spare away from conference ses- sions and appointments poking around in artisanal grocery stores. She suggested that what Santos needed in her plan was a few shelves for some artisanal grocery items. "It is true. I did not come up with it – she did," Santos said. "It was really a way to differentiate against other restaurants." Something else that differentiates her business from most others is that Southport Grocery & Cafe has been win- ning Good Food Awards since 2013. With seven Good Food Awards already to its credit, Southport Grocery has two products among this year's finalists for Good Food Awards, Backyard Relish and Bread and Butter Cauliflower. Past winners have all been for pickled and preserved products or for mustards, which are sold on the grocery shelves and served in the Cafe. "We whole- sale a little bit to other small Chicago places," Santos said. "We can pretty much sell what we make." She entered her first products into the Good Food Awards in 2013, when her preservationist at the time heard about the program. "The things that they stand for, we stand for as well," Santos said. "It's more ingredient-driven and sustainable prac- tices-driven. That kind of production of foodstuffs reminds me of what my grand- mother did." The awards matter to her customers as well as her staff, according to Santos. "Peo- ple love the things that we preserve," she said. "The Good Food Awards just give us a little bit more national recognition that we're doing what we say we're doing. It's like street credibility." Participation in the Good Food Awards and in the Good Food Mercantile trade shows that are produced by the same organization, the Good Food Foun- dation, also gives Santos the opportunity to associate with like-minded people, and that's helpful to her business as well, she said. "This business is hard. It's the passion behind the products that gets me going, and when people love your prod- ucts, it makes you want to keep doing it," she said. "When well-known na- tional people [like Alice Waters and Ruth Reichl] who have believed these things for so long – it just reminds you why you're doing this." GN

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