SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Raley's supermarket chain heir Michael Teel plans to launch Good Eats Grocer, a gourmet grocery chain, in two Sacramento, Calif., locations, reported The Sacramento Bee. The concept is a grocery/convenience/foodservice offering akin to Tesco's Fresh & Easy, Wal-Mart's Marketside, Jewel-Osco's Urban Fresh and other smaller-footprint stores.
By the new year, the "bistro-market" anchor of the Good Eats chain should open in a site that once housed the Rosemount Grill, where Teel's grandfather, Raley's founder Thomas P. Raley, often met with [image-nocss] his store managers, said the report. A few months later and a mile and a half east, Teel and business partner Michael Ashker will open a Good Eats in the building now occupied by Corti Brothers, the 61-year-old market that pioneered the specialty-food business in Sacramento. A third store is scheduled to open as soon as next summer in midtown, to be followed eventually by five more locations around the region, the report added.
The attraction of Good Eats, Teel and Ashker hope, will be a mix of quality, convenience and style. While entering the grocery market is always risky, said the newspaper, experts say other ventures around the country have demonstrated that the Good Eats model of smaller stores and fresh grab-and-go meals can succeed.
Each Good Eats Grocer will carry slightly more items than a Trader Joe's, but with more emphasis on fresh, prepared foods. Teel and Ashker have attracted management and store-design veterans who helped build Whole Foods Market and Seattle's Metropolitan Market chain. Sacramento architect Ron Vrilakas, known for renewing the buildings that house midtown destination restaurants Zocalo and Mikuni, among others, is designing the stores, the report said.
"We want to reinvent the neighborhood market," Teel told the paper.
For Teel, 57, the venture marks a precarious re-entry into the business he left abruptly in 2002 when he resigned as president and CEO of West Sacramento, Calif.-based Raley's. He is financing Good Eats largely through a loan against his personal credit, said the report. He and Ashker shopped the idea around to a number of investors, and even pitched it to Raley's executives. No one bit.
"It's a startup," Ashker said, strolling through the gutted Andiamo building. "It's risky."
Around the country, industry experts cited buy the Bee say, retailers that successfully blend a small store footprint with high-quality prepared food and an emphasis on local produce are winning food dollars away from supermarkets and restaurants.
But following through on that model has proven difficult. "It's about execution," George Whalin, who heads Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif., told the paper. "If you look at the sheer number of food-oriented startups that make it, it is a very small percentage" of the number that try, he said.
The grocery business is a low-margin battlefield. That's particularly true in the Sacramento region, where the lack of a single dominant grocer makes for an especially broad range of players in the market, the report said. And London-based Tesco PLC is coming into Sacramento with its Fresh & Easy chain, scheduled to open at least 19 stores in the region starting next year.
Teel said he began thinking about a neighborhood-scale grocery chain in 2000, when he was still Raley's CEO. After a failed magazine venture, he met Ashker, a former hedge-fund manager and veteran entrepreneur. The two began to develop the Good Eats idea. Teel cited the success of the ready-to-eat offerings at Selland's Market-Cafe on H Street in east Sacramento as one of his inspirations for Good Eats.
He said that he envisions neighborhood residents strolling to Good Eats to pick up dinner. He lives on Folsom Boulevard, roughly midway between the chain's first two locations. "I can walk either way to a store," he said.
For Good Eats to gain a foothold, it will have to quickly establish a reputation for top-notch grab-and-go food, Dan Raftery, a retail consultant based in the Chicago area, told the Bee. "The biggest challenge, which can turn into the greatest asset for these operations, is what they prepare," he said. "If it's good, people will come back."
Much rides, therefore, on the skills of the two chefs heading the Good Eats kitchen. Kelly McMullen, 30, has cooked under marquee San Francisco chefs and left a sous chef position at Google Inc.'s headquarters to join Good Eats. Justin France, 32, a Yuba City native, has cooked for Whole Foods Markets and came to Good Eats from a sous chef position at Cafe Bernardo on R Street in midtown, the report said. The pair are crafting the Good Eats prepared-food menu, which will number about 80 items. The first Good Eats will offer additional choices for sitdown dining.
Click herefor CSP Daily News coverage of the small-format phenomenon.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.