East Dallas is going to get pretty crowded with grocery shoppers now that Green Grocer has announced its partnership with Artizone.com, an online shopping community that features a wide selection of local artisanal shops and food businesses. Cassie Green and Gary Stephens founded the first Green Grocer in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago (2008), and now they’re opening a second location in Dallas by September 2012 on 3614 Greenville Ave. with 4,000 square feet of retail space. Green Grocer will be a “one stop shop to pick up every day grocery items, lunch to go, ingredients for a fresh and delicious dinner or a gift basket for a friend” and will feature “organically grown, locally produced food and specialty items.”
But Sunflower Market (soon to be Sprouts now that the two chains have emerged) already dominates the corner of Lewis and North Henderson, while Trader Joe’s is set to open on 2001 Greenville Ave. – just 1.2 miles away from Green Grocer – by the first quarter of 2013. Oh, and remember me telling you how Wal-Mart is opening its own Neighborhood Market store in the old Whole Foods space on 2218 Greenville? That’s happening this September as well. By next year, at the very latest, one-two-three-FOUR grocery stores will be fighting the good grocery fight within a two-mile radius.
What’s that idiom again? Two is company, three’s a crowd… so what’s four? Four might be produce-shopping overkill. With the advent of Green Grocer, at least this means that those of you who’ve been pining for a neighborhood market that supports small, local vendors as opposed to large retail chains are finally getting exactly what you want, even if we’ll all be playing bumper cars with our grocery carts along Greenville and Henderson. Hip hip hooray!
