Green Grocer (photo by Brittany Nunn)
Well isn’t this a tease. Just a couple weeks ago Cassie Green, the co-owner of Green Grocer on Lowest Greenville, told us they were going to close the health-centric grocery store on Jan. 18.
After a “pretty emotional” goodbye, Green put all their inventory on sale in an attempt to clean out the shelves, and she told us she was looking towards the future.
Apparently the future is a “mini-version of itself,” according to Culture Map, which reported that the new concept, called GG Micro Market, will have limited hours and a smaller staff.
Green told Culture Map: “We still have a lease on the space for more than a year. After thinking about how to cover that payment and hearing the outcry from our customer friends about our closing, we decided to create a micro version.”
This grocery store venture has been a roller coaster ride for founders Green and Gary Stephens, who moved here from Chicago during the summer of 2012. It’s the second location of their Chicago-based store by the same name and, like the original, it emphasizes local and organic offerings.
This isn’t the first crisis the store has had. The couple tried to save the location on more than one occasion, even going so far as to publicly ask neighbors to shop there more often.
When they announced they were closing earlier this month, Green says a lot of neighbors were surprised, but she wasn’t. “I’ve been looking at the numbers for the past three years,’” she pointed out. “We were just never able to bring in the number of customers we needed to bring in. We decided we can’t keep throwing resources at this.”
But now in one last hurrah, the couple plans to continue to sell their “popular items” such as juice, coffee, smoothies, bone broth and meats, Culture Map states. Read more about the new micro-concept.
