Alexander Coolidge, and Jeremy Fugleberg

Cincinnati

Kroger is taking shopping to the next level in its newly expanded Corryville location. The $25 million store is the first multi-floor format in the region as the grocer continues to tinker with new urban-centric designs.

Opening March 9, the new store offers shopping staples on the ground floor, while an upper level will feature a beer growler station and a bar serving both wine and beer.

"It's a really good area and there was only so much land, so what do you do? You go up," said Ken Pray, Kroger's director of store design.

Kroger’s latest store showcases how it seeks to court shoppers to visit and linger at stores longer. The company is increasingly embracing more experiential shopping for customers in order to become more than a destination for eggs, cornflakes and other staples. The added features will be put to the test in a tighter, urban store format, one of only 10 Krogers in the city of Cincinnati.

Kroger acquires Murray's Cheese

Solving the unique challenges of running a successful urban supermarket is top of mind for Kroger as it closes another such a store, just a mile away in Walnut Hills. It also comes as Kroger flirted again in recent months with developing a store in downtown Cincinnati.

The store also will be only the second Kroger in the nation to have a "living wall" – a vertical garden, a feature aimed to appeal to the neighborhood's tens of thousands of college students as well as busy medical professionals working at nearby hospitals.

"We think it's a cool element – we're striving to make this Kroger a different kind of destination," Pray said. "We want customers to say 'Hey, that's not the Kroger I used to know.' "

The new 70,000-square-foot Corryville store replaces a smaller store on the same property. But it's roughly half the size of several Marketplaces that Kroger has built locally in recent years.

Trying for right size, fit for a busy city

The Corryville store and its specific offerings illustrate Kroger's strategy for winning over customers and boosting how much they spend.

Faced with intensified price competition at the start of the millennium as discount stores and drug stores turned to cheap groceries to drive traffic, Kroger responded by trimming prices but also ramping up variety, services and amenities to set itself apart.

Last year, Kroger spent roughly $4 billion to build or renovate new stores. In 2015, the company bought Mariano's, a Chicago-based chain of urban grocery stores to gain knowledge about serving city consumers; Mariano's was part of Kroger's acquisition of Roundy's.

The new store, at 1 E. Corry St., features a Murray’s Cheese shop, a natural foods section, a Starbucks, and a bistro area with an entrance that allows you to grab items without having to walk around the entire store. The store will also offer ClickList, Kroger’s buy-online-pickup-at-the-store service as well as a Little Clinic walk-in health center. The store also features other familiar amenities: a drive-through pharmacy, a floral department, and expanded produce, meat and seafood, dairy and frozen food sections.

What's different is the store's size. Even though it's larger than the store once in Corryville, it's still small for a typical new Kroger. That its size is unusual is underscored by the fact it's been almost a decade since Kroger opened a store in the Cincinnati region that's under 100,000 square feet.

"It stands out among our newer stores because it's noticeably smaller than most of the stores we're building nationwide," Pray said.

That has big implications for how the store will operate. Customers shop a smaller, urban store differently than they would a supermarket in a suburban strip mall. Because the store is in a crowded neighborhood, less land is used and there's less parking.

A full-size combo or Marketplace Kroger will have at least 400 to 450 parking spots for its own use. The Corryville store has 300 parking spots that it shares with a nearby Walgreens.

A bigger share of customers will be visiting the Corryville store on foot or by transit, not by car. In turn, that means shoppers will buy fewer things per trip because they will be carrying their bags. It also means the store's patrons are expected to visit frequently.

Since the store's customers will include busy professionals and college students, the new location will feature a heavy selection of pre-made foods along with the upstairs bar.

The new Kroger's downstairs bistro seating and the upstairs bar were designed by students from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning.

"This is the first time we've built something they've designed," Pray said, adding Kroger wanted the store to resonate with the thousands of students who will shop there.

Kroger has also partnered with ArtWorks and a local artists group called the Humanity Machine to develop a metal sculpture that will be displayed near the outdoor seating area. Part of the sculpture will be installed prior to grand opening.

Working to get urban shopping right

One city store opens, another closes and Kroger's Downtown flirtation continues. These moves highlight Kroger's desire to serve urban communities, but also the challenges in executing those plans.

Asked about Kroger's long-running flirtation with building a Downtown supermarket, Pray said Corryville might influence the look of a future store in the heart of the city, but offered no specifics on the status of the project.

"We're definitely pursuing our options," Pray demured.

Last fall, The Enquirer learned Kroger was working on a potential Downtown site at the southeast corner of Central Parkway and Walnut Street along the streetcar line and next door to the Hamilton County Administration Building. Kroger officials neither confirmed nor denied project talks for the site, which still operates as a parking lot. But there has since been no official announcement nor unofficial indication of progress.

Downtown Cincinnati's last supermarket closed more than 40 years ago, and the grocer has long been pressed by interested neighborhood groups to develop a supermarket. Downtown boosters, including streetcar advocates, have been asking for a new store to help continue to attract new residents to live and work in the city's urban core.

Downtown resident helps bring market to The Banks

The Corryvillle store also opens the day after Kroger closes its first Greater Cincinnati store in nearly six years at 954 E. McMillan St. in Walnut Hills.

Kroger officials say the Walnut Hills store, which opened in 1983, never gained a large enough following to make it successful. The store lost the company $4.9 million in the last six years and has been profitable only once in the last 25 years. It would have lost it another $900,000 in 2017 had Kroger not decided to pull the plug.

Local officials and activists say Kroger's departure will leave a void.

“The store itself, as badly designed as it is, as poorly managed as it has been, is like a microcosm of the neighborhood,” said Kevin Wright, executive director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation. “When you’re there, it’s one of the few places in the neighborhood which is very representative of the neighborhood and people are friendly to each other and they bump into each other and so on.”

To ease local shoppers' transition to the Corryville store, Kroger has set up weekly shuttle bus service for customers 50 and older from Walnut Hills. The company is also providing bus fare through the summer for other customers who register for the service at the Walnut Hills store before it closes.

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