LONGMONT — A steady stream of customers filled the aisles of the new Lucky’s Market in Longmont on Tuesday, the day before the official scheduled opening.

“We opened the doors a little after 8 just to see what would happen,” said Bo Sharon, who co-founded Lucky’s with his wife, Trish, in Boulder in 2003. “We got busy.”

Bo Sharon is a native of Los Angeles — and a former child actor — who met Trish, a Boulder native, while they were both in culinary school in California. After getting out of school the couple thought about going to work for a well-known chef in Las Vegas, but decided instead to move to Boulder and buy the North Boulder Market, which was for sale.

“To say the least, the learning curve was high,” Bo Sharon said Tuesday.

But they loved the concept of a local, independent grocery store and loved being able to provide their customers healthy food at a reasonable price, he said.

“We’re 90 percent organic and natural but once in a while we enjoy an Oreo,” said Sharon, referring to his store’s inventory.

The 26,000-square-foot store is double the size of the Lucky’s on north Broadway in Boulder. That allows it to have a “hot bar” where people can pick up prepared food for lunch or dinner. And like the Boulder store the Longmont Lucky’s has a deli and a meat department, both of which help Lucky’s stand out from its competition, Sharon said.

“We smoke our own turkey breasts; we cure our own pastrami without nitrates,” he said, adding that the butchers even make their own bacon.

Lucky’s tries to locally source as much of its products as it can, Sharon said. Willow River cheeses come from Longmont’s Cheese Importers, and over on the other side of the store the flowers, plants and peppers in the produce department also come from local suppliers.

“We’ve got 16 different (local) farmers represented in the store right now in produce,” Sharon said.

Lucky’s Wine & Spirits, a full-service liquor store, is located next to the market.

Lucky’s Market Location: 700 Ken Pratt Blvd. Hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day Phone: 303-827-3684 Website: luckysmarket.com Grand opening: 8 a.m. Wednesday

The couple had their eye on opening a store in Longmont for more than a year before they officially announced they had found a spot late last year.

Their store is in the newly renovated Parkway Promenade shopping center. Lucky’s will be joined by the restaurant Modmarket, which will open just to the west of Lucky’s in October, and then Sears Hometown, which will be just to the west of Modmarket, in November.

Richard Groves of Blackfox Parkway Associates, owners of the 120,000-square-foot center on the northeast corner of South Pratt Parkway and Ken Pratt Boulevard, said the several million dollar renovation of the center had begun even before it was announced that Lucky’s would be opening its second store there.

“This is great — this is tremendous,” Groves told Sharon as shoppers wandered the aisles of Lucky’s Tuesday morning.

Sharon said he and Trish will be bouncing back and forth between the Boulder and Longmont stores. They have hired 104 full- and part-timers to work in the Longmont store, which will get its official unveiling Wednesday with a grand opening at 8 a.m. There will be a ribbon cutting and the couple will be donating a $20,000 check to the OUR Center.

Asked about the name — Lucky’s — Sharon smiled and said, “It’s a general reflection on Trish’s and my philosophy. To be able to do what we do and do what we love — we’re lucky.”

Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at tkindelspire@times-call.com.