SOLON: Buckets of fresh gladiolus, sunflowers and lavender greet the shopper at the front door, evoking feelings of Tuscany before you even enter.
Inside, a display of vine-ripened tomatoes, smoked mozzarella cheese, olive oil and balsamic glaze, just beyond the shopping carts, only reinforce the message that this is no ordinary grocery store.
Welcome to the new Giant Eagle Market District.
It sits about 30 miles north of Akron, where Route 91 meets Route 43 in Solon, and its much-anticipated grand opening is set for today when the doors unlock at 6 a.m.
Market District is the upscale store in the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle chain’s grocery portfolio, which also includes traditional Giant Eagle stores and the budget Valu-King stores.
Today’s Solon opening brings to seven the number of Market District stores in operation. The reported $18 million project is a first for Northeast Ohio. Two other Ohio stores are in Dublin and Upper Arlington in suburban Columbus, and there are four in the Pittsburgh area. Another location is in the works for Strongsville with a tentative opening slated for late 2014.
Giant Eagle spokesman Dan Donovan said the 24-hour store hopes to offer customers the best of two worlds, a traditional Giant Eagle grocery store and a gourmet emporium like they’ve never experienced before.
To put it in Akron terms, the store has the culinary panache of the West Point Market, the utility of an Acme Fresh Market, the organic features of the Mustard Seed and the deluxe prepared foods of a Heinen’s. There’s online ordering and curbside pickup like what’s offered at Buehler’s and the kind of wine and beer tastings you would find at Fishers Foods.
It’s as if the planners looked around at everything the grocery store world had to offer and combined it all into one store, and then added even more. As grocery stores go, this is Disney World.
While the center of the store houses traditional grocery offerings, the perimeter is where the store sets itself apart.
There’s a gelato stand, where the frozen dessert is made fresh on-site daily on equipment imported from Italy. There are chefs making fresh sushi daily and a cafe that serves wine by the glass and has beer on tap along with restaurant-quality seating and two flat-screen televisions. If shoppers choose, they can enjoy a glass of either while strolling the aisles.
The prepared-food section includes a pizza shop with a brick oven, a specialty burger station with grilled burgers made to order and served on a signature honey butter bun, and a rotisserie where meats are smoked and roasted.
The deli has the kind of luncheon meats customers expect, including Isaly’s Chipped Chopped ham for $3.99 a pound, but the same case has the corned beef briskets that are roasted in-house, price tag: $15.99 per pound.
There’s a charcuterie station of imported salami and cured meats, and more than 400 kinds of cheeses, including goat’s milk Gouda that’s been aged for six years. The wide selection of prepared foods includes a chopping block where customers can purchase freshly chopped vegetables to take home and the recipes for cooking them up into meals.
Today’s grand opening will feature an appearance and cooking demonstration by Cleveland chef Michael Symon at 1 p.m. Symon will be the first of many chefs who are expected to cook in the store’s demonstration kitchen, where a chef is on-site cooking something most of the day.
Executive Chef Tim Monsman, one of 13 chefs on staff at the store, said the focus is on teaching customers how to enjoy a variety of foods and them pointing them the way down the aisles to gather their ingredients.
If halibut is on sale in the seafood department, there’s a good chance the demo chef will be cooking halibut and handing out recipe cards.
There is an in-house sweets shop where confectioners hand-dip chocolates and offer roasted nuts, cotton candy and a selection of nostalgic candies like B-B-Bats and Necco wafers.
The bakery makes bread fresh every day from scratch — no frozen doughs — and a French-style patisserie offers high-end pastries like French macaroons.
The produce section has 17 varieties of peppers. Avocados are strategically stacked alongside limes, onions and garlic (think guacamole), and there’s a wall devoted to a dozen different kinds of fresh mushrooms and exotic produce, including Indian bittermelon and Chinese okra.
The fresh meat and seafood department includes a glass case where customers can watch the progress as steaks are dry aged. These New York Strips and Delmonicos sell for $19.99 per pound after two weeks in the case. The store regularly stocks rabbit and duck breast and sells exotic meats, too, including ground camel and rattlesnake.
The expansive bulk foods department has dried mushrooms and chili peppers. Dried morels for $219.99 per pound, anyone?
Like most other Giant Eagles, there’s a bank, a pharmacy and a GetGo gas station. But there’s also a full-time dietitian on staff and a full-time esthetician in the health and beauty department.
Folks as far away as Fairlawn were part of a mass mailing for the store’s grand opening. If people will drive 25 or more miles to go to a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, why not a Market District?
The store offers everything a regular Giant Eagle does, plus so much more — items like Mexican Coke made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.
Olivier Kielwasser, senior director of beer, wine and liquor, inspected the wine displays, which include nearly 2,000 varieties — French, Italian, and Spanish, California and Ohio.
A temperature-controlled reserve wine case houses items like the $294 bottle of Roederer Cristal Champage, and the $249 bottle of Joseph Phelps Insignia Napa Valley Red. But turn the corner and the aisle is filled with $5.99 jugs of Carlo Rossi.
Industrial wire shelving holds dozens of brands of gourmet pasta sauces approaching $8 a jar alongside cans of Valu Time chopped tomatoes for 79 cents.
Asked how much more the average customer spends at Market District compared to a regular Giant Eagle, Donovan said only, “The short answer is, more.”
The opening marked the closing of the adjacent store Wednesday afternoon in the Solon Village Shopping Center. The old store employed 250; Market District employs 400, the majority of whom work part time. The old store was 55,000 square feet; the new store, 94,000 square feet on its main floor, plus another 11,000 square feet on a second level where there’s additional cafe seating and also a room that customers can rent for parties.
Donovan said many of the 250 employees transferred from the closed store, while others were placed in jobs at other Giant Eagle stores in the area. None lost their jobs.
Lisa Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or at labraham@thebeaconjournal.com. Find me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @akronfoodie or visit my blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/lisa.