JDH Capital : News
Mountain Island getting upscale grocery store
15 May 2009
Mountain Island Weekly
by Andrew Batton
Mountain Island shoppers will be getting a new trendy place to buy milk, bread and other essentials when a new Bloom grocery store opens in the area this summer.
Bloom, Food Lion’s high-end store brand, will anchor the Long Creek Village shopping center at Mt. Holly/Huntersville and Beatties Ford roads. Charlotte-based JDH Capital is developing the 19,200-square-foot retail center.
Besides Bloom, Collins Cleaners, Fu Shing Chinese Restaurant and CVS Drug Store also have committed to the center, which should open in late sum-mer.
JDH Capital also hopes to land “convenience retail tenants” such as fitness clubs and child-care centers, along with office uses, according to Sherri Faulkner, marketing director for JDH Capital.
Bloom, undoubtedly, will prove the biggest draw for the new center. Salisbury-based Food Lion launched Bloom in Charlotte in 2004, hoping it would compete with Harris Teeter and other upscale grocers. The Long Creek store will be the grocery chain’s 66th store.
Bloom’s draw is its intuitive layout, said Karen Peterson, spokeswoman for Bloom. Bloom stores group foods that are normally served together. The non-foods are on one side of the store, separate from the food products on the other side of the store.
“So you won’t have to walk through the paper towels to get to the milk,” Peterson explained.
The shelves are lower to accommodate the average shopper, i.e. moms, Peterson said.
Bloom also offers shoppers the chance to tote a barcode scanner around the store, enabling them to keep a running total of their groceries and their bill.
“For people who are on a budget who want to carefully manage what they are spending as they shop, this scanner is perfect,” Peterson said.
The store will also feature interactive kiosks that allows guests to find products, select wines and get recipes. Bloom also allows shoppers, using their computers at home, to save shopping lists on its Web site and print them later at the kiosk in their local store.
