A Commitment to Competitive Pricing

The Telluride Watch
Published: 8/15/06
By Martinique Davis

Gazing out across aisles of perfectly aligned products gleaming against the squeaky clean interior of the just-opened Market at Mountain Village, shoppers by and large appeared impressed with the town’s newest community perk.

“I’ve been waiting twenty years for this,” Mountain Village resident Carlotta Horn said, as she and her two high school-aged daughters loaded their cart full of provisions for their upcoming Lake Powell trip.

Fellow Mountain Village homeowner Allison O’Dell, while pushing wide-eyed, 3-year-old Sean past the meat counter stocked with such delicacies as wild caught crab legs, fresh lobster tails and rows of thick New York strip steaks, said the new grocery store reminded her of a small-scale Whole Foods or other gourmet organic market – one typically found in a much bigger city.

The store’s airy and open aisles, wide enough to push two carts comfortably past each other, struck San Bernardo’s Amanda Carlson as she shuffled by other eager shoppers streaming into the new market on its opening day on Wednesday.

“It’s really nice that it has so much more room,” she said of the 14,000-square-foot space, now the largest grocery store in the region. She added that with the opening of the new store in Mountain Village, her grocery store commute just got five miles shorter. “I’m much more likely to come here rather than drive into town.”

Since The Market’s opening last week, the new store (located in Town Hall Plaza next to the free gondola parking lot) has been inundated with a near-constant flood of Telluride and Mountain Village-area shoppers eager to check out the region’s newest grocery shopping venue. Boasting the area’s largest selection of organic and gourmet specialty items, an expansive frozen foods department, a prepared foods deli manned by Telluride’s Aemono Catering, a fresh meat counter, a large international foods section, and more, most shoppers who visited The Market last week wore an awe-struck look as they slowly explored the aisles of their new shopping digs.

Amid the bustle, owner/manager Darin Hall had a happily satisfied outlook on his and business partner Mike Lawler’s new venture. “Feedback has been great – we’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of people who have come here to shop this week,” Hall said while taking a short break from manning the barrage of new store challenges, like searching for prices on unmarked items, working through glitches in the phone system and helping busy checkers re-stock their plastic bag supply.

Hall and Lawler operated the Mountain Village Market, located in the Palmyra building in the Mountain Village core, for nearly two years prior to opening the new market at Town Hall Plaza. They have also operated Ridgway’s only grocery store, the Ridgway Mountain Market, for six years.

Hall explained that when they were looking to expand their grocery business, they originally explored opening a store in other small Colorado communities. But they soon realized that an unexplored grocery goldmine sat right in their own backyard. With  a year-round population of 1,200, there was a need for a substantial market within Mountain Village town limits.

“Our overall goal is to stop leakage to Montrose, and keep grocery business in the Telluride area,” Hall said. “Time will tell, but so far we’ve gotten really positive feedback from our shoppers.”

To assist with their goal of reducing Telluride area residents’ need to drive to Montrose for moderately priced groceries, Hall and Lawler have committed to competitive pricing of certain items at their store. Hall says that all of The Market’s meat, dairy and produce selections have been priced the same as what shoppers would find at City Market South in Montrose.

The store has also opened the regional market to more gourmet and organic selections than can be found at some of the larger grocery retailers. “Thirty to forty percent of the items we carry here you simply couldn’t get at a commercial type store like Wal-Mart or City Market,” Hall said, explaining that those stores go for volume in sales rather than niche-type products. “We’re going for a ‘treasure hunt’ type of experience, so when people come here to shop, they find something they’ve never seen before. We’ve tried to combine a lot of fun, unique products with the standard grocery basics.”

Items like Glogg Drink Mix, cannoli dessert shells, Polish pickles, and Kagome vegetable and fruit juice are just a few of the hundreds of unique products shoppers will find at the store, along with a vast assortment of different sauces, salad dressings and condiments.

Junior Fruen, part of the Rose’s Market Telluride grocery family from years ago, has come on board as an assistant manager of The Market. “We’re working with a lot more suppliers so that we can bring in all the products people want,” he said. “It’s a work-in-progress, but our goal is to get those things that everyone wants at their grocery store.”

The Market at Mountain Village also boasts a wide selection of natural, non-toxic cleaning and laundry supplies, as well as recycled toilet and bathroom tissue and biodegradable paper cups and plates.

Of The Market’s commitment to offering more natural, organic and “clean” products, Hall said: “I think that people look at food and shopping differently than they did even a few years ago. There are better-educated shoppers out there that are wiser about what they consume. To respond to that, we have tried to offer a lot of different options for people, from totally clean products to the more conventional ones. A lot of time and effort has been put into each department and what can be found there.”

The market’s adjoining liquor store is slated to open in the next four to six weeks, Hall estimated. Looking beyond the liquor store opening, Hall and Lawler see little more for the future of The Market other than continuing to supply Mountain Village and Telluride residents with the products they want and need.

“We thank the community for their support so far, and hope that people will continue to come to us with their thoughts and suggestions,” said Hall. “If someone wants something, we’ll do everything we can to get it for them. We want to establish a long-term relationship with the community and its food needs.”

The Market at Mountain Village is open daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.