Frayser Regains Large Grocery in Northgate Shopping Center

Discount grocer Gordin’s Foods & Butcher Shoppe, another cost-plus-10 percent grocer, is moving into space Kroger just vacated in Frayser’s Northgate Shopping Center.

Gordin’s asserts it can succeed at a location where the national grocery chain lost money because of lower overhead and lower prices that should draw more customers, co-owner Toby Gordin said Friday.

The goal is to open at 3226 Thomas on April 14.

As if demonstrating the cost-cutting approach, Gordon was busy repainting “spot boxes’’ himself when a reporter interrupted him Friday. Spot boxes are free-standing refrigerated containers that usually hold meat.

He and his father, Mike Gordin, own six Memphis-area Save-A-Lot groceries and their first Gordin’s Foods & Butcher Shoppe, which opened at 1781 S. Prescott, at Lamar, about a year ago.

Groceries with the ‘‘plus-10 percent’’ approach are a trend that started in Memphis with CashSaver.

“It’s a new concept coming into Memphis,” Toby Gordin said. “We list our retail at what it takes to get on the shelf and when you check out it’s 10 percent on top of that.”

Asked why he’s putting a cost-plus-10 percent operation in Northgate instead of a Save-a-Lot, Gordin replied, “We want to look at different formats. We experienced very good growth with our cost plus 10 percent out of the Prescott location and hopefully this will do the same thing.”

The Gordins are repainting the store inside and out, installing new shelving, new decor and other upgrades. He declined to say how much money they are investing in the space.

“Frayser has always needed a grocery store that’s got great pricing,” Toby Gordin said. “The neighborhood around us, it’s always been a great neighborhood. With Kroger coming out, we knew there would be a need for another grocery store.”

The grocery will employ 20 to 30 people; Kroger had employed 52 there when it closed.

Many of the products will be the same as non-discount grocers, Gordin said.

The nearest competitors are a SuperLo, less than two miles away at 3327 N. Watkins, and the Kroger at 2632 Frayser, at Range Line, about 3.5 miles from Northgate Shopping Center.

Kroger closed in Northgate on Feb. 18. Kroger had been losing money there for more than three years, company executives acknowledged.

A substantial grocer moving in behind Kroger so quickly is “very important” to Frayser, said Steve Lockwood, executive director of the Frayser Community Development Corp.

“I’ve always said Frayser is not a food desert. There’s a lot of knee-jerk stuff that as a low-income community this has got to be a food desert,” Lockwood said.

However, Kroger had been the only large grocery serving the west side of Frayser. Losing Kroger there “left us open to that description of ‘food desert.’ I’m obviously very tickled somebody is coming in,” Lockwood said.