Earth Fare opens its second area store at 7 a.m. today, adding competition to the expanding grocery market in Mandarin.
The 28,000-square-foot natural and organic foods retailer is in the Mandarin South Shopping Center at 11700 San Jose Blvd.
Open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, Earth Fare also features a 65-seat indoor café with 16 patio seats and offers free Wi-Fi.
“It’s a good sign,” said President and CEO Frank Scorpiniti, explaining that a slate of new and remodeled grocery stores signals a strong market.
“Usually you find these kinds of refreshes and new entrants in vibrant markets, so that’s a good sign for Mandarin, a good sign for Jacksonville and it foreshadows to us quite an exciting opening and success for all those businesses,” he said.
Earth Fare is across San Jose Boulevard from Winn-Dixie and is near Publix Super Markets. It isn’t far from a Trader Joe’s under construction and a Native Sun Natural Foods Market.
Other relatively new entrants to the Jacksonville market are Aldi, Lucky’s Market and The Fresh Market, which recently freshened its stores with new products and some cosmetic remodeling.
Asheville, North Carolina-based Earth Fare opened its first Jacksonville store Aug. 20, 2014, in the Atlantic North Shopping Center at Kernan and Atlantic boulevards.
“That store did quite nicely for the business,” Scorpiniti said. People “suggested we look in this community, so we began doing so a few years back.”
At the time the Atlantic Boulevard store opened, Earth Fare’s chief financial officer said the company believed Jacksonville could support three to four stores, singling out Mandarin and the Westside as areas under consideration.
Scorpiniti said they found the Mandarin location two years ago.
He would not commit to the number of stores targeted for Jacksonville, but said the initial prediction was possible.
He said Earth Fare probably has the potential for more stores in Jacksonville, “but there is nothing on the drawing board.”
“We haven’t really defined a Jacksonville store count,” Scorpiniti said. “We are just looking at opportunities as they arise in this market area.”
He said Earth Fare has plans for nine to 10 stores in Tampa and eight in Orlando.
The company, founded in 1975, operates 41 locations in nine Southeast, mid-Atlantic and Midwest states.
Mandarin’s Earth Fare is its sixth in Florida. The store hired about 130 employees.
Privately held, Earth Fare developed a philosophy that its products would be free of high-fructose corn syrup as well as artificial fats and transfats, colors, preservatives and sweeteners.
Also, its meats would never have been administered antibiotics or growth hormones.
The company said that its more than 750 private-label food products are sourced using only non-GMO ingredients.
It also offers private-label organic cleaning products.
Scorpiniti referred to Earth Fare’s trademarked “Live Longer With Earth Fare” slogan.
“In our view, the better you eat, the longer you live,” he said.
Earth Fare also stocks products from more than 30 local and regional vendors, including Bold City Coffee Roasters and Pura Bean Coffee Co., Berry Good Farms Barkin’ Biscuits, Shakti Life Kitchen, Wainwright Dairy and Hoby’s Honey.
Store sustainability initiatives include LED bulbs, compostable food containers and a recycling program. The heat generated by refrigeration and freezer systems provide 100 percent of the hot water used in the building.
A community advisory board of more than a dozen Mandarin-area residents has been meeting regularly with Earth Fare about the store.
The Mandarin South Shopping Center is owned by Preferred Growth Properties, the Books-A-Million real estate subsidiary that also developed The Crossing and The Strand at Town Center.
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