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COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— December 16, 2015-January 5, 2016
Retail
by John Rebchook
Natural Grocers opens a new
store, and neighbors often cheer
that they have access to fresh
organic foods that is it famous
for selling.
In addition to its fresh food,
all of its new stores, and recent-
ly remodeled ones, have some-
thing else – community rooms.
Natural Grocers recently
opened three new stores – most
recently one in the Berkeley
neighborhood in northwest
Denver, one in Aurora and
another in east Denver.
They all have community
rooms, which typically can seat
around 50 people.
In November, Natural Gro-
cers opened a new store at 4500
E. Alameda Ave., in a former
Gunther Toody’s restaurant
space.
“Our new location is about
four blocks from our original
one (at 5231 Leetsdale Ave.),”
said Jeremy Jones, marketing
director for the publicly traded
Natural Grocers by Vitamin
Cottage, which has a market
cap of about $455 million.
By moving into the Gunther
Toody’s space, Natural Grocer’s
was able to expand the size of
the store by about 2,000 square
feet to about 15,000 sf, which is
the target size for its new stores.
“That bigger store gave us
an opportunity to carry more
products and to include a dem-
onstration kitchen/community
room,” Jones said.
Because it had been in the area
for years, neighbors already
were familiar with it.
“And now we have a bigger
space on a more visible corner,
so we are drawing new custom-
ers, in addition to retaining our
existing ones,” he said.
Whether they are old or new
customers, they now have
access to an up-and-coming fea-
ture, the community room.
And the store is not alone.
“All of our new stores have a
community room,” Jones said.
Natural Grocers will host
things such as free cooking
classes, lectures on nutritional
health and other free classes in
the community rooms.
When Natural Grocers is
not using the space, it can be
reserved by outside users.
“It is free for 501(c)3 nonprof-
its and others can rent the space
for $25 per hour,” Jones said.
In other words, if you want
The Berkeley Natural Grocers opened Dec. 15 at Tennyson Street and
West 38th Avenue.
