Sure, there were lots of free food samples, but restaurant owners and others said they also came to buy.
Wednesday morning was the grand opening of a new business on a formerly vacant lot south of downtown Akron: a Restaurant Depot, a food and kitchen equipment wholesale emporium open only to business owners and nonprofits.
Diane Austin, owner of the Wistful Cafe breakfast and lunch spot in Portage County, was among the crowd of folks checking out the place at the intersection of Miller and Sweitzer avenues, and she said she is thrilled that Akron has a Restaurant Depot, part of a national chain of wholesale food stores.
“I was in the store parking lot this morning,” Austin said. “I was laughing, and I said, “I am going to go in to the store and hug everybody I see.’ ”
Austin explained that she has been spending two hours each week driving to and from the Restaurant Depot in Valley View, outside Cleveland.
“Coming here is going to cut down so much time,” she said. “That’s why I am so excited. And with this being as close as it is, we can come several times a week, so it is easier on the cash flow.”
At a Wednesday morning ribbon cutting, Akron city and Summit County officials hailed the warehouse store for other reasons: It is has brought private investment and jobs to an economically distressed part of town. The store is currently employing about 30 people; a total of about 50 unionized jobs are planned.
The 55,000-square-foot store offers 10,000 products, including fresh produce and frozen items, as well as kitchen items.
“We also stock products from every ethnic background,” the Restaurant Depot’s Sandy Roberts told the small group of people gathered in the store’s entryway for the ribbon cutting. “So whatever chef’s idea is going on … we have that available.”
Roberts is vice president of sales for the chain’s Midwest region. She said Restaurant Depot employees have been getting word out about the new location with “boots on the ground,” visiting lots of area restaurants, in addition to sending out fliers.
Customers on Wednesday included owners of Mexican restaurants, pizza shops, Italian eateries, Asian food spots, as well as firefighters buying food for meals made at their station and members of private clubs.
Pizza shop digs in
Greg Welch and Bill Tice, owners of Zza’s Pizza in Lakemore were buying flour, cheese, breading ingredients and more.
“We’re buying high-gluten flour” for the pizza dough, Welch said. “We make our own breading for the chicken. … We don’t buy premade sauce.”
The Akron store is the fourth Ohio location for the company, headquartered in Queens, N.Y. Nationwide, there are more than 100 warehouses.
At the ribbon cutting, County Executive Russ Pry praised the Greater Akron Chamber, saying the organization “was a big spearhead in making sure this project came about.”
The project, he said, is “another very successful private public partnership, creating jobs in an area in our community where we really need to create the jobs.”
The store is a few blocks from the $12-plus million Involta data storage center on Miller Avenue, which the city and county, along with Greater Akron Chamber officials worked to attract to Akron in 2012.
Nearby, the state is spending $96 million to build a new interchange at South Broadway and South Main Street. Currently, the state is tearing down buildings to make way for the interchange.
County and city officials said easy access to the highway helped attract Restaurant Depot to the site in South Akron.
Pry noted that construction of the warehouse store was financed with $6.5 million in New Markets Tax Credits. These are federal tax credits that can only be used to finance business investments in qualified low-income communities.
A total of $5.5 million in the tax credits were among those allocated earlier this year to a nonprofit entity of the Development Finance Authority of Summit County, formerly the Summit County Port Authority.
The tax-credit program provides investors with federal tax credits in exchange for the investors offering interest rates that are below the market average to businesses that want to launch or expand in low-income communities.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com.