Gourmet Garage is a chain of
specialty/
natural food
Natural food and all-natural food are terms in food labeling and marketing with several definitions, often implying foods that are not manufactured by processing. In some countries like the United Kingdom, the term "natural" is defined and regu ...
markets with four locations in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
as of 2022. The enterprise began as Flying Foods, a specialty food distributor, and transitioned into retail in 1992. Gourmet Garage's 3 locations were purchased by Village Super Markets, a member of the
Wakefern Food Corporation
Wakefern Food Corporation is an American company that was founded in 1946 and is based in Keasbey, New Jersey. It is the largest retailers' cooperative group of supermarkets and the fourth-largest cooperative of any kind in the United State ...
cooperative, in 2019.
History
Flying Foods was launched in 1981 by college roommates, Andy Arons and Walter Martin, and Paul Moriates, whom Martin met during a brief tenure working at
Waldorf Astoria Hotel Waldorf can have the following meanings:
People
* William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor (1848–1919), financier and statesman
* Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor (1879–1952), businessman and politician
* Pappy Waldorf (1902–1981), 1966 ...
. Their mission was to import fresh foods that were not available in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
at the time and sell them to chefs at high end restaurants in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, and elsewhere across the country. By 1987, when the business was sold to
Kraft Foods
The second incarnation of Kraft Foods is an American food manufacturing and processing conglomerate, split from Kraft Foods Inc. in 2012 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It became part of Kraft Heinz in 2015.
A merger with Heinz, arra ...
, it had grown from one office to four and both imported foreign products and exported American artisan-made food overseas.
Gourmet Garage began as a distributor in an actual garage space in
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
. When trucks from commercial clients left, they would open their doors to the general public. In 1992, the store formally opened on
Wooster Street in Soho. Arons partnered with Adam Hartman, a CPA who had helped negotiate the sale of Flying Foods, and two food business veterans, John Gottfried and Edwin Visser, to open the retailer,
which prided itself on the stark contrast to specialty stores of that period. Gottfried told the New York Daily Press, "The previous approach was to sell this stuff like jewelry. We sell it like produce."
In 1994, the business moved to a larger space at the corner of
Broome and
Mercer
Mercer may refer to:
Business
* Mercer (car), a defunct American automobile manufacturer (1909–1925)
* Mercer (consulting firm), a large human resources consulting firm headquartered in New York City
* Mercer (occupation), a merchant or trader ...
in Soho. The following year they opened a new location in a former garage space on the East 64th St., still selling their high quality products at a slightly lower price. Gourmet Garage continued to pursue that audience throughout Manhattan, opening stores on the
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
, in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
, and near
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
.
A new store in
Tribeca
Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stre ...
opened in mid September 2015.
Gourmet Garage has continued to develop relationships with local producers, and the product mix of the stores is heavily weighted towards fresh products and prepared foods.
Locations
* SoHo, 489 Broome St.
* Lincoln Center, 155 W 66th St.
* TriBeCa, 366 Broadway
* West Village, 585 Hudson St.
See also
*
List of supermarkets
As of September 2020, this is a list of supermarket chains, past and present, which operate or have branches in more than one country, whether under the parent corporation's name or another name. For supermarkets that are only in one country, see ...
References
External links
* {{Official website, http://www.gourmetgarage.com/index.php
Wakefern Food Corporation