There was a time in Wilmington when if one hungered for organic eggs or milk, being on a first name basis with a farmer or having a cow and chickens in the yard was a necessity. Then, beginning in 1982, these individuals could join a member-driven food co-op called Tidal Creek in a hard-to-find, confusing, poorly lit retail space tucked away off Wrightsville Avenue.
Residents like me who frequented the cramped member-owned cooperative, where food arrived in bulk and members worked together to repackage and share natural and fresh food, were not considered mainstream America.
Remember the double drive-through fast food window debuted in America in the 1980s.
Elsewhere, meeting a demand for healthier eating, grocers like The Fresh Market (Greensboro, NC, 1982), Whole Foods (Austin, Texas, 1980), and Trader Joe’s (greater Los Angeles, Ca., 1958) moved into larger North Carolina cities and flourished.
Leasing a brand-new space in a strip center on Oleander Drive in 2002, Tidal Creek morphed into a well-lit, thriving, boutique grocery store with a whole food café inside. The co-op, still member owned and staffed, was more welcoming to the public and developed a loyal member-driven clientele, some of whom shop in the store daily.
The co-op became a lifestyle; a place for like-minded people to meet, share ideas and information, which generated education, community partnerships, outreach and support for local charities. Profits stay local, given back to members as annual dividends and reinvested in growth. The store has expanded repeatedly.
Only an estimated 5 percent of Tidal Creek members live in the vicinity of the store. Many members live as far away as Leland to the west and Jacksonville to the north.
The first competition came in 2002 as businesswomen Marie Montemurro and Karen Stewart built another popular membership-based health food store in Landfall Centre, Lovey’s Natural Foods and Cafe.
Mainstream grocers noticed their market share declining as customers flocked to these two stores for healthier foods, from fresh organic fruit to gluten-free items and natural vitamins they could not get elsewhere, even organic meats. They also noticed the trend in customers lingering over coffee and conversation at these stores and morphed accordingly.
Thirty years after Tidal Creek opened, organic, fresh, locally sourced food has become de rigueur as have in-store cafes and prepared, ready-to-eat fresh food.
It can scare the pants off a business owner when another entity sees profits being generated in a segment of the business community and decides to move in on that profit to capture it.
Competition, equal or unequal, is rarely viewed as a good thing. Trust me, I know all too well.
But competition, while challenging, can be turned for good. However, to survive the battle requires shedding deadweight, a sharpening of skills, stripping costs down to the bone and often: reinventing oneself.
After more than three decades in Wilmington, now losing money, with 19 months left on a high dollar lease, Tidal Creek Co-op is in a battle to survive.
Sales have plummeted as its market share has hemoraged with the construction of the popular bigger-box chain natural food supermarkets: The Fresh Market, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. The store also has seen a plethora of full-service, 60,000-square-foot grocery stores built within a 4-mile radius of its location.
The Oleander site is flawed in multiple ways: the narrow entrance is perpendicular to the road, ingress and egress can be frightening, parking is tight and inadequate. The store suffered for years until it entered a rental agreement with UNCW to make use of parking in the old Cinema Six lot to the east. The UNCW parcel is for sale and rumored to be under consideration or perhaps even under contract by Publix, the supermarket of all supermarkets.
Already faced with fierce competition, Tidal Creek’s membership board wisely has been looking at four options in the downtown Wilmington community to relocate.
Commercial Realtor and developer Gene Merritt first heard about it over a coffee at Folk’s Café roastery and coffee shop on Princess Street. Merritt is a downtown advocate and he sees the competition at Tidal Creek as a golden opportunity for the downtown communities of Carolina Heights, Carolina Place, Forest Hills, the historic and mansion districts, Princess Place, and the whole north side. The closest store is the 32,000-square-foot Food Lion on Dawson, on the south side.
Merritt, one of the original developers of North Fourth Street, says while the urban areas are seeing a glut of grocery stores, the downtown is in what he calls a food desert and has been for 35 years.
He proposed to relocate Tidal Creek’s 8,000 square feet into a rehabbed building at 1108 Princess Street, the former A&P location beside Parchies BBQ and across the street from Folk’s. The site has 80 parking spots. Merritt’s plan for the co-op is to purchase the 10,000-square-foot property. The city of Wilmington and WDI have been supportive, reportedly offering incentives, including special financing.
While regular Tidal Creek customers could be aghast, the move makes good sense for the store and greater community, with strong social as well as economic significance.
As Merritt points out, the downtown area has long needed a full-service grocery store. Carolina Farmin’ met that need for two years before closing in 2013 as Wilmington was flooded with the most recent round of farm-to-table competition. Merritt says the Carolina Farmin’ model was successful but the business failed because of what he called inconsistent management practices; poor site characteristics, again like Tidal Creek, dangerous ingress and egress and difficulty navigating the parking lot.
The co-op must reinvent itself yet again in a new location or it will bleed to death. A purchase will help the store get out from under an exorbitant rent in a far-from-ideal location, even if older members like me are inconvenienced. Besides, a move to a larger location on Princess would take the co-op back to its more humble roots, created to meet a need to provide fresh, natural foods at a lower cost. And there can be profit in meeting needs.
A move downtown would be a positive game changer for the city, community and the co-op.
