City's first Fresh Market grocery 'designed to tempt all your senses'

Walk into The Fresh Market, and you're met with the smell of ripening fruit and fresh-brewed coffee as you stroll past dozens of pots of red, pink and creamy white poinsettias.

Classical music plays. There's soft overhead lighting, dark-red tile floors and wood displays for produce, wine and bakery goods.

It's a specialty grocery store with a European market feel.

"The store is designed to tempt all your senses," said Russell Friend, manager of the Huntsville Fresh Market that opens today at 9 a.m. "What sets us apart is customer service."

Craig Carlock, senior vice president of operations for the Greensboro, N.C.-based grocer, said the store tries to create "a great food shopping experience. We want folks to walk in and say, 'Wow.' "

The store, at 4800 Whitesburg Drive in the Village on Whitesburg, was built in part of a former Winn-Dixie. It is 63rd Fresh Market store and the fourth in Alabama.

"We've been wanting to get to Huntsville for years," Carlock said. "We were able to find the right site with the right parking."

The privately owned company - founded by the Berry family in Greensboro in 1982 - looks for locations in "the heart of communities," Carlock said. If a site for new construction isn't available, "we wait for a second-generation building, and that's what happened here."

Fresh Market plans to open 12 to 15 stores a year, Carlock said, and "we're beginning to grow in the Midwest and Northeast." Ten stores opened this year, including the Huntsville location and one in Detroit and two in Chicago. Next year, stores are planned near Philadelphia and in Cleveland and Baltimore, Carlock said.

The store features an old-style butcher shop; a 12-foot-long seafood section with fresh seafood and prepared items such as stuffed salmon and pecan-crusted trout; a delicatessen with 250 types of cheese and not only rotisserie chicken, but rotisserie pork loin roast, baby back ribs and turkey; a bakery; and florist. The wine section at one front corner of the store has about 450 items from California, European, Australia and South America and includes "Critics Choice" wines as well as "Value Buys."

Carlock said Fresh Market beef is aged for 14 days for greater tenderness, and ground beef is ground fresh every day from steak and roast trimmings.

Though the store has specialty items, it also carries familiar brands such as Green Giant, Ritz and Heinz.

"Behind the store there's a team of experts to bring us the best at the best value," Carlock said.

Fresh Market, which will hire more than 100 employees, will have opening-week activities including sampling stations, cooking demonstrations, a complimentary outdoor barbecue and a live jazz band.