It's official: Food Front will open in Hillsdale

The grocery store says it hopes to be ready for customers by late summer

By Shasta Kearns Moore

The Southwest Community Connection, Jun 1, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Food Front General Manager Holly Jarvis takes her first steps through the door of the former Wild Oats building in the Hillsdale Shopping Center after owner Ardys Braidwood handed her the key. Food Front expects to open before the end of the summer.

Shasta Kearns Moore / The Southwest Community Connection

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HILLSDALE – More than 50 people came May 12 to welcome Food Front Cooperative Grocery store leaders as they officially announced the opening of their second store – Food Front Hillsdale – in the Hillsdale Shopping Center on Capitol Highway.

“I’m so excited to have them here,” Multnomah Village resident Liz Brunkow said as she filled out the paperwork for her membership. “I’m paying the full $150 just to make sure they get a good start.”

Food Front – whose flagship store on Thurman Street will now be called Food Front Northwest – is a cooperative grocery, meaning that shoppers, if they choose, can buy shares in the store. The $150 for a share can be paid all at once or spread out in payments of $5 per month.

Owners can vote and serve on the board of directors.

For this reason, said General Manager Holly Jarvis, the store won’t suddenly leave the community as the previous tenant, Wild Oats, did in October.

“So as Food Front comes in … it will stay here for a very long time, until the neighborhood says, ‘We don’t need or want you anymore,’” Jarvis said. “We will always be a locally owned grocery store.”

Mike Roach, who has been co-owner of nearby Paloma Clothing for 33 years, said the community, which is known citywide for its Farmers’ Market, has grown to appreciate and encourage local business.

“It’s really as if the community has spend the last 33 years getting ready for a community-owned grocery store,” Roach said.

But he also said that with a new and, he anticipates, more popular grocery store as the anchor tenant in the Hillsdale Shopping Center, the relatively small parking lot will once again become an issue.

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