New market promises convenience

Freshgrocer.com, opening by July, will provide a variety of foods only steps away from Penn's campus. Students and West Philadelphians can shop for groceries in style starting this summer. Freshgrocer.com, an innovative specialty foods supermarket topped by an 800-car parking garage, will open in July, according to the establishment's owner and operator Pat Burns, an area grocery entrepreneur. Officials said the 31,000-square-foot facility standing on the northwest corner of 40th and Walnut streets remains on budget. Featuring freshly prepared foods, cooked on the premises in a state-of-the-art open kitchen, the new market will offer a deli, coffee bar, juice bar and sushi bar on the lower level of the complex located three blocks east of Brown's Thriftway -- the only other supermarket in University City. The new market will also provide inter-state catering, through which customers will be able to order hot or cold foods from the comfort of their home via phone or computer, Burns said. He added that the catering details, including delivery locations and food availability, will be worked out by March. According to Burns, who owns two popular supermarkets in the Philadelphia suburbs, Freshgrocer.com will offer indoor and outdoor seating on its ground floor and mezzanine, with an entrance and elevators on 40th Street. A conveyor system -- visible from 40th Street -- will transport grocery bags to a parcel pick-up in the parking garage, he added. "It's an exciting corner," Burns said Tuesday, pointing to the new market's millennial feel. Calling his establishment "an international type of grocery market," Burns said Freshgrocer.com will offer a wide selection of multicultural food from 6 or 7 a.m. until 10 or 11 p.m., servicing everyone from "neighbors to professors to students." Penn and University City District officials said they hope that the additions of the Sundance Cinemas complex, going up across the street, and Freshgrocer.com will transform 40th Street into a lively retail corridor, complete with coffee shops, restaurants and clothing stores. "Sundance will be phenomenal for the area," Burns said Tuesday. Freshgrocer.com will open before its Sundance neighbor, which will debut in the fall at the earliest. Executive Vice President John Fry said budget problems and the high demand for steel across the city will delay construction of the eight-screen independent movie house by at least three months. On Tuesday, Tom Lussenhop, the University's top real estate official, said Freshgrocer.com will benefit the community. "[The supermarket] is trying to make the otherwise dreary exercise of shopping a little more pleasant," Lussenhop said. Burns is not a newcomer to the supermarket arena, owning two 80,000-square-foot supermarkets -- Drexeline Supervalu in Drexel Hill , Pa., and Barclay Square Supervalu in Upper Darby, Pa. In November, the supermarket's unfinished structure hosted the Beaux Arts Ball -- the largest charity event for a single beneficiary in the nation -- which is hosted annually at a major Philadelphia construction site.

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