Market Opening at Mountain Village Draws Crowd

The Telluride Daily Planet
Published 8/9/06
www.telluridegateway.com

By Katie Klingsporn

Minutes after The Market at Mountain Village opened its doors to customers, the store was flooded with shoppers. Most were walking slowly, ogling the huge selection of juices, fingering the cantaloupes in the entrance, or oohing and ahhing at several shelves worth of olive oils. Many of these customers, who live in an area where a definite paucity of big supermarkets exists, displayed a certain amount of awe at The Market.
Not that The Market is a huge place. But with 14,000 square feet, it feels spacious. The produce department takes up the whole front section of the store. There is a deli complete with gourmet pre-made salads and pastas - run by Aemono Catering - in the center, and the frozen foods section is as long as a bus. “I'm overwhelmed in a very positive way,” said Carol Hintermeister, a Mountain Village resident who was slowly filling her shopping cart. Hintermeister moved to Mountain Village from New York City, where, she said, she was spoiled by the availability of pretty much any kind of food, produce or deli item imaginable. She expects that The Market will alleviate her current shopping situation, which has consisted of trips to Montrose, on-line shopping and the occasional fill-in trip to downtown Telluride. Now, she said, she can ride her bike to pick something up when the need arises.
Filling the need for a grocery store in Mountain Village and offering people products they can't normally get is the intention, said co-owners Darin Hill and Mike Lawler. “What we've tried to do is kind of make the store fun with a wide selection of conventional, healthy, natural, organic and gourmet items,” Hill said. “It's all about giving people some choices they don't normally get.”
Case in point: the peanut butter selection. The shiny shelf of jars runs the gamut from your basic Jif to Woodstock Farms, an organic brand. And then it breaches the borders of peanut butter into the territory of almond and soy nut butters.
The Market is also certainly geared toward those epicureans who search for the more specialized ingredients like pearled sugar, daikon, oyster mushrooms and King Crab legs.
Nancy Calagna and Frannie Major, who live in Telluride, were checking out the goods. They were impressed with the expansive frozen food section, the variety of dry goods and the bigger selection in general. “I feel like it's the dawning of a new day in Telluride,” Calagna said. “I think it's definitely something we need.” And after first inspection, the girls even seemed positive about the prices in comparison with other local selections. “It might be a little cheaper,” Major said.

The concept of a store, which is located just above the gondola parking lot, has been in the works for about two years, Hill said.