New Carnival: Minyard is debuting store with upgrade ambience
By BARRY SHLACHTER STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITERSTAR-TELEGRAM/BRUCE MAXWELL A tortilla factory is part of the 56,000-square-foot Carnival Super Market in Dallas, which has its grand opening today.
DALLAS -- Minyard Food Stores today is opening a prototype Carnival store that has the feel of an upscale grocer with vast perishable selections making up half the store, but with prices tailored to its target working-class, Hispanic customers.
The 56,000-square-foot supermarket was built on the central Oak Cliff site of a former warehouse. Similar stores will open in two south Fort Worth neighborhoods within 18 months, said Michael Byars, Minyard's president and chief executive.
It's all part of a strategy by the chain's new management to tie its fate to that of North Texas' burgeoning Latino community, which is expected to grow 40 percent over the next five years.
The new Dallas store offers 520 different fruits and vegetables, 120 seafood items and 620 meat products, ranging from thin-sliced sirloin steak to fresh rabbit, beef lips, pig heads and chicken feet. Aside from an on-site tortilleria bakery and large prepared-food section, it has a medical clinic staffed by a bilingual nurse practitioner.
The fixtures, bilingual signage and decor are aimed at conveying a Latin "village square" feel, Minyard executives said.
None, including Byars, would say what it cost to design and build, saying only that considerable time and effort was taken to analyze other concepts and formats across the country.
"Our prices have to stay competitive or customers will say, 'You have a beautiful store but we're paying for it,'" said Mario Chavez, vice president of merchandizing. Byars put it differently, explaining the approach to a group of vendors and local politicians by saying his company was "trying to make a profit while doing the right thing" for its customers.
Chavez said the energy-efficient store looks more costly than it is, noting that the ceilings are painted black rather than inlaid with acoustic tile, and the floors are darkly stained, polished cement rather than tile.
The flooring alone saved more than $150,000, he said. Unlike many traditional supermarkets that start with a high-volume "power aisle" and finish with frozen food, the flagship store starts with a large fruteria island, where an array of fruit drinks are freshly made from scratch, next to a "square" with 15 oak picnic tables.
"As you enter, it's a theater," Byars said. Immediately to the right is the bakery, then a prepared-food section overseen by a chef, Faye Greenberg, who trained at Cordon Bleu and came to Carnival after 10 years at Central Market.
But expect chicken enchiladas, not coq au vin. Meanwhile, MedXpress Clinic is the first such outpatient service in a North Texas supermarket, Byars said.
Minyard this year acquired two parcels of land in Fort Worth to build similar stores. A month ago, the company bought about 8 acres at the northeast corner of Hemphill and Bolt streets, at the south end of the former Texas Steel site. The developer who sold the land had bought the 27-acre site in 2005, razed the plant, cleared the area and began offering parcels for a planned $28 million shopping center to be called Plaza de las Americas.
In December, Minyard bought 7 acres at the northeast corner of Rosedale Street and Miller Avenue. It plans to demolish the buildings there, which were built for the former Clarks Department Store and last used by Tandy Corp. for manufacturing. In October, Minyard sold its retail development at Berry Street and Miller Avenue to a Dallas developer, although it remains a tenant. Minyard developed the site in 1998 using local property-tax abatements and federal economic-development funds. Byars said one of the new Fort Worth stores will be built in mid- to late 2007 and the other in late 2007 or early 2008.
Which will come first is not yet known, he said, calling the locations "underserved areas [where] no one was willing to go in there."
Jim Conine, Minyard's senior vice president for properties, said it would depend on spending priorities and whether there is enough staff to handle two such projects simultaneously.
Older Carnival stores will be converted to the new format or remodeled, Byars said, stressing that each store will continue to cater to its own neighborhood ethnic mix. At the Oak Cliff store, this is reflected in the buckets of chitterlings, favored by some black shoppers, sitting in coolers next to pig heads, a Latino delicacy, which, in turn, are near large frozen bags of catfish nuggets, which are bought by a range of customers, Chavez said.
The Minyard family sold the 74-year-old chain, based in Coppell, to an investment group with Fort Worth ties, Acquisition Vehicle Texas II, in October 2004. Byars declined to give any financial figures but said the chain is doing well, particularly after closing three struggling stores in the Dallas area in the past 18 months. Staff writer Sandra Baker contributed to this report.