From the minute that you step into Quality Grocery, it’s clear that this place has been steeped in tradition. From the hand-written chalkboard menu, to the hand-scooped ice cream, to the box of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that line the bottom shelf, Quality Grocery makes it clear it’s not trying to be the next hot-item store around town.
Originally opened in 1909, Quality Grocery has become the longest-running grocery store in Wake County. Although the store has cycled through a few different owners, the current iteration of the store is as wholesome as ever.
Jason Howard, owner, along with Jay Wellons, partner, already run a few successful businesses throughout Raleigh — The Rockford and Brooklyn Heights, to name a few — but Quality Grocery is a much more community oriented project. Howard and Wellons reopened the century old store this past October and have simultaneously kept true to its roots and given the store a fresh feel.
“[Quality Grocery] felt like a concept that had a lot of history and there’s a lot of people that loved it,” Howard said. “We want to try and keep that thing going.”
Howard spoke about living in the historic Oakwood neighborhood in which the grocery store has always been located, and he said he remembers supporting the store back in its original run. Howard fondly spoke of “Mr. and Mrs. Poole” the previous owners of Quality Grocery and the strong community the store has always maintained.
“We researched what it has been throughout the past 100 years and tried to implement all of those different facets,” Howard said. “We just wanted to keep it Quality Grocery, dedicate it to the neighborhood and keep it family-oriented, something that we can all be proud of.”
And family-oriented it is. Kids can play outside while their parents enjoy beer or wine on the premises, and the older people can bask in the modern take on a traditional premise. The neighborhood grocery store may have fallen to the wayside as of recently, but Howard and others seem to agree a community-oriented mindset is again on the rise.
“Independently owned and well thought out companies are starting to be where it’s at,” Howard said. “People are trying to revert back to a place in time where people would take a bit more care about how they served you, these places are appreciated more than your big-box type of stores.”
Perhaps that’s why you can walk into Quality Grocery and find grandparents sharing some hand-scooped ice cream with their grandchildren, while at the same time that there’s a group of thirty-somethings outside enjoying beer while their dogs hang out.
Quality Grocery seems to blur the line between business and community, you can enjoy a hot meal from its open kitchen right in-store on its checker-board tables or you can pack it all in a brown bag and eat it at home. This warming atmosphere is exactly what Howard and Wellons seem to be going for, and it’s certainly paying off.
“The atmosphere here lends to everything working together, just like a neighborhood should,” Howard said. “That’s really the goal here. And we’ve had about 85-90 percent of our customers come right from the neighborhood.”
The community-centered aspect of Quality Grocery isn’t just contained to its clientele either; the store is trying to reach the point where its shelves are stocked entirely with goods from Raleigh.
And it’s got quite a solid start. From Slingshot Coffee to Bone Suckin’ Sauce to Monster Cookies, the store has been gradually implementing more and more Raleigh-based goods. The food is almost entirely made from unprocessed products from the Triangle (save the brown or red hot dogs, which are still from Smithfield, N.C.), and the store plans to gradually wean itself off of non-independently owned items.
“We had to get the store opened though and had to fill the shelves,” Howard said. “So we’re in the process of slowly rotating this stuff into a place where upstart companies will want to have their products here due to the exposure they can get.”
Quality Grocery plans to have in-store demos where people can showcase their product and give customers a face-to-face interaction with the people who are producing their food.
Slowly but surely Quality Grocery is rebuilding its foundation within the community. No longer is the corner store just a place for old folks to reminisce about the past, but it’s truly becoming an open door for anyone who’s interested in enjoying high-quality products served by high-quality people.
