The apartments keep coming. Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods such as Mill Street and Hillside have long been food deserts. And the once-booming events business that The Warehouse did just never rebounded after COVID. You might just boil that all down as an explanation of why Chef James and Shaundy Africano decided to open The Warehouse Urban Grocer — but that would be missing the heart of it all. The Africanos love serving the community, especially when it comes to food.
“The community aspect of it has always been important to us as a restaurant,” James says. “We’ve been involved in giving away tens of thousands of dollars worth of food and labor and service over the years doing things for people. I think it’s important to serve the community and local causes.”
It was, in fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic when Chef James began packaging grocery staples into family-sized portions to help neighbors access fresh food during supply shortages. Now the Urban Grocer is a unique chef-driven, full-service grocery. Think restaurant-quality food by one of the city’s most creative chefs with the convenience of a local market.
“For years, we have welcomed people into The Warehouse to gather around great food and meaningful experiences,” James says. “Urban Grocer is the next chapter of that vision. We wanted to create a neighborhood market where people can stop on their way home, pick up dinner, discover regional products and find ingredients they can trust. Great cities are built around great neighborhoods, and every great neighborhood deserves a place that brings people together.”
“As more people choose to call downtown home, it’s critical that we continue investing in the everyday amenities that make urban living more convenient,” says Chelsea Gondeck, CEO of the Downtown Partnership. “Grocery options have consistently been identified as one of the downtown community’s greatest needs, and Urban Grocer is an important step toward creating the vibrant, walkable neighborhood our residents, employees and visitors expect.”
Inside the Urban Grocer
The Urban Grocer’s official grand opening was July 18. The market features fresh produce — much of it organic — a full-service deli, butcher and seafood counters, chef-prepared meals, artisan cheeses, housemade pasta and sauces, baked goods, pantry staples, beer, wine and more.
“One of the things we’re really excited about is the fact that we’ve got all of these connections over the last 30 to 35 years of working in food that we get to bring to you,” James says. “We have farmers and ranchers from around the community as well as regional and international things that you may not have access to everywhere else.”
We dropped by during the market’s soft opening and were impressed with the space and the wide variety of offerings. Looking for a specialty cheese? Urban Grocer has 62 different cheeses coming from producers in Colorado and around the world.
“Some of it is from places where we didn’t buy for the restaurant, mostly because we didn’t have the volume with the restaurant to buy cheese from some of the gourmet importers,” James says. “But now, once a month we’ll buy a big bunch of the 18- or 24-month cheeses and twice a month a bunch of the soft-ripened ones. So it’s pretty exciting to get to use them too.”
That kind of leveraging is evident all around the market. The Warehouse has long been known for Africano’s use of exotic meats and high-quality ingredients. (Read more about him in our profile here.) He’s still using those sources to provide ingredients directly to grocery shoppers. In the butcher case, that includes bison, lamb, beef, elk, venison, duck, house-ground beef, homemade bacon and chicken. Fresh seafood options include halibut, tuna, European sea bass, Colorado black bass, mussels, lobsters and shrimp and oysters.
“We had clams, but we sold them all this morning,” James says as we tour through the market.
There’s a full-service deli. There’s fried chicken that is already selling out every day. The bread case is an all-star collection of local bakeries, including the Sourdough Boulangerie, Provision Bread & Bakery, Blue Sunflour Bakeshop, Out of the Breadbox for gluten-free, Wimberger’s Old World Bakery & Deli for rye and pretzels. James even convinced The Loft to wholesale their bagels through the market. And The Warehouse is baking bread daily for the market too.
“We have a honey wheat loaf, and we have a white loaf that we make here: $1 for the white loaf, $2 for the wheat loaf,” James says.
Yes, you read that correctly.
“Part of the deal was to stay approachable and have things that everybody from Mill Street and Hillside or the Experience at Epicenter, the Mae or the Broadmoor can walk in and find something recognizable on their way home from work,” James says. “That’s why we also have Nutter Butters and Smithfield bologna and Fritos.”
And a wide range of grab-and-go meal options, both frozen and refrigerated, for take-home dining. Those include pastas, soups, curries, stir fry kits and more.
“The food that we make in The Warehouse is beautiful and it tastes great, but it doesn’t travel well,” James says. “This stuff really travels well, and it’s a little more traditional. It’s all made by us with the same care, with the same great ingredients by people who actually care about the food. And you get to take that home with you.”
The Warehouse Urban Grocer is open every day 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Learn more at urbangrocercos.com.
