NOTE: see the bottom of Sunday's Site posts for homes for sale in the area
One of my favorite remembrances of living in Duluth was walking down to Snow White, the corner neighborhood grocery store just down the street. Not only was it convenient, it also had one of the best fresh meat markets in town and it just felt good supporting the local merchant on the corner and chatting with the grocer who knew you by name.
We totally lost that when we moved to Eden Prairie, which didn't really fit our sense of place although it is a great community. It felt like heaven when we moved to Golden Valley and I could again walk to a neighborhood grocery store. Only this wasn't any ordinary grocery store…it was the original Byerly's!
If you aren't familiar with the Twin Cities Byerly's may not mean anything, but to the best of my knowledge it was a pioneer in the gourmet/upscale grocery store concept. This original store was started in 1968 along Lilac Way in Golden Valley. It was founded on the revoluntionary premise that grocery shopping should not be drudgery…and to prove it Byerly's featured carpeted floors and a chandelier over the frozen foods.
When they opened their superstore built on the site of a former gravel pit in St. Louis Park in 1980 it was featured in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal and became a regular tour bus stop! With roughly 2 1/2 acres of floor space, it featured the signature carpet and chandelier, ridiculously wide aisles, a deli almost the size of a city block, a 24-hour restaurant, their own candy store, a wine shop, a cooking school, a liquor store, a flower shop, a post office and an exclusive gift shop with objects ranging from a simple wine glass at $4 to a gold-plated bird cage for $75,000.
Times have changed since then and in 1997 Byerly's was acquired by Lunds, another local family-owned company. The new Lunds and Byerlys has done a great job of combining their dedication to quality, service and innovation while retaining their separate identities.
'My' Byerly's, the one where it all started, is now in the midst of a major remodel…not enlarging, just re-arranging. I look forward to it being better than ever and am glad it won't be a mega-store…it will still be my neighborhood grocery where the friendly staff welcomes me with a smile!
Click here to see homes currently for sale in Golden Valley, MN in areas near Byerly's in the southwest corner of Highway 100 and Duluth St…including a great townhome in a quiet complex along Bassett Creek at 6046 Golden Valley Rd. Please be patient while the link searches for the most current listings…click on the map to zoom in until you see icons on the dots, then pass your cursor over them for property information, click for property details.
Sharlene Hensrud, RE/MAX Results - Email – Golden Valley Realtor
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