Green Zebra Grocery, the business we’ve said has the best bike parking in Portland, is just two days away from opening their second store. And they’re putting bicycles front-and-center.
Green Zebra Grocery, the company we’ve heralded as having the best bike parking in Portland, just announced the location of their long-awaited second store: It’s coming to the Lloyd District as the anchor tenant in the new Hassalo on Eighth development.
The “healthy convenience store” startup founded by the former CEO of New Seasons Market says it’s exceeded its sales expectations thanks in part to even more non-car traffic than expected.
Last year, Green Zebra Grocery founder Lisa Sedlar told us she needed about 400 to 600 transactions a day for her model — higher quality, higher prices — to be viable. She was also counting on 30 percent of those customers to arrive by means other than a car — if only to prevent the 14-space parking lot from filling up.
Even in a city where bike parking in front of businesses is a government-sanctioned program, some business owners still choose to go above and beyond.
Lisa Sedlar is on a mission to do for the Portland mini-mart what Burgerville did for fast food and New Seasons did for grocery stores.
Her plan starts in North Portland next month and is intended to expand to Southeast soon after.
Here’s what the plan looks like: A huge, curving salad bar area at the front of the room, with fresh grab-and-go sandwiches, four cook-from-scratch soups and freshly cooked Indian food. A “microroast coffee of the week.” A meat department that includes grass-fed beef. Beer, wine and kombucha on tap, with tables on the patio out front. All of it in 7,000 square feet.