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Kenneth City awaits Sweetbay

Kenneth City will see its Kash n' Karry take on a new personality with the renovation to a Sweetbay store.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published November 13, 2005

KENNETH CITY - Sweetbay Supermarket, beloved of foodies for its wide range of products, will replace a Kash n' Karry here, as well as two others in St. Petersburg, next year.

The renovation of the grocery at 4665 66th St. N is part of a chainwide conversion of Kash n' Karry stores to the new concept.

It is one of the first three in Pinellas County to be renovated. The St. Petersburg conversions will be at stores on 34th Street N and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street. In all, 50 stores in Florida are scheduled for conversion to Sweetbays next year.

Sweetbay has already opened two new stores in Pinellas. One, in Seminole, opened a year ago. The other, in the Midtown area of St. Petersburg, opened last weekend. Those stores were newly built, rather than conversions.

"We're glad to see it coming in here," Kenneth City Mayor Bill Smith said. "It should be a plus for the city."

Smith said he has not been in a Sweetbay but has heard a lot about them. Now that one's coming to town, Smith said he plans to visit the Midtown store.

The mayor said he did not realize the Delhaize Group, the Florida-based company that owns Kash n' Karry, was converting the Kenneth City grocery until architects recently visited the town's building department to discuss the project.

"I knew they were in here with that big roll of papers," Smith said. "The girls couldn't even move it. They had to get some of the men from (the Department of Public Works) to move it."

The roll, which contained details of the plans, was 8 to 10 inches in diameter, he said.

Smith was even more thrilled when he discovered that Sweetbay would have to pay the town $25,430 for permits and to review the plans. He prompted Vice Mayor Muriel Whitman to announce that amount at last Wednesday's council meeting.

Construction, which is estimated to cost $1.7-million, is scheduled to begin before the end of the year. The renovation should be complete by mid 2006, said Nicole LeBeau, corporate communications manager for Sweetbay. The store is scheduled to remain open during construction.

It's difficult to do that, LeBeau said, but other stores have been converted while the store remained open.

"In the past, it's been a good process and one we've tried to keep pretty well structured and organized," LeBeau said. "We've got a good system down."

The store will not be enlarged from its 53,000 square feet. That's larger than both the Midtown and Seminole stores, which are 38,000 square feet and 46,000 square feet, respectively.

What will be different are the contents, which will include a butcher shop, a delicatessen and a bakery, as do all Sweetbays.

Sweetbay prides itself on providing variety and exotic foods that are tailored to the customers of a particular store.

"A true passion for food - that's what Sweetbay is all about. Food, food and more food," LeBeau said.

That means the renovated grocery will have a wider range of products, including 20 varieties of tomatoes, 200 different cheeses and 14 types of sausages. There may also be other products unique to the Kenneth City store that appeal to those who shop there, LeBeau said.

It's unclear what those products might be because the market research is not complete. But the Midtown store has Bosnian and Caribbean products because research showed that's what shoppers there wanted.

One product that almost definitely will be sold is blueberry sausage.

"It's absolutely, positively wonderful," LeBeau said. "It's one of our top-selling items."

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]