The grocery industry is a cutthroat battle for market share, one complicated by dizzying factors like supply chains, unions, and real estate; Twin Cities Business recently laid out the growing fight for food-selling supremacy in great detail locally.
Nice Time Market + More isn't designed to be a scalable Cub slayer. The just-opened south Minneapolis grocer is a throwback concept—a walkable corner store, thoughtfully stocked with the essentials—that places an emphasis on the "more." It's the type of neighborhood asset that co-owner Tatum Barile had missed for decades after relocating from her hometown of San Francisco.
"In those Bay Area stores, they have produce and they have good food," says Barile, who previously worked at Cafe Twenty Eight, Nightingale, Art Institutes International MN, and All Square. "And for about 15 years I've been thinking about why my neighborhood doesn't have that—you have big grocery stores or really expensive grocery stores. Me and my business partner had worked together at All Square, and we thought: Why not, let's make the thing we want in our neighborhood for everybody."
Barile's chef pedigree informs a lot of what goes on inside 2402 E. 38th St., the previous home to Minneapolis's final Tom Thumb location; as a nice callback, the jolly mascot, weathered by decades of winters, greets shoppers as they enter Nice Time. The deli case provides a rotating roster of fresh, all-cold dishes, and that temperature choice isn't by accident: Barile says hot deli food isn't eligible for EBT payments, so Nice Time cooked up a clever workaround to that punitive fine print.
"The whole concept of the kitchen is to make restaurant-quality food accessible to everybody," Barile says. "We'll slowly add stuff as the neighborhood tells us what they want."
This past Thursday, that deli counter showcased rosemary and lemon roasted carrots, French-style potato salad, braised meats, and pastelón, a Puerto Rican lasagna that uses plantains instead of noodles. An ever-evolving sandwich menu was recently rolled out, and with its mammoth, crispy, biscuity bread, the Italian sandwich on fresh-baked Dutch crunch roll ($13)—a Bay Area favorite, Barile notes—proved delightful. The egg/sausage/cheese sandwich ($11) became an immediate Best Budget Bites contender.
The well-stocked shelves are limited, but Barile's curatorial touches abound. By-the-pound produce is lovingly stacked next to handwritten menu suggestions; the freezer is loaded with Heggie's Pizza for Minnesotans, and the dairy cooler offers port wine spread for Wisconsinites; the locally sourced meats are deliberately several cuts above Oscar Mayer in terms of quality. A wall of Frontier spices tempts adult home cooks, while bins of 5¢ candy pieces attract their kids. "Nice Time is unironically from a different era," Barile says with a chuckle.
"We aren't as cheap as Aldi, but we're nowhere near as expensive as Lunds & Byerlys," she continues, noting that many car-free residents like herself choose Standish because of its adjacency to light rail. "Almost everybody that comes through the door has thanked us for being here, because they no longer have to go to Cub Foods."
Barile and her business partner, U.S. Navy vet Heather Olsen, built out the full commercial kitchen, installed new bathrooms, removed drop ceilings to expose beautiful tin ceilings, and retrofitted old signage that now sparkles with fresh paint (Tom Thumb's BEVERAGES sign was rearranged to form FAVES, under which a cooler filled with house-made salsas and sauces sits.) Olsen's construction knowhow from the military meant that every non-permitted project could be accomplished in DIY fashion by the owners.
Not that the duo spared many expenses in their renovation of the rundown convenience store. They outright purchased the 94-year-old, 3,100-square-foot brick building early last year "by the skin of our teeth" for $925,000, and then invested around a half-million dollars to turn it into the charmingly retro food/drink destination that now hums with carefully chosen playlists. (There's even a DJ booth featuring a legit sound system to facilitate weekend shopping parties.) To give you an idea of the care that went into each decision, an old 1940s French painting of vegetables inspired the shop's color palette.
Barile says she doesn't have any moral objections to tobacco, vape, and lotto products, but they're not in the cards for Nice Time. Minnesota-made THC bevs, on the other hand, could make an appearance, as could local craft beers and wines should Minnesota's byzantine liquor laws ever fully modernize. The basement could one day became a speakeasy, Barile says with a twinkle in her eye, though that plan would be years down the road. For now Barile, Olsen, and their eight-person staff are adapting Nice Time's model to whatever the neighborhood demands.
"Our first goal is to get EBT and WIC approval, that's super important," Barile says. "We eventually want to offer community cooking classes, host private dinners for fundraisers, and just gain a rhythm—it'll take some time to get to know our neighbors."
Nice Time Market + More
Address: 2402 E. 38th St., Minneapolis
Hours: 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Thursday-Monday
