In an area where chain grocery stores have closed in recent years and municipal officials say they struggle to attract grocery stores, Sal Omer, an independent grocery store owner, said it’s simple.
Omer said growing up, his father, also a grocer, told him that as long as customers are happy and you treat them well, they will come back.
Omer said he and and his father have opened three suburban grocery stores together, and they plan to have a soft opening this week for Richton Park Fresh Market.
The market will fill a 15,000-square-foot building at 3736 Sauk Trail that has been vacant since the previous occupant, a Save-A-Lot store, closed in 2024 and left residents worried about their ability to access fresh, affordable food.
Municipal officials have struggled to fill the space with a full grocer. Omer said he aims for the store to fill a gap in access to fresh, affordable meat and produce.
“It’s important to have fresh meat and a lot of fresh things because they don’t have it,” Omer said.
Omer said the store will offer fresh meat that’s prepared by a butcher in the store, along with a grill where customers can request meat to be cooked without an additional fee. He said he is still working on the licensing to open the grill, however.
He also said the store will offer fresh produce that he picks out and delivers himself, which he said saves some delivery costs and keeps the prices low. He said doing this helped him keep prices low at his Chicago Heights store, La Super Carniceria y Taqueria.
Omer also said he plans to customize the food to what the community needs. He said he will take suggestions and product requests from customers during the soft opening in an effort to get to know the customers and their needs.
Overall, he said, he plans to treat the store community like a family. He said because the store is family owned, it allows him to put a lot of time and effort into meeting the customers’ needs and keeping costs low, which he said will keep people coming back.
“Customers will see me everyday, you know, anything they want, they’ll ask me, and I’ll try to do everything they like,” he said.
Omer said he also plans to keep costs low by starting out with a limited number of employees and items at the soft opening and expand. He said he plans to start out with a low profit margin and has already established a hard working team of employees after receiving more than 100 job applications.
While he is not hiring anymore, he said he could have more job openings down the road.
While Omer said he expects a soft opening in the next week, he said he is unsure when the store will fully open.
Brandon Boys, the Richton Park director of economic development, said Friday residents seem most excited to see the offerings at the butcher counter as well as the store’s full-service offerings in the produce and deli sections.
He said the market, in Richton Park’s Town Center area, is within walking distance of several neighborhoods, additional neighborhood retail and the Metra Electric station.
The village approved a resolution in December requesting the grocery store receive a Cook County Class 7D property tax incentive from the Cook County Assessor. The incentive would provide a reduced assessment level for 12 years.
The program, established in 2022, aims to address food deserts by fostering grocery store development.
Municipal officials have called the east side of Richton Park where the store is located a food desert. A food desert is usually defined as an area without a grocery store that offers fresh affordable food within a 1-mile radius, according to Michael Mallon of Mallon & Associates, who conducts grocery feasibility studies.
The Richton Park Save-a-Lot store closed in 2024 due to high property taxes, according to the property owner Yellow Banana, a grocery company owned by a Cleveland-based investment firm. The company owned several other Save-a-Lot stores in the Chicago area that have closed due to financial issues.
awright@chicagotribune.com