54.3 F
San Diego
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024
-Advertisement-

Team Effort Brings Jimbo’s to Downtown

JIMBO’S… NATURALLY!

CEO: “Jimbo” Someck.

Financial data: Not disclosed (privately held).

No. of local employees: 300.

Headquarters: San Diego (Carmel Valley).

Year founded: 1984.

Company description: Natural foods grocer with four local stores and a fifth set to open in 2013.

Key factors for success: Company emphasizes locally sourced and organic produce and food items, community involvement and personal customer service.

Jim “Jimbo” Someck has taken on the giants of the grocery world for nearly 30 years, and managed to grow his locally based natural-foods store, Jimbo’s… Naturally!, to its current four locations around San Diego County.

His next challenge is debuting his fifth store in a place sparsely populated by chain grocers of any kind — downtown San Diego. Someck and mall operator Westfield Group recently announced that a 28,000-square-foot Jimbo’s, the grocer’s largest so far, will open in Spring 2013 at Westfield Horton Plaza.

The challenges will include putting the store on the second floor of a center that hasn’t housed a grocer since Irvine Ranch Market operated there in the 1980s, well before subsequent renovations.

“Westfield is investing millions in making that center very consumer friendly, and a lot of work is being done to accommodate us,” said Someck, who prefers to be called “Jimbo.”

The grocer and mall operator have not announced terms of the arrangement. But Tom Tierney, a regional senior vice president with Westfield, said the mall will be adding larger elevators, to accommodate grocery carts and ease shoppers’ access between the store and its dedicated parking area on the fourth level of the mall’s G Street parking garage.

Ride Along

Escalators outside the store will feature a conveyorlike system, carrying the brand name Vermaport from European maker Darrott, which will allow grocery carts to ride separately alongside shoppers on a parallel track between floors.

Someck and mall operators said that type of technology is increasingly being used in urban centers where grocers and big-box retailers are setting up shop in spaces not originally built to house them.

“We are trying to make that and our other malls more along the lines of one-stop-shopping places for our customers,” Tierney said of Westfield Horton Plaza. “Jimbo” Someck is a fantastic operator that will invigorate the mall and really deliver on that idea, with people being so pressed for time these days.”

Tierney said other neighborhood-oriented service businesses, along with traditional restaurants and retailers, will likely follow as the mall undergoes a renovation to include an adjacent public plaza, set for completion in late 2013 and involving demolition of the former Robinsons-May building.

Someck’s company currently employs about 300 at its four locations — in Carmel Valley, Escondido, Carlsbad and San Diego’s 4S Ranch — and the downtown store is expected to create an additional 100 jobs, store and mall officials said.

The East Village area has a Ralphs and an Albertsons store, with scattered convenience stores selling food items, and Westfield officials tout the coming new store as the first chain grocer in downtown San Diego focused on natural foods.

The idea of selling natural foods in urban settings is not new to Someck, who started Jimbo’s in 1984 in North Park, after working for several years at Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market.

Eating Right

“This industry is not so much on the fringes of the hippie and granola culture anymore,” said Someck. “People are watching what they’re eating — you’ve got people concerned about things like obesity and diabetes and gluten intolerance.”

His stores focus on items including locally sourced produce and hormone-free beef and poultry. While others in the company oversee day-to-day operating details, Someck said he remains the stickler for maintaining good long-term relations with customers, employees and suppliers.

“I’m very fortunate to be involved in a business that deals with something I’m very passionate about,” Someck said.

His company has grown as natural-food grocers have been gaining popularity during the past decade, led by players including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts and the locally founded Henry’s Farmer’s Market, the latter of which was folded into Sprouts last year by the two chains’ parent company.

Eben Jose, a retail industry analyst with research firm IBISWorld Inc. in Santa Monica, noted that natural-foods stores have been clicking with mainstream shoppers in part because of concerns about eating healthy, but also because prices for organic foods have gradually come down.

“They’ve had to compete more on price because the mainstream grocers have been adding organics and natural foods, so you are seeing more instances of sales and special promotions at the smaller stores,” Jose said.

Smaller operators are slowly expanding, by emphasizing more personalized customer service and community interaction with like-minded consumers, and by picking strategic neighborhood locations deemed infeasible or impractical by larger national chains, he said.

While IBISWorld projects overall grocery industry sales to increase by around one-half percent over the next five years, the growth for specialty natural-foods players will likely be stronger, Jose said.

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

On Good Footing for Growth, Expansion

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-