Coming soon to Austin.
The idea for a package-free organic grocery store started years ago when brothers Christian and Joseph Lane were discussing a simple business idea: refilling beer and wine bottles.
From there, they decided to include other basic grocery store offerings — meat, dairy, produce, bulk items and bread.
Next thing you know, the concept of a “zero-waste” grocery store was born.
The Lanes and a small group of partners are putting the finishing touches on their modest-sized store, called “in.gredients,” at 2610 Manor Road. The store is scheduled to open this summer.
Their idea is to cut out as much extraneous packaging as possible, with customers encouraged to bring their own containers for things like bulk items.
While there are some limitations as to what can be sold unpackaged because of health codes, “that’s part of our ethos, is to reduce waste and reduce unnecessary packaging,” said Brian Nunnery, head of business development. “And we would say that a lot of packaging that is out there right now is unnecessary.”
[…]
“We can’t open fast enough,” Joseph Lane said, adding that there is a desire for such a grocery in East Austin.
“You see a lot of folks in these neighborhoods that, you have to travel across (Interstate) 35, through campus and the nearest thing is Wheatsville (Co-op),” he said. “Wheatsville’s a great place, great people working there, but you’ve still got to go through all that to get there.”
See here for some background and here for their website. I’ll be very interested to see how this goes. I believe that if it’s successful there it ought to be viable in Houston as well; there are certainly plenty of parts of town that could use a real grocery store. Any Austin folks out there that are excited about this?
It’s on my to-check-out list but I don’t know that I’m excited about it (or the Trader Joe’s that’s coming).