Local Mission Market, A New Kind of Grocery Store

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Grocery stores aren't usually territory for a restaurant blog, but the lineup of homemade, well, everything at Yaron Milgrom and Jake Des Voignes' Local Mission Market is enough to rival pretty much any professional kitchen in the city. Open as of this morning, the third project from the Local: Mission Eatery and Local's Corner duo has been hotly anticipated in this corner of the Mission, where the closing of DeLano's Market a couple of years back has left the area without a full-fledged grocery store. LMM fills that niche: in one stop, cooks can get meat, fish, cheese, a bakery, and dry goods.

Local Mission Market is the definition of a locavore shopping experience, with all of the stock coming from within 90 miles of the store. (Yup, that means no bananas, tropical fruit, or other imported goodies, though a few essentials like coffee, tea, chocolate, and spices get exemptions.) The duo aim to put seasonality into every aspect of the store: for instance, with pumpkin in season right now, shoppers can purchase roasted pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin baby food, and ten different kinds of the gourd itself. The photos below belie the full experience, as Milgrom, Des Voignes, and their team have been working around-the-clock for the past few days to cook up every bread, pasta, and packaged food in the joint and get it all on the shelves.

To manage such a massive operation, the duo have brought on a specialized market team: chef de cuisine Leslie Gratiano, sous chefs Nick Noren and T.J. Richards, and baker Sandy Guevara. In addition to making all of the market's food, they'll provide butchery, pasta-making, stock-making, and other essential services for the two restaurants under the Local umbrella. The only things shoppers won't find: personal care products and booze of any kind (the team's fourth project, the forthcoming Local Cellar, will address the latter issue).

Though it's artisanal, the LMM experience is also tech-savvy: bulk foods are weighed on a scale attached to an iPad that prints out a custom label. Shoppers can purchase memberships to the store that allow them to shop online: an Apple membership ($10/month) grants access to the site, where shoppers can have their purchases pre-packed and waiting at the store at an appointed time, while a Plum membership ($30/month) includes free delivery in the vicinity from the shop's bicycle cart. Hours will be daily from 9 am-9 pm.

· Local Mission Market Debuting Next Week [~ ESF ~]
· Local: Mission Eatery Opening a Market [~ ESF ~]