Marketplace

Kroger’s secret

Stadium Pharmacy has been offering home delivery service for prescriptions since opening eleven years ago, says pharmacist and owner Xavier Tato. “Many patients are homebound and can’t come out to pick up their...

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Red Brick Kitchen Doubles in Size

In mid-February, Pete Landrum and his father-in-law, Jay Harshe, a retired contractor, were presiding over an enormous but orderly renovation and expansion of the Red Brick Kitchen & Bar. “Basically the whole place is...

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More Auto Parts Changes

Who knew that there would be a Part Two to our January auto parts story? In that issue, Bruce Bertram and his boss Bill Hueter at S-G Parts of Ann Arbor explained how S-G, Viking, and Boyer, three independent parts dealers, had...

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Newspaper rebound

Business took a turn for the worse over the last decade for newspaper distributor Nick Genova, but home delivery remained a rock.Genova’s company, Washtenaw News, distributes fifteen publications locally, including the...

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The Shalabis Are Back

“I’ve been waiting all my life to open my own place,” says Moe Shalabi, owner (with his wife, Fidaa) of the new sandwich shop in Lamp Post Plaza, Pita King. It’s not as long-deferred a dream as it sounds:...

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Momo Tea Is Now Sweetology

MoMo Tea on South U closed for a remodel and reopened as Sweetology. The entrees and most of the savories are gone, replaced by an elaborate and exotic dessert menu of the sort popular in Hong Kong. Irene Zhang, who owns the...

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Veganism for Everyone

The cheerful, hardworking vigor of Phillis Engelbert and Joel Panozzo has given an everyman gloss to the sometimes finicky niche market of veganism. Engelbert and Panozzo were amateur cooks who had both turned vegan mainly by...

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Idol Makers

We received 144 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for Idol Makers on page 74 of the February issue.”My nine-year-old daughter, Ava, made a guess that the ad for Idol Makers was the fake one,” wrote Monet...

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Beer Grotto

Jaime Reichard, manager of the Beer Grotto, pours an ounce of dark fluid that looks, tastes, and swirls like Kahlua into a brandy snifter. Made by Odd Side Ales in Grand Haven, it’s actually a beer called Hipster Brunch...

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Detroit Vegan Soul

With so many restaurants in Ann Arbor, you don’t have to leave town for good meals of most varieties. But if you seek a change of urban scenery as days get longer, there’s an unusual new option near Detroit’s...

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Farewell to Dancing Dog and Vellum

Bill Knudstrup, a painter and one of five remaining partners of the Dancing Dog Gallery, talked regretfully about its closing. Just a year and a half ago it seemed a suitably art-focused repurposing of the old Herb David Guitar...

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Centsible Eats

Whoa! Once I toted up the numbers, I realized the holidays had seriously thrown our household food budget out of whack. The new year demanded financial restraint. Polling acquaintances brought me a boatload of cheap eats...

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Salads UP on Liberty

Salads UP is the brainchild of two recent Michigan grads, Max Steir (business) and Robert Mayer (history and econ), who met as roommates on North Campus. Mayer says, “We saw an opening here for something like this. We took...

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Coffee Klatch

With so many coffee shops in Ann Arbor, one is almost always opening or closing, but in the last few months, the changes came thick and fast. Are they symptomatic of some broader theme?David Myers, owner of the local Mighty Good...

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Paredown Opens an Annex

As downtown and campus retailers are talking doomsday, squeezed between high rents and online competition (see, for example, the closing of Dancing Dog Gallery, below), an interesting counterpoint is the number of businesses...

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Tai Chi Chai Tea

Not only did Eve Avrin provide all the pertinent contest information in her entry this month, she also educated us.”The Fake Ad for January 2015 is found on page 75,” Avrin wrote. “Tai Chi Chai Tea. Last...

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Briarwood Steps Up Its Game

Briarwood is blooming with offshoots. Side by side, Bravo! Cucina Italiana and P.F. Chang’s China Bistro opened in December in what had been a parking lot just east of Macy’s. While not the very tippy top of fine...

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Welcome, Mahindra!

India’s Mahindra Group is best known globally for its tractors, but the company has set up shop in Ann Arbor to build an entirely new American product. From a manufacturing and engineering facility on Ellsworth Rd. (once...

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