No pots, pans or cooking gadgets? No problem.
The Clark Associates Companies will be opening a
Restaurant Store location at 121 Kane St. in East Baltimore by mid-March. The location is near Patterson Park and Johns Hopkins Bayview.
The 57,200-square-foot retail store and warehouse will carry everything from napkins, utensil, fryers, stockpots restaurant supplies and equipment for individuals, restaurants, schools and the food service industry. Items will cost anywhere from 10 cents to $10,000.
The Restaurant Store will be a cash and carry shop, meaning customers will be able to find most of their items in store and pay with check, cash or credit, Bechtold says. The warehouse will have 60,000 items in stock and those that aren’t will take about two days to ship.
Clark Associate’s parent company Calumet Enterprises bought the building for $2 million from F&M Development LLC last year, according to state property records.
The Baltimore Restaurant Store will be Clark Associates’ seventh location, with six others in Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Baltimore store will hire 15 employees. Maryland seemed like a natural place to expand as the Lancaster, Pa., company grows in the mid-Atlantic, Marketing Manager Melissa Bechtold says. The other locations mainly do business with local, family owned restaurants, but also have corporate customers like Sheetz, Starbucks and Sonic, Controller Brad Fortna says. If all goes well in Baltimore, the company may open a location near Washington, D.C., next.
Writer: Jolene Carr
Source: Melissa Bechtold, marketing manager at Clark Associates; Brad Fortna, controller at Clark Associates