Area's first Marc's debuts Wednesday
Kettering store to help offset last year’s Kroger closing.
A Cleveland-based grocery and discount chain will open its first southwest Ohio store in the Dayton area this week.
The 50,000 square-foot Marc’s grocery store will open at 2100 E. Whipp Road in Kettering on Wednesday, offering groceries, beer and wine, household cleaning products, health and beauty items, a full-service cold cut counter and the closeout
department that the chain is famously known for, said Kevin Yaugher, president and COO of the company.
Marc’s employees stock the closeout department, a trademark of Marc’s stores, with seasonal items and discounts products they find around the country, Yaugher said.
The closeout department at the Kettering store will start with school supplies for the grand
opening Wednesday. The section on opening day will also feature throw pillows, linens, luggage and tools. Eventually it will change over to Halloween costumes, decorations and candy, followed by Christmas merchandise.
“Seasons are always changing obviously, but that’s kind of the staple department that makes us unique,” Yaugher said. “When you do shop us, you better buy while you’re there because it might not be there tomorrow.”
Marc’s sources its own produce “from the best growers around the world” and operates a produce distribution facility in Cleve
land, he said. Marc’s offers pharmacies at 40 of the 59 locations, but one is not planned for the Kettering store.
“Our success has been based on pricing. Over the years we’ve focused on national brands at discounted price and we pass savings onto our customers every day,” Yaugher said.
The Kettering store isthe 59th Marc’s in Ohio. Marc Glassman started his namesake in the Cleve
land area in 1979 and expanded into Youngstown, Akron, Columbus and now the Dayton market. The store opening will bring 100 jobs to Kettering.
“Everyone’s in the process of training as we speak out at some of our other locations and on site at this point,” Yaugher said. The store is still accepting new applications.
The Kettering location was specifically attractive to Marc’s for several reasons, mainly population density, said Ken Sustin, the Marc’s corporate secretary who handles real estate. When
choosing a location, Marc’s executives drive to the market and evaluate the environment, competition, and traffic patterns.
The company’s research concluded that the area was underserviced, Sustin said.
When Kroger left Kettering in June 2017, residents grew uneasy about what would come of the building and how some residents without adequate transportation would get their groceries, said Kettering’s eco- nomic development man- ager Gregg Gorsuch.
The city also wanted another grocer to fill the space, so Gorsuch started working with the building’s broker, who was already looking for another grocery store.
The plans for a Marc’s store started coming together in early 2018, Gorsuch said.
“We’re just always looking to find new locations that fit what we’re looking for and where we think we can provide good savings to the local community,” Yaugher said. “When the location on Whipp Road was presented to us by a real estate agent, we went and looked at it and did our research, and we really liked the area and that’s what brought us to the Dayton area.”
Looking at the company’s store-by-store history, Sustin said Kettering has some of the characteristics of the most successful Marc’s stores.
Marc’s is unlike big-box stores, Sustin said. It’s a neighborhood store, so loca- tions are chosen based on the demographics of a three-tofive-mile radius.
There have been other Dayton locations submitted to Marc’s, but Yaugher said “it’s too early in the process to commit.”
“We hope to find some other additional locations around the Greater Dayton area as well as the markets that we service now to continue to grow,” Yaugher said.