If PCC Community Markets had any doubts about returning to the downtown Seattle location it shuttered just last year, the crowd that showed up for the grand reopening Tuesday offered some reassurance.
A line of PCC devotees was waiting when the doors opened Tuesday morning, and by 11:30 a.m., the store on the ground floor of Rainier Tower at Fourth Avenue and Union Street was packed.
“It’s chaos right now,” said Krish Srinivasan, CEO of the member-owned Seattle-based grocery co-op, who was so delighted by the turnout he let slip a “Jaws” joke: “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
In fact, this time around, PCC has opted for much smaller “boat.”
The PCC Corner Market, as it’s called, is roughly a third the size of its 20,000-square-foot predecessor, with a much narrower selection that the co-op hopes will outperform the original store, which closed less than two years after opening after lackluster sales.
The new format, which focuses on deli, lunch and breakfast items, and lots of grab-and-go selections, essentially replicates what was generating most sales in the first store.
Although that store’s deli did a brisk trade, it couldn’t cover the expenses of a full-sized store in the middle of downtown still missing much of its pre-pandemic workforce, Srinivasan said. “It just didn’t pencil.”
So much so that in 2022, when PCC reported its first loss since the 1990s, the downtown location accounted for around a third of that red ink.
The new downtown format, by contrast, is tailored to a lunchtime worker-and tourist-crowd. There is a plethora sandwiches, hot pizza and a salad bar, but fewer dry goods and PCC staples like fresh produce and meat.
The store’s hours also reflect the shifting downtown: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and closed on the weekends.
Tuesday’s massive crowd was in part the result of smart promotion and a ton of free samples. Many in attendance looked less like they’d come from the office than the lounge on a cruise ship.
But there were plenty of actual office workers and downtown residents who seemed largely approving of the smaller format and focus on prepared foods.
“Those are the things I bought there anyway,” said Bill Zagotta, a downtown resident who was a regular at the first store and was delighted to see the new one.
“I think this model makes a lot of sense,” added Maria Diamond, who works nearby, as she emerged from the store Tuesday. “I think the full store was a lot for this community to support.”
PCC’s smaller format, its first, may also reflect moderating expectations for downtown recovery.
In June, downtown worker foot traffic hit its highest level since March 2020, when COVID-19 emptied out downtown offices, but is still 66% of what it was in June 2019, according to cellphone data posted by the Downtown Seattle Association. PCC signed the lease for the original store in 2018.
Srinivasan said PCC is “really bullish” that downtown’s recovery will continued to pick up steam.
But he concedes the co-op might not have returned downtown were it not for other factors.
Because PCC’s lease in Rainier Tower runs for at least another 10 years, the co-op’s choice was either to find another tenant for the space or “make some really good lemonade,” Srinivasan said.
PCC’s lemons-to-lemonade move was to use around a third of the space for its first small-format store and use the remainder for PCC’s new headquarters.
This fall, the headquarters will move from a larger space on Elliott Avenue that many members and employees felt was out of character with a 73-year-old member-owned co-op.
The return to downtown comes amid a major turnaround effort, as PCC claws its way back from a series of setbacks, including pandemic-related expenses, soaring food inflation and the lingering costs of an earlier strategy of aggressive growth.
PCC is also working to change its image as an upscale, pricey grocery store.
While PCC continues to offer higher-end items, such as “our uniquely sourced meat and seafood,” Srinivasan said, the goal is to “be price-competitive on the things that we know you can buy at other places.”
The new strategies seem to be paying off. In 2024, the co-op posted a 3% increase in sales over 2023, to $450 million. It also saw a modest profit of $485,000, its first since 2021.
The co-op added around 3,000 members, for a total of 117,000. It also saw strong sales growth from nonmembers, who accounted for around a third of total sales.
Nearly half of PCC’s members have joined since the start of 2020.
Last year also saw PCC and its union narrowly avoid a strike after a bruising contract fight that appeared to put the very existence of the co-op into question.
Some employees said they weren’t being paid enough to live anywhere close to the stores they worked at. PCC officials insisted at one point that union wage demands “would make the co-op’s existence unviable.”
In the end, co-op and its union, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 3000, agreed to a deal that made employees “the highest paid grocery and meat workers in the area,” according to the union.
At the time, PCC touted the deal as one that “reinforces our co-op’s reputation as a great place to work while also securing our long-term financial success.”
PCC officials hope the downtown store can help the co-op continue to hone its business model.
The co-op plans to use the location to test new ideas, such as digital price tags, that might be rolled out to other stores. It will also experiment with selection, including the kind of products workers grab as they leave the office. “We’re going to learn if people need dog food on their way home,” Srinivasan said.
Even the hours may be adjusted. After hearing of some downtown residents’ disappointment over the 6 p.m. closing time and no weekend hours, Srinivasan emphasized that the project was still in the early stages.
“Opening hours, closing hours, weekends — nothing is set in stone,” he said.
