Downtown St. Louis Grocery Store ‘Culinaria’ Will Soon Become A ‘Schnucks’
In August 2009 Schnucks Markets opened a small format grocery store in downtown St. Louis. It has been called “Culinaria, A Schnucks Market.” They had little choice, the Schnucks’ development company Desco had razed the historic marble-clad Century Building to construct a parking garage for their Old Post Office project across 9th Street — but the ground floor retail space wasn’t getting leased. To save face, Schnucks opened a grocery store in the space.
They didn’t have much confidence it would be successful, so they called it Culinaria rather than Schnucks. To their surprise it has been a success, though the average transaction amount is likely less than the big stores.
Very soon they’ll drop the ‘Culinaria’ brand name to become a ‘Schnucks’, like the bigger stores.
Over the last 11 years they’ve made physical changes, such as a minor reconfiguration of shelves in 2013. They also stopped doing wine tastings in the upstairs mezzanine long ago. The Kaldi’s Coffee station closed before the pandemic. The pharmacy became a CVS pharmacy this year, as Schnucks sold their pharmacy business entirely.
Currently the store is undergoing the biggest changes since opening. Here’s a list of just some of the ongoing changes I’ve observed:
- New shopping carts
- New flooring is being installed throughout
- The coffee station is gone
- The wine & spirits will be moving from the mezzanine to maim floor
- The dark shelving is being changed to white shelving
- New aisle guides
- Self-check stations have been added for the first time, replacing most cashier stations
- The wall over the deli, meat, seafood areas is now red with new signage.
- Only very longtime employees still have Culinaria name tags.
You could say they’re just revising the store, but everything new now has the Schnucks name on it. The Culinaria name and the design elements that distinguished it from regular Schnucks stores are all being removed.
Schnucks hasn’t yet announced the name change, and a spokesperson didn’t confirm it upon my inquiry. But clearly it’s happening. The very last change will likely be new exterior signage.
— Steve Patterson