Stories indexed with the term ‘Zingerman’s’

Employees at Zingerman’s Deli – or any of the Zingerman’s family of businesses – are trained to handle complaints from customers with a five-step process. The third step: Make it right.

Zingerman’s itself is “handling a complaint” from the city’s Historic District Commission (HDC) – one that can be traced back to a June 2008 Zingerman’s request to demolish two houses, which are located in the city’s Old Fourth Ward historic district.

Now Zingerman’s is bringing back another proposal, but this time they’re not starting formally with the HDC. Instead, they’ll begin by seeking approvals from the city’s planning commission and the city council.

The site plan calls for a two-story, 9,500-square-foot structure to be added to the rear of the deli building, which will carry a price tag of around $4 million. The new building would replace the house at 322 E. Kingsley St. and extend lengthwise towards Community High School.

Zingerman’s started satisfying the formal steps for getting approval of their expansion project this week, on Monday, March 8, by holding a citizens participation meeting.

But Zingerman’s has also met informally with the HDC at two separate work sessions since the start of the year – one in January and the other on Thursday, March 11. Based on a significant change in design between those two meetings, which integrates “the orange house” into the project instead of demolishing it, Zingerman’s is trying to “make it right” for the HDC.

Still, at Thursday’s HDC work session, the Zingerman’s team stressed how great the challenges were – financial and logistical – to preserving the orange house as part of the project design. It seemed apparent that Zingerman’s was making an implicit pitch for members of the HDC to give a green light for the previously proposed project – the one minus both houses. [Full Story]

When former University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr arrived Thursday evening at the Zingerman’s Raucus Caucus fundraiser to benefit the Peace Neighborhood Center, he had no linemen blocking for him.

So Michael Hedin – whose Townie’s Two Step team was competing in the fundraiser’s sandwich design contest – wheeled around from his conversation with us to pitch to Carr the virtues of his team’s two-meat sandwich. The coach was there to help judge the sandwich design contest at the heart of the fundraiser – and he was wise to Hedin’s angle: “Yeah, I always used to talk to the officials before the game, too!”

A few minutes later, Gov. Jennifer Granholm delivered remarks that kicked off the event, which raised around $18,000 for the neighborhood center, according to Rick Strutz, a managing partner of Zingerman’s Deli.   Located on Maple Road near Miller Avenue, Peace Neighborhood offers after-school programming and tutoring for elementary and middle school students.  [Full Story]

According to Mo Frechette, they miss seeing customers out there in warehouse land. Toni Morell says they’re bored during off season. There’s also some inventory they’d like to move at discounted prices, Frechette says, so “why not do it as a hush-hush locals-only thing?”

The Chronicle suspects that Zingerman’s fans won’t really care why the managing partners of Zingerman’s Mail Order decided to open a super low-key discount retail store – they’ll just care about the when, where and what.

So here’s the deal: Every Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., starting last Friday and running for 21 weeks, the warehouse at 610 Phoenix Drive will be selling 21 types of items at deep discounts – including some things priced at $21 – to anyone who happens to stop by. The stock will be different each week, though there’ll likely be some overlap, too – you can sign up to get weekly emails alerting you to what’s on offer.

When we stopped by on March 13, the venture’s kickoff day, we watched a steady stream of people drop in – mostly from the surrounding industrial park, which includes the Borders Group headquarters and the Ann Arbor Learning Community, a charter school. Frechette said they’d told some of the surrounding businesses about it – plus there’s a sign at the entrance to their driveway – but otherwise, only some “leakage” about the store on Facebook and the blogosphere. Yet word is getting out. [Full Story]