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ASCENDANT INDEPENDENT
Chicago’s Harvestime Foods
Daily market visits provide the best produce offerings in upscale Lincoln Square neighborhood.
BY CHRIS AUMAN
The Lincoln Square neighborhood, located on Chicago’s far north side, is a real estate agent’s dream. Full of great restaurants, boutiques and parks — not to mention annual festivals such as Oktober- fest, Apple Fest and the Square Roots music festival — it’s an easy sell to young condo buyers and renters. Another key selling point: Harvestime Foods.
Located at the intersection where the highly tra cked Lawrence Avenue meets quiet Talman Avenue, Harvestime Foods has a loyal base of customers who’ve helped establish the store’s word-of-mouth reputation. “We have great customers here,”says partner/owner Nick Dallas. “Most of them right now are younger and are well-educated on the quality of food they eat, and we try to provide that.”
Lincoln Square has a population of 40,000- plus residents who, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning (CMAP), have a median age of 35 with a median annual income of just under $63,000. Like many urban neighborhoods, those numbers are always in ux. ey’ve certainly changed since Dallas and three of his brothers opened this store in 1995.
e four brothers — Pete, Nick, Chris,
and Dino (who died this year) — emigrated to the United States from Greece with their family in 1977, settling on the far north side. An uncle already in the restaurant business in Chicago helped them get into foodservice, and they operated several restaurants in the city and suburbs. In the late 1980s, however, they decided to transition into the grocery business, opening their rst store, Edgewater Produce, in the Edgewater neighborhood. e Dallas’s used their individual trade experience to lay the oors and install the wiring, plumbing and HVAC system before opening in 1989. As
PHOTOS COURTESY OF HARVESTIME FOODS
the oor space of the location expanded, they decided to open a second store and began the search for a site they could purchase outright. ey found it in Lincoln Square, buying the site of a former Korean grocery store from the Bank of Korea, who repossessed the property when the owners defaulted on their loan. In 1995, Harvestime Foods opened for business.
Hand-Selected Items Ensure Quality
Nick Dallas may be the produce buyer for both stores, but that’s just one of his duties. When asked what his o cial title is, he says,
28 / OCTOBER 2018 / PRODUCE BUSINESS