Highland park market kielbasa3/10/2023 Today, Frank’s Market is sandwiched in between the Bitter End, a thriving new wi-fi accessible coffeehouse, and Fulton Pharmacy. Although there is no doubt from the store’s aroma that this is a meat market, Frank’s also sells fresh produce, beer and wine, milk and bread, and other pantry items. Frank’s early niche was homemade sausages, kielbasa, and pierogies but they expanded from there. With the trend toward larger stores and supermarkets, a small neighborhood store must find a niche in order to stay in business, Stanitzek said. “Fritz has modernized the store a great deal but he’s kept that old neighborhood charm.” “It made the place so warm and special for customers,” she said. “The products at Frank’s are always fresher.”Īnthony raves about the steaks, sausages, and special orders they regularly purchase from the market and she fondly remembers when Fritz’s dad used to give kids an apple or a banana when they came into the store. “We don’t buy meat at the grocery,” Anthony said. Although she says her husband does most of the shopping, she regularly stops into Frank’s Market. Anthony co-owns the Fulton Pharmacy, another of the many locally-owned businesses on West Fulton. Suzi Anthony is a regular customer, a West Side resident, and a neighboring business owner. In addition to the out-of-towners lured by the personality and homemade products of the family meat market, Frank’s attracts a diverse slice of the Grand Rapids population, including students, faculty and staff from nearby Grand Valley State University, as well as parents and children going to and from John Ball Park Zoo. He hadn’t intended to stay, either, but the “business started to grow and I enjoyed the people and enjoyed the creativeness of our homemade products.”įritz is proud to carry on his grandfather’s name and legacy and he enjoys running a business that is small and friendly. His son Fritz began helping out after high school and honed the butcher craft for 14 years before purchasing the business from his dad thirteen years ago. inherited a special kielbasa recipe from the retiring butcher that eventually catapulted Frank’s Market from a meat market into a specialty store. When another local butcher shop closed to make room for new development, Frank, Jr. “The people - that’s what he enjoyed the most about this work. “My dad enjoyed the contact with the customers,” Fritz said. Instead, he ended up staying and making a career out of sausage rather than football, operating the market from 1957 to 1993. planned to run the store for a year or two and then sell it. left behind a four-year football scholarship at Notre Dame to man the market. When Stanitzek suffered a ruptured disc, his son Frank Jr. But Stanitzek eventually was back in business with the unbridled optimism that flowed from America’s victory in the Second World War. The store caught fire and was nearly destroyed in January 1944. With Grand Rapids’ immigrant population booming at the time, this was perhaps his greatest marketing tool as the shop attracted a loyal following among West Side settlers.īut there were still some hard bumps to test their Polish-American endurance. A photo of the elder Stanitzek hangs on the wall above an antique cash register that Fritz keeps to remind him of his heritage and his father and grandfather’s hard work ethic.įrank, Sr., who was conscripted into the German army during World War I, spoke to his first customers in German, Polish, or English depending on their native tongue. Grandfather Frank Stanitzek opened shop in 1933, soon after emigrating from Poland. “We give that personalized service you can’t find at a large supermarket.”įrank’s Market has kept the same name and location from the beginning. “We know our customers on a first name basis,” Fritz said. Third-generation customers shop at the market, people whose parents bought sausages from his father and grandfather. Not only do people come a long way to shop at Frank’s, they’ve been coming for a long time. But people come from as far away as the lakeshore and Lansing to purchase specialty items such as homemade sausages and smoked meats for weddings, communions, baptisms, and other occasions. His small neighborhood market sits on a burgeoning west side business district in downtown Grand Rapids. Fulton, the pungent aroma of spices and sausages gives a clear indication of the nature of the products sold there, something you don’t generally experience when visiting the local big box grocer.Īnd that's part of the draw. When you walk into Frank’s, located at 750 W. You notice this when you enter his shop, Frank’s Market, a clean, orderly store with spotless refrigerated cases and attractive, lean cuts of meat displayed neatly inviting purchase. Fritz Stanitzek admits to being “kind of a clean freak” and says it has spilled over into his business.
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