Dean & DeLuca to open North Texas location
Dean & DeLuca, the upscale grocery chain, had a strong Fort Worth presence back in May during its first year of sponsoring the Dean & DeLuca Invitational golf tournament at Colonial Country Club.
It even had a pop-up store, Dean & DeLuca Prince Street Marketplace, on the Colonial grounds, leading to speculation that the retailer might open its first Texas store in Fort Worth. For years, there have been rumors of a Dallas location, and there were some rumors that a Dean & DeLuca might open in the new Left Bank shops development off of Fort Worth’s West Seventh Street.
But the winner for the first Texas Dean & DeLuca is neither Fort Worth nor Dallas, but Plano, according to a report in CultureMap Dallas.
The store is scheduled to open in early 2017 at Legacy West, an “urban mixed-use complex,” in Plano, reports CultureMap’s Teresa Gubbins, also a DFW.com contributor.
That does not rule out a Fort Worth/Tarrant site. In May, Jay Coldren, Dean & DeLuca’s chief development officer, told the Star-Telegram that the retailer planned to open two retail outlets in the Dallas-Fort Worth by the end of 2017. And Coldren hinted that that wouldn’t be the end of it.
“We’re looking at two sites here that we’ve very close on,” Coldren said in May. “We’re very excited about the Dallas-Fort Worth market. We hope to do a number of locations here, both of our full-market stores and our café locations.”
The Prince Street Marketplace provided a small-scale preview of what a Dean & DeLuca offers, with a small kitchen menu, a large selection of specialty coffees and teas, pastries, a produce section, a large selection of savory and sweet treats, and some fancier stuff such as multiple and colorful varieties of sugar and salt.
The 1,800-square-foot pop-up was about 15 percent of the size of a regular Dean & DeLuca, Coldren said. He added that the chain — which currently has stores in New York; Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Leawood, Kansas; St. Helena, California; and overseas — was seriously considering a Fort Worth location.
According to Gubbins, Legacy West will also feature a Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House, Fogo de Chao, Toulouse Cafe and Bar, Taverna, Tommy Bahama Restaurant, True Food Kitchen, Mesero, Shake Shack, and Legacy Hall, a 55-thousand-square-foot food hall that will be home to more than 20 food vendors. DFW.com’s Preston Jones reported on Legacy Hall earlier this week.
This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Dean & DeLuca to open North Texas location."