by David Mendez

Let’s get this out of the way early: the proprietors of the future Richmond Beach Foods know that their business will always be known by locals as the Little Store. But they’re also happily reviving a bit of local history from their own past.

“Do we still call it the Little Store? Yes, we do,” said Lauren Peterson, one half of the team taking over the long-time corner store. “It was that in its inception.”

“It’s been called that for millennia. Dinosaurs were walking by the Little Store,” quipped Norene Roberts, the other new owner.

“We’re going to return to the name that we called it as kids,” Roberts said.

Folks around Richmond Beach have been curious about what’s coming to the old corner store at the corner of NW 196th Street and 20th Avenue NW since its last occupants, Sun and Sung Gwak, announced the closure of the Little Store last year. Their farewell post set off mournful tributes, as well fears as that the building was due to be demolished and turned into some kind of huge development project.

Then brown butcher paper covered the windows, teasing that a new store is “coming soon.”

Roberts and Peterson are Richmond Beach natives who have been best friends effectively since birth. “Our moms are best friends and we were born two days apart,” Roberts said. “The story goes that when her mom was being wheeled out of the hospital, my mom was being wheeled in and they essentially high-fived each other,” Peterson added. 

They’ve remained close ever since. The two grew up a block away from one another, they went to the same schools, were the maid of honor in each other’s wedding. Their oldest children were born three months apart, and their youngest kids were born less than a year from one another. They even get joint family pictures with Santa.

“My favorite joke when we started this was, hey, we finally found a way to be legally bound to each other! We didn’t have to get married, but we may as well be,” Peterson said.

Though their lives have been entwined for decades, the two split professionally. Roberts is coming to Richmond Beach Foods as a career social worker, most recently working with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, Peterson spent more than 20 years at QFC, doing “just about every job you could do in the store,” until moving to the corporate office.

“I still care deeply about that company, but I’m really happy to be doing something on my own and spread my wings a bit,” Peterson said. “I’m really excited to get back and do it again; in fact, a lot of my customers here will be customers at my old store. I see them now and I’m so excited.”

The building that houses the Little Store has stood for nearly 100 years, per county documents, with one suggesting that the building went up in 1927, operating as a meat market and a grocery over the years. A 1998 story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that then-owner Alan Gross began to carry “an unusual combination of groceries and gift items…whatever captures his fancy” in the store. Neighbors, the story said, would head to the shop to drink coffee, trade gossip, and do business at the post office counter in the shop.

The market business changed hands a few times over the years, though Gross still owns the building. The most recent operators of the store, Korean immigrants Sun and Sung Gwak, ran the shop for 19 years until closing their doors on Sept. 30. Last year, the Gwaks told KING5 that Gross, “without warning,” said that he wasn’t renewing their lease. Gross did not respond to multiple phone calls requesting comment. Roberts and Peterson told The Osprey that they couldn’t speak to any disagreements between the Gwaks and Alan Gross. “It’s not our place,” they said.

Though the occupants have changed, the building remains. With that, Roberts and Peterson to restore the same kind of place they loved growing up.

“When we were kids, it was definitely the center of the neighborhood,” Roberts said. “There was coffee and bluegrass jam sessions on Sundays and fresh food prepared. I could stop in there when I was walking to Syre (Elementary School) if my mom gave me some money to go buy lunch.”

The plan is to provide grab-and-go sandwiches and salads, or upscale groceries that folks can grab in a pinch between trips to markets like Town and Country or QFC. They want to be a place for folks to get a coffee and hang out, or even grab a pint of beer and relax. They also plan to have an “absolutely stellar” candy section, as well as a selection of gifts, seasonal merchandise, flowers and anything a person might want to grab on their walk around the neighborhood.

The neighborhood, and their neighbors, are already helping to shape the store, Roberts said. One woman came by, saying that she loves to work on puzzles, and asked if the store could set up a puzzle library. Roberts said that she liked the idea so much that she’ll bring in her own puzzles to set up a designated puzzle table.

That intersection, where 195th Street, 196th Street and 20th Avenue meet, feels like a space in transition. It’s the home to the well-loved Blackbird Cafe, as well as a small fire station and a few services. But the former home of the Wild Horse Bar and Grill sits empty, as it has since the business shut down in 2005, despite a spate of remodels.

Richmond Beach Foods is still not ready to welcome neighbors inside. They originally hoped, back in December, that the shop would open in February. But, as of this writing, the timeline keeps sliding. Permitting delays at the City of Shoreline are preventing further work. Peterson said that they now hope for the shop to open in April, or perhaps May.

“It’s something that we heard would be a challenge,” Petersen said, and she emphasized that the business has plenty of support from folks they know and have worked with in city hall.

“We’re doing what we can. The floors are done,” as well as much of the painting, Petersen said. Exterior paints aren’t yet done, though paint tests linger on the south-facing side of the building. But the business’s new exterior sign has been approved and the sign itself is ready to go; she’s cautiously optimistic that it will be installed in March.

Staff has been hired as well. Ten people — a mix of full-time and part-time employees — have been brought on board, from industry veterans to college students.

Meanwhile, small and fun projects have gone up, popping onto Instagram for the sake of a laugh. A photo of a Stick Lending Library (“take a stick, leave a stick,” the sign suggests,) went up on Instagram in early March. Petersen laughed when asked about it, saying it’s something that she and Roberts just thought it would have been something they loved as kids.

“Norene executed it beautifully on her own,” Petersen said. “It was something to distract herself with.”

Roberts and Petersen have quite the opportunity in front of them, and they recognize it. Their store has the potential to become an anchor of the community as folks make their way to the library, to the park, to the strawberry festival, or as they head down to the water.

“We know how special that building is to so many people, and we will do it justice,” Roberts said.

“Generations of Richmond Beach residents are very emotionally attached to that store, and we don’t take that lightly,” Peterson said. 

“Just be honest and take care of people. That’s a recipe for success, in my opinion,” she added.