Comfort Cuisine Going Downtown With Grocery Store

Jon Kenny and Arlene Fields will move Comfort Cuisine downtown.^

Comfort Cuisine, a small caterer specializing in healthy menus tucked away in Garden City will make its downtown Roanoke debut shortly, moving into 16 West Marketplace and opening a long-awaited grocery store.

As downtown housing has filled up in recent years, the need for a grocery store has grown and Comfort Cuisine will not only furnish that, but also a smoothie and coffee shop in addition to their healthy prepared foods that are delivered to customers in many cases.

Jon Kenny and Arlene Fields each has considerable background in food service and business in general (see Dan Smith's column in the January issue of FRONT).

John Garland of Spectrum Designs owns the building with several partners and has planned to make it something of a retail center for the growing community living in downtown Roanoke. The building has been a cafeteria and most recently a gym.

Garland says he's thrilled at the breakthrough and that Comfort Cuisine will provide "everything they [already] do, plus a downtown location to provide not only pickup and catering, but you can eat there, too, and buy the ingredients at the grocery store and follow [Jon's] recipes and make it yourself."

In addition to the new grocery store and restaurant, Garland says the building, which is still being renovated, has "eight apartments under construction, and I listed them on CraigsList one time and started showing them less than two weeks ago. I already have six of them rented and more showings this weekend. Downtown apartments, or at least the great ones at 16 West, are going like hotcakes."

--By DAN SMITH