If you ask any Twin Citian to free-associate with the words “grocery store” or “supermarket,” there are likely just a few names that come up—and perhaps only one that truly captures the essence of the small, neighborhood grocer in a world where that paradigm is quickly disappearing.
The Kowalski family has operated grocery stores in the Metro since 1983, when founders Jim and Mary Anne Kowalski purchased their first Red Owl franchise on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue. Jim, who passed away in 2013, had worked for Red Owl corporate since 1978. “We decided to do this together,” Mary Anne says. “I quit my counseling job, we got a loan from a friend, and we used all of our savings and bought the store.” The couple had both grown up in St. Paul, so opening a market on Grand was “like coming home,” Mary Anne says. “We knew we were going to be a small, neighborhood-oriented grocer. That meant we needed to figure out what the neighborhood wanted.” They held their inaugural consumer group meeting—something they still do today—on their front porch in St. Paul and asked the neighbors what they’d like to see in the market. “They suggested taking the candy out of one of the checkout lanes so the kids wouldn’t start grabbing it,” Mary Anne remembers. “So we did those things—those small details.”
The couple purchased their second store—a Red Owl franchise in White Bear Lake—in 1985. Over the next year or so, they remodeled it, turning it into a prototype for what Kowalski’s Markets would be and adding the Kowalski name. “We knew we couldn’t compete with the big-box stores, so we needed to be something different,” Mary Anne says. “It really became a specialty market.”
The Kowalskis’ daughter, Kris Kowalski Christiansen, who’s now the company’s CEO, explains the “Kowalski makeover.” “We aesthetically changed the grocery shopping experience, so it was focused on comfort and beauty,” Christiansen says. “We took out the fluorescent lighting. We added the stone arches. We wanted people to be excited to grocery shop.”…