Trend-spotting: Ingles Markets moves into the gardening business

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Watching homegrown Ingles Markets change over the past few years has been fascinating. The grocery store chain in recent years has gone the “bigger-is-better” route, a trail obviously blazed by Wal-Mart. In no particular order, Ingles started by building bigger stores; then Ingles got into selling gasoline and built little convenience stores to go with the gas pumps.

The newest trend for Ingles is to add garden centers to their massive shopping complexes. Here’s a clue – on Monday, a city advisory group will take up the following request:

Requests by Ingles Markets for exceptions to city zoning rules so the company could put garden centers in parking lots at stores at 915 Merrimon Ave. and 1141 Tunnel Road.

The expansion isn’t going over well with some folks. WLOSer Pat Simon had a decent report about controversy over the planned expansion of Ingles’ Black Mountain store. The expansion includes a garden center.

Ingles representatives are proposing expansion plans for the Black Mountain store. They want to build a new garden center, add 165 parking spaces, along with a new gas station and convenience store. Some residents are worried that will take away more business from Mom & Pop stores.

I also keep hearing rumors that Ingles plans to expand its warehouse in Swannanoa. And there have been rumors that Ingles would be building a big new frozen foods warehouse on the site of the former Beacon plant. Ingles bought the site for a song after the fire several years ago. Anybody got an update?