Coffee, Community, and Conscience

NoBo Mrkt joins Commongrounds Coop

By Geri Dietze | Nov. 11, 2023

If you’ve been to Commongrounds Coop in Traverse City, you’re familiar with its mission to combine “food, family, arts, and wellness” in one inviting space. If you’ve yet to visit, your timing is perfect, coinciding as it does with the recent opening of NoBo Mrkt.

“We have had an amazingly positive public response to the NoBo Mrkt space and our products,” explains manager Jennifer Yeatts. Some 400-500 people stopped by throughout the grand opening in September, and business has remained steady ever since.

Form, Meet Function

NoBo Mrkt is a collaborative café, retail spot, and food court, anchored by an eye-catching beverage center with Higher Grounds coffee on one side—their second brick-and-mortar site—and craft brews, wines, and spirits on the other. The entire space seats up to 100, including the outdoor patio.

Inside, the space is light and bright, open and contemporary. If it feels like art, that’s because it was created by David Hassing of True North Architectural Design. Hassing spent some serious design time in New York and Chicago before bringing his talents to Traverse City, and one can see how his creativity combines with utility in a wholly original way.

Look for a combination of textures and materials: wood, stone, metal, and cement, with varied finishes—shiny, satin, and matte. Lighting is an interesting mix—track, hanging globes, and a multilight chandelier reminiscent of steampunk, but far more refined—and illuminates the large open space, as do the tall windows overlooking the river. Seating is varied and colorful with upholstered booths and banquettes, plus variously-sized tables for a couple or a crowd.

And don’t forget to look up: 72 individual floating shapes, fashioned from sound-absorbing Tectum panels, hover overhead. Hassing calls it “artful chaos,” using the floating installation to reduce sound created by the 11-foot ceilings, while countering the “practical chaos” of the exposed lights, AC, and heating ducts. In short, NoBo Mrkt is also a feast for the eyes.

Connecting the Local Food Dots

The ethos of the place is devoted to supporting small-scale, regional food and beverage purveyors, including farms, markets, breweries, vintners, and distilleries, through retail sales and from the fresh, wholesome dishes emerging from the NOBO café kitchen.

Keep in mind that NoBo is still a work in progress, though not for long: Currently, the chef and staff are working out of the small pantry kitchen (the full kitchen should be done in December) so the menu is small, but exemplary. Enjoy breakfast sandwiches, grilled cheese, a grilled ham and pork Cubano, French Onion soup finished with port wine, or a quinoa salad, among other offerings.

Here’s a little detail to whet your appetite. The must-try breakfast sandwich is oven toasted with Leelanau Cheese raclette, Sleeping Bear Farms Star Thistle Honey, house made garlic aioli, and Anavery Fine Foods scrambled eggs on your choice of 9 Bean Rows Bread—sourdough, multigrain, or ciabatta.

NoBo’s staple salad changes based on seasonality and is always named after the bird that the colors best coincide with; for example, the present and delightfully purple salad is named the Starling, made with radishes, pickled beets, port cranberries, Ginger Gold matchsticks, and Idyll Farms goat cheese.

General Manager Jerome Smith says that NoBo is planning small plate dinner service, focusing on farm-to-table ingredients. “We’re hoping for December,” he says.

Chef James Thomas III adds the menu will include some traditional American/continental and French cuisine (his favorite) like Steak au Poivre, and Chicken Quarters in Herbs de Provence, as well as seasonally available fish. “Folks can easily order several of each…to sample, share, and eat socially in our cozy dining room overlooking the river,” he explains.

Before earning his Great Lakes Culinary Institute degree, thanks to the Michigan Reconnect scholarship, Chef James had already worked his way through some notable eateries, and he gives high marks to the chefs under whom he honed his skills: the “bright and optimistic” chef Mike Prainito, now executive chef at Rare Bird Brewpub; Red Ginger’s “ceaselessly positive and thoroughly experienced” Steven Brochman; and the “incredible” Randy Chamberlain of Glen Arbor’s Blu.

Chef James says the menu will change throughout the seasons in response to local and regional ingredients. “I hope to have a diverse menu…that will be incredible and [show] how important it is [to] support our highly valuable local farmers and businesses.”

Currently, NoBo partners with Cherry Capital Foods, Leelanau Cheese, Idyll Farms, Grocer's Daughter Chocolate, 9 Bean Rows, Light of Day Organics, Earthly Delights, Food for Thought, Michigan Farm to Freezer, and NanBop Farm. Other partners will be added as NoBo Mrkt continues to grow.

A Mission and a Purpose

But it’s not just the food and the coffee drawing folks in. Soon, NoBo will be much more than a cool gathering spot on the Eighth Street corridor.

Through its partnership with the Grand Traverse Foodshed Alliance, the site will promote and support chef entrepreneurs who might not have access to traditional routes into the food business, including those who come from underserved communities, those who lack resources, and those who do not have access to a formal culinary education. One incubator restaurant food stall will provide on-site learning opportunities for chef cohorts, supported by the mentors of the Foodshed Alliance.

Enter Tony Vu, a first generation Vietnamese American, Grand Traverse Foodshed Alliance board member, and partner at The Good Bowl, Traverse City’s place for premium fast-casual Vietnamese food.

Vu spent 25 years in Flint and had a considerable impact in the food business, first as owner of the very popular MaMang in the Flint Farmers’ Market, and then as the founder of the Flint Social Club, a nonprofit, operating in the same location with a learning kitchen where food entrepreneurs could get training, mentoring, and support.

When Vu was asked to envision a food program for NoBo Mrkt, he saw similarities with the situation in Flint: opportunities came through the same channels, in an “ad hoc, grassroots [form], underutilized, and [without] much infrastructure.” Vu stresses the importance of mentoring and support in any community, “and recognizing that not everyone has a fair shot at starting a business or a career.”

The Foodshed Alliance is committed to supporting all aspects of the local and regional food chain, and this inclusive education model will help promote their aims. Vu adds that current barriers include a “general lack of cultural diversity [and] representation in Traverse City’s food scene,” as well as the need to “lower barriers in a food scene that isn’t affordable.” In regard to the opportunities available through NoBo Mrkt, he says, “We are looking for people who want to start their own businesses.”

The first cohort of chef-entrepreneurs will begin in January 2024 and will complete a three- to four-month program with a network of mentors who support the goal of the Foodshed Alliance. For more information about the program, head to NoBo Mrkt’s website.

Find NoBo Mrkt at 414 E. Eighth St. in Traverse City inside Commongrounds Coop. nobomrkt.com

Update: An earlier version noted there would be two food stalls rather than one in the incubator portion of the restaurant.