When grocery giant Whole Foods moved into the new Madison Yards development last December, it shuttered the store it had run for nearly 20 years at 3313 University Ave.
To the owners of Madison’s Istanbul Market and Sun Prairie’s Fresh Mart, the newly-empty building looked like just the right place for their next international grocery store. Many of the customers at their other stores had long made the trek from near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and owners Yashar Tairov and Saniya Tairova were hunting for a place that UW-Madison students could get to without a car.
At around 30,000 square feet, the University Avenue space is more than twice the size of the Sun Prairie store, which dwarfs their first shop, the cozy Istanbul Market on Gammon Road. It offered enough room for a coffee shop, separate bars for hot food and sushi, a butcher counter and a plentiful produce area, plus room to stock a wider range of groceries.
Fresh Mart’s Madison store is located at 3313 University Ave in Madison. The store opened after the building’s former occupant, Whole Foods, moved to a new location down the street.
The husband-wife team signed a 15-year lease and opened Fresh Mart Madison in March. The new store has around 25 employees. Managing the front end is Luiza Kurbanova, the couple’s 22 year-old niece, who grew up in Rockford and spent summers in Madison helping out at Istanbul Market. Her parents work at the Fresh Mart location in Sun Prairie.
The family came to Wisconsin as refugees from Russia and trace their roots to Uzbekistan, but the store stocks foods sought by homesick immigrants from all over the world. “We have international (food) from everywhere: from Africa, from Asia, India, Pakistan. In Europe, Eastern Europe, Caribbean … Hispanic, all kinds of food,” Tairov said.
Saniya Tairova (right), co-owner of Fresh Mart, stands with her mother-in-law, also named Saniya Tairova (middle) who makes food featured in the store’s hot bar, and her niece Luiza Kurbanova (left), who helps run the store.
There’s an olive bar with around two dozen options. There’s a range of nut milks, from cashew to hazelnut. And there are aisles filled with jams and fermented foods. “The biggest thing in our Middle Eastern culture is pickled items,” Kurbanova said.
For meat lovers, there’s veal bologna and a deli counter offering halal burgers and kebabs. In the freezers, there are Russian-style dumplings stuffed with halal meat, a variety of types of naan, and bags of diced green mango and water chestnut.
An aisle at Fresh Mart’s Madison store is filled with pickled foods.
“Before we opened the stores, we literally had to drive to Chicago or Milwaukee to get anything close to what we had at home,” Kurbanova said. “We didn’t grow up with a lot of international foods just being in our back pocket.
“So the fact that a lot of our students get to … just come around the corner and get all the food that they want, especially the food that they grew up with, is so, so huge for us. We’ve gotten a lot of people who come in here (and say),‘I haven’t eaten this since I was two years old,’ or ‘This is the first time I’ve seen this since I was in the States.’”
Halal chicken kebabs are among the offerings in the meat section of Fresh Mart Madison.
The store also stocks some of the basics you’d find in any average U.S. grocery store, so that shoppers don’t have to make a second trip to get their milk or frozen pizza.
“You’ll get your (Eastern European) bread from Eastern European … but you’ll also get your regular whole wheat bread that you used to make sandwiches,” Kurbanova said. “So it’s a little bit of everything for everyone, not just international-focused.”
The new Fresh Mart has a full produce department. The owners hope to stock more organic produce in the future.
So far, the new store has drawn far more U.S.-born shoppers than the Sun Prairie store, Tairova said. If customers don’t see the products they’re looking for, they can drop a note in the suggestion box. “We have people asking for more organic and more healthier options,” Tairova said, so the store is adding more, along with more products from local small businesses.
Two chefs fill the store’s hot bar and sushi counter with a rotation selection of dishes. A separate business, Hotco Noodles, cooks and sells on site, billing itself as “the best Sichuan cuisine in Madison.”
A patron scoops stuffed peppers at the hot bar at Fresh Mart.
Sometimes, Tairov’s mother, also named Saniya Tairova, cooks too. On a recent morning, she made stuffed peppers filled with rice and ground meat. And customers regularly ask for her Uzbek flatbread, which always sells out.
“She makes it when her heart tells her to. I always tell people that and it always makes them like the bread a little bit more,” said Kurbanova, her granddaughter.
Growing pains, and joys
The new location has advantages. It’s close to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and its thousands of international students. But so far, business has been slow. Road work along University Avenue has made it harder for drivers to get to the store. Others haven’t heard it’s there.
“Not too many people know,” Tairov said. “It is very difficult now, very slow, but I think it’s going to pick up.”
A patron bags onions in the produce section at the new Fresh Mart.
Running such a spacious store is a big change from the shop five miles away where the family got their start in the business. There Tairov had his regular customers’ butcher counter orders and would start weighing the chicken and meat as soon as they walked in. It was “like a coffee place, but a grocery store,” Kurbanova said.
A Fresh Mart worker puts a pizza in the oven to bake. Along with the hot bar, Fresh Mart makes grab-and-go options like sushi and to-order foods like pizza.
Now, Tairov tends to a new set of regulars at Fresh Bite Cafe, the coffee shop tucked just in front of the checkout counters at the new store. The cafe offers a full range of espresso drinks, plus Turkish coffee and a bakery case filled with bagels and pastries, some of them baked in-house.
The store is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and Tairov looks forward to being there to welcome the first customers each morning. He makes rounds to the other locations during the day, then comes back to the new store to close it down for the night.
“He’s literally the first person here and the last person out,” Kurbanova said.
The four questions
What are the most important values driving your work?
Tairov: It’s not just a business. I’m so happy to come every day because when I work, I see all my friends and I meet more new friends. I try to do (the same) with all our employees: not push too much, so they will be happy to come to work.
How are you creating the kind of community that you want to live in?
Kurbanova: The outreach, (encouraging people) to be open to anything and everything. We want to open brand new (food) horizons to people.
Tairov: Everybody (who comes from another country), they always miss their home. So when they come (to the store) they’re just so happy. They find something they miss (and maybe it helps them do their homework better). Some people find a small candy (they remember) and it’s like they made $5 million.
Tairova: The smiles on people’s faces, I think, tell a lot.
Kurbanova: We’ve had a lot of parents that are like, “I can finally have my kids try the candy that I had when I was a kid.”
What advice do you have for other would-be entrepreneurs?
Tairov: Don’t think too much. If you start to think too much, you won’t do the business. All business is risk. If your heart says you’re ready, do it.
Are you hiring?
Tairov: Maybe (soon). It’s summer and the students (are out of school). We’ve just opened now, and we have to figure (things) out, but we definitely need more people.
