Market brews fresh start in former Andersonville hardware store building
Raj Patel, co-owner, puts up some stock on a display shelf at the new Andersonville Market on Saturday (March 22). The store opened last week in the former location of C.L. Sharp Sentry Hardware on Andersonville Highway at Park Lane. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Raj Patel, who also is part-owner of the Liquor Depot in Norris, said stock is still being added to the store, which will eventually include milk and other dairy products, and some frozen foods and fresh-made ready-to-eat food items.
There are new gasoline pumps outside the store, with pay-at-the-pump capability.
“We plan to be open from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. seven days a week,” Patel said. “We will offer convenience-store items, along with fresh coffee and breakfast foods in the mornings, and we’re looking at having other deli-type foods during the day.”
Patel and his business partner in the liquor and convenience stores, Ankit Patel, have leased the former hardware store property, at 4011 Andersonville Highway.
They rented it from the Sharp family, said Sandra Sharp.
The family still owns the property, even though the store closed in 2016.
Floor-to-ceiling coolers have been installed along the interior west wall.
Descendants of C.L. Sharp, the hardware store’s former operator, announced in July 2022 that they were planning to reopen the store that September, but those plans never materialized.
The hardware store began in another location across the highway and a couple of blocks west of the current location, and moved to its last location in 1998, said Sandra Sharp, who is the daughter-in-law of Conley Sharp Sr. and mother of Kate Bennett.
She married Conley Sharp Jr., who went by the name Lewis, she said.
