See if you can use all these words in one truthful sentence:  gourmet groceries, libations, delivery, and Richmond.
 
How about this: Main Street Market – Deli has brought to Richmond a European-style market that sells bottled libations, fresh fruits, gourmet groceries, great deli sandwiches, even cleaning products, and its delivery area covers the city’s core, from Rockett’s Landing to the western reaches of Carytown. Best of all? There’s no charge for delivery, only a minimum order amount.
 
Main Street Market – Deli has brought a little of New York to Richmond. Now you can ring the market, place your order, and have it appear at your door. Out of paper towels? Got a jones for chocolate? How about six friends just turned up at your house, and you’re out of beer?
 
“That’s the appeal you have to have,” said owner Newton Carroll, who opened the market-deli a year ago. “We’re trying to achieve that neighborhood market feel in a neighborhood that doesn’t necessarily have that feel,” he said.
 
Indeed, before the market’s arrival, the area surrounding its generous space at 1215 E. Main St. had no discernible personality. With polished floors, metal shelving, wine racks and decidedly soothing lighting, Main Street Market – Deli has brought ambience where none existed.
 
If you overlook the Nutella, the Sons of Italy pasta sauce, and the Boar’s Head meats and cheeses, you might agree with Carroll’s “nothing pretentious” description. Think of it as gold plated basic needs—the practical and hard to find. You might not find Simple Green, but there is Murphy’s Wood Oil Soap.  There’s no microwave-it-now, but there are fresh sandwiches, fresh fruits, even gluten-free cookies and frozen vegetarian selections. Canned tomatoes? Some much-needed Red Bull? Ring, ring.
 
Business has slipped, though, because foot traffic has to duck and cover while keeping a close eye on footing just to get to the market’s door. “For the last three months, there’s been a big hole in the street,” Carroll said, pointing to torn-up pavement. “And for the last five or six months, there’s been scaffolding on the street.” The bus stop that used to be on the corner is no longer there—a bane and a blessing, Carroll said. “I’ve lost business because of the bus stop being there, and I’ve lost business from the bus stop not being there.”
 
Carroll has gone to great pains to make sure his beer and wine selection is different from others. He has chosen a well-rounded selection of domestic as well as micro brews. And his wine choices are just as studied, including a white Verdicchio del Castelli di Jesi and Fox Hollow cabernet.
 
Occasionally, Carroll woos people to the shop with a beer or wine tasting. The most recent featured Sam Adams and Starr Hill. And this Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., Stone Mountain Vineyards will host a Virginia wine tasting.
 
Carroll hopes to survive the roadwork and the scaffolding, but he says it’s a struggle. Folks don’t know he’s there from morning (when he serves a full takeout breakfast) to night (8 p.m. weeknights; 6 p.m. Saturdays), six days a week.
 
For now, he has little choice but to keep on plugging, and leave it up to fate. In a quiet moment, when he’s not bustling around, stocking shelves or ringing up a sale, he looks at the orange traffic cones, the crumbled macadam, the ugly metal scaffolding outside the window and muses, “If someone is dumb enough to invest in this economic climate…he deserves support.”

Main Street Market - Deli | 1215 E. Main St. #A | 788.1111 | http://www.mainstreetmarketdeli.com