Luna’s Groceries, a popular food retailer in Madison’s Allied-Dunn’s Marsh Neighborhood, will open a second location in 2025 on Madison’s South Side in the former Yue‐Wah grocery space at the Village on Park Mall.
The new store will be in the heart of South Madison, the most diverse part of the city, and will be surrounded by places like the Urban League of Greater Madison, Access Community Health Center, Centro Hispano of Dane County, the Black Business Hub, Omega School, Madison College’s Goodman South campus, Mt. Zion and Fountain of Life churches, and, coming soon, the Center for Black Excellence and Culture.
“I’m super excited to be in that location. I’ve been dreaming of being on Park Street since I’ve wanted to have a grocery store in the United States,” says Luna’s Groceries owner Mariam Nuñez. “It’s such an incredibly diverse area and one of our goals is to serve the people in the area we are in.”
Nuñez hopes to build the type of community in South Madison that Luna’s Groceries has created in the Allied Drive area since its grocery store first opened in 2019. The new Luna’s Groceries on South Park Street will also include a Caribbean restaurant inside the store with a few seats to sit down, but mostly for takeout orders. Nuñez estimates it’ll take about eight months to get up and running, most of which time will be spent building out the commercial kitchen.
“It’s going be a grab-and-go restaurant dedicated to people that are working in that area that just need something delicious to eat and then continue on their day of work,” she says.
The restaurant will be mostly Caribbean food, says Nuñez, who was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and has very strong ties to the country to this day.
“We’re going to have salads and other stuff. But it is going to mostly be food that represents the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, a little bit of Venezuela and Costa Rica … all of the delicious food that you can find in the Caribbean,” Nuñez says.
Nuñez understands the long-standing history and reverence people do have for Yue-Wah Oriental Foods, the beloved little grocery store that was a South Madison fixture for 40 years.
“We’re gonna keep some of the staples that people have come to know at Yue-Wah, the diversity of produce, especially vegetables that Yue-Wah had at the store … when I first moved to United States, that was the only place that I got my plantains,” Nuñez says. “I also got chicken there that we use for soup that you don’t find in the regular supermarket. I got vegetables that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I want to continue to provide some of the same things for the customers that were loyal for years to that store.”
It’s a different area of town, but Nuñez has the blueprint for a successful grocery store having established the original Luna’s Groceries in the Allied-Dunn Marsh neighborhood back in 2019. Prior to Luna’s arrival, the Allied Drive neighborhood had been identified as a “food desert.”
“It’s been an amazing experience. Luna’s has embodied everything that I had hoped for. I wanted a grocery store that was not just groceries. It was a place where the community gathers and the community has their heart in it, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Nuñez says.
That Luna’s community recently came out for the 2024 Luna’s Block Party, an event Luna’s holds every summer to show their appreciation for their customers.
“We had double the people we had at last year’s block party, so that was really amazing. Every year the attendance has been increasing,” Nuñez says. “We had 40 vendors and they were so unbelievably happy about how they sold everything that day. People came at noon and they stayed until 9:30 p.m. I had to kick them out at the end of the night; they were having so much fun. It was truly a community party.”
The block party idea, she adds, comes from her father who used to own grocery stores and clubs back in the Loma de Cabrera, Dominican Republic. “The block party is the perfect place to show off the love for music and food that we have,” she says.
In addition to her father, her sister, Aracelys Nuñez, has been her inspiration on her journey. “She has been my right hand since day one. She will be the co-owner with me at the new Luna’s store and I’m super happy about that … I just asked her to leave everything and work with me at Luna’s, and she did it, and I promised her that it was gonna be worth it. She would work with me at Luna’s for 14 hours a day and seven hours a week at the beginning,” she adds. “So being able to bring her in as a partner in this new Luna’s is just a dream come true where she can truly feel like an owner.”
With the new store, Luna’s will now have a presence on Madison’s west and south sides …. Is there any possibility to get a Luna’s Groceries on the east side, too?
“My goal is to have 10 stores…. so at some point that might happen,” Nuñez smiles. “As we grow and our brand grows and people are looking to become partners and have a part of Luna’s, we are thinking about how we can look to franchise the store so we can be in any little neighborhood that doesn’t have a capacity for a big store, but has a capacity for a small store run by people who really care about the community. It’s not something that’s gonna happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but it’s something that we have in our hearts that we want to make happen.”
In the meantime, Nuñez will be busy with all of the work that comes with opening a new store.
“What I’m looking forward to the most with the new store is the same thing we have been doing – building community, respect, and love in a place where people can feel that they can come and have some good food and be relaxed and maybe find some friends while they are shopping,” she says.
