Supermarket News
Dallas' Knox Street gains essential amenity: a gourmet grocery cafe
Berkley's Market on Knox Street.
Dallas' Knox Street has a new opening that meets the needs of the neighborhood: Berkley's Market, the grocery concept founded by entrepreneur Zac Porter, has opened at 3300 Knox St., near the corner of Knox and Travis, just off the Katy Trail.
Located in the former Into the Garden space next-door to Toulouse, the store is nearly 5,000 square feet, including a 600 square-foot patio that came with the space.
"It's our largest store and our new flagship," Porter says.
It's also the concept's fourth location, following two in downtown Dallas and one that opened in Oak Cliff in 2022. But this one is probably the one closest to Porter's heart: less than two miles from Highland Park Village, where he opened his first store, then called Royal Blue Grocery, in 2015.
"It does feel like a return to the neighborhood for us, and we're thrilled to be seeing lots of familiar faces and regulars," Porter says. "We're also superexcited about being on Knox Street, and we're off to a good start, stocking up and reviewing requests to get the items our new neighborhood wants."
One new thing exclusive to this location is a lunch counter and wine bar.
"We've always had wine for sale by the bottle and by the glass, but we wanted to create an area that made it comfortable to sit down and have a glass with charcuterie and snacky things," Porter says.
He and his wife Emily Ray-Porter and their friend Cullen Potts entered the grocery world in 2015 when they opened a location of Austin-based Royal Blue Grocery in Highland Park Village. With its street-side patio seating facing Preston Road, it quickly became a destination for Park Cities meet-ups and people watching.
Its market-and-coffee-shop combination as well as Porter's attentive daily presence helped spawn a major sidewalk scene at the shopping center. It was closed in 2021 to make way for Sadelle's, which opened in 2022.
In 2021, Porter parted ways with Royal Blue and relaunched as Berkley's Market, affording more freedom to fine-tune their neighborhood focus.
Knox Street has thousands of residents in the area, as well as shoppers, diners, and visitors from the Katy Trail who are already dropping in before and after using the trail for fueling. That means breakfast tacos and coffee for orders on the run, plus essential and gourmet groceries, and prepared foods.
They've kept the location's original brick walls and open rafters - the center was built in 1930 - and opened up the patio, which the gardening store had closed in as a display area for outdoor furniture.
"Knox is such a buzzy street and I'm hoping we’re a real convenience for everybody in the neighborhood," Porter says.
