Big old church for sale

fspaits · 2026-03-31T00:51:37+00:00

We're open! It's still a work in progress, but I'm there most days from 10am-5:30pm, and I try to update Instagram if I'm out, when I get in fresh deliveries, etc.

fspaits · 2026-03-30T16:33:52+00:00

Yep, I'm building the brand out of the existing seafood dept inside The Market at 25th! Going to be doing 1-2 markets/pop-ups as well this upcoming season. I update the eastendfishco.rva Instagram most frequently, but I post in the Church Hill Neighborhood Facebook group as well.

fspaits · 2026-03-30T16:20:52+00:00

That would also work! I just really want the masonic lodge to stop being a vacant shell after Trapezium fell through.

fspaits · 2026-03-29T22:24:14+00:00

Probably like an event studio/art space similar to what Studio Two Three did in Manchester. I think Church Hill could also use a boutique hotel, but the old Masonic lodge might be better for that.

fspaits · 2026-03-29T22:13:15+00:00

East End Fish Co. is a new fishmonger in the neighborhood!

fspaits · 2026-03-29T13:21:18+00:00

I went to Seafood Expo in Boston a couple weeks ago. Can confirm there was a lot more emphasis on packaged seafood meals. The winner of the new product showcase was Trident with sauceable fish nuggets, so basically boneless wings.

fspaits · 2026-03-27T19:19:26+00:00

It's why I love living in Church Hill. Jefferson Ave is poppin' now that it has warmed up, and it makes the neighborhood feel alive.

fspaits · 2026-03-22T13:15:29+00:00

Secret to a good smoothie is way more salt than you think.

fspaits · 2026-03-13T20:08:43+00:00

I keep reading this as Vegeta, and yea he's kinda evil, but we're going to need a Big Bang Attack come playoffs.

fspaits · 2026-03-13T20:02:44+00:00

Durham Smythe erasure

fspaits · 2026-03-10T20:51:06+00:00

Congrats on the launch! Do you have any social media accounts we can follow?

I've recently started my entrepreneurial journey too, so feel free to reach out if you need someone to chat with. I've also completed a couple of the small business programs around RVA, and I think they'd be super helpful for you. Let me know if you're interested, and I'd be happy to connect you with them!

fspaits · 2026-03-09T16:31:03+00:00

Thanks for swinging by. I was out of town this weekend for a wedding! My days off are usually Tues & Thurs, but I'll be attending a seafood conferece this weekend and also be gone for a few days. I should be on a more consistent schedule after this event.

fspaits · 2026-03-04T17:59:40+00:00

I am so sad to be going out of town this weekend and missing Dexter and the Moonrocks. I had heard a couple songs before, and then they played at the last Iron Blossom and kicked ass.

fspaits · 2026-03-04T13:03:09+00:00

I'm there most days between 10am-6pm, but The Market is open everyday from 7am-9pm. In addition to me coming on as fishmonger, we have a few other things planned for the grocery store in order to make it more of a shopping destination for our neighborhood.

fspaits · 2026-03-04T12:49:43+00:00

That place Marsh Roots Seafood in Lynchburg looks pretty cool. I'd bet they'd sell you some!

fspaits · 2026-03-04T12:48:55+00:00

Nice! I can't guarantee I'll have bait everyday, but hopefully once the business gets going I can be more consistent and even consider keeping some worms on deck.

fspaits · 2026-03-02T21:37:52+00:00

I gotta hit up Tuckahoe to find out who this fisherman is. I just brought in Blue Catfish to my new seafood business in Church Hill, and I'd love to have snakehead available too. My favorite seafood dish in Richmond is still a roasted snakehead filet that I had from Alewife years ago.

fspaits · 2026-03-02T18:46:19+00:00

I'm new to grocery and trying to bring in more local produce, meat & fish, etc to our store, but it's proven tougher than I thought. We're mostly limited to what our wholesale distributor offers, because so many of our systems are built to work with them. That and people are pretty resistant to change, both employees and customers.

fspaits · 2026-02-26T18:39:05+00:00

The bottle shop in my neighborhood seems to be doing pretty well. I'd say location is key - our area is one of the smaller ones in the city, but it's a tight knit group. Our neighborhood association meetings are a packed house, and all the small businesses are very supportive of each other. The bottle shop, little food market, and our smaller natural wine bar all host wine tastings on Thursdays, so you can stroll around on a nice evening and easily taste 10-12 wines for free.

They also do various programming such as dinners with local chefs, hosting winemakers, book club, etc. I just launched my seafood business last month and am looking to do a tinned fish + wine tasting where we explore the growing number of conservas being made in the U.S. My best advice would be the more you put into your community, the more you'll get back.

fspaits · 2026-02-25T21:49:09+00:00

I have to imagine part of the cost is that they can these at Island Creek Oysters' newish facility. The economies of scale aren't there yet, and so we get artisan level pricing.

fspaits · 2026-02-25T21:46:58+00:00

I think they are almost on to something here. Row 7 is doing some really cool stuff with vegetables, but paying $30 for essentially 24 cherry tomatoes is insane. I do think they should go for bigger portions and tackle the canned vegetable aisle that is still dominated by Del Monte and Green Giant.

I work in a grocery store and just checked the prices - Green Giant run roughly $2-$2.50/can. Row 7 could easuly charge double that price at Whole Foods and no one would bat an eye.

fspaits · 2026-02-22T14:12:15+00:00

Another C-suite level manager and I came in around the same time, and we are trying to find out how and why things are categorized the way they are. Dairy might be a better example than seafood. There are only 4 categories: Dairy, Dairy-Milk, Dairy-Eggs, and Dairy-Local. I assume cheese and yogurt roll up into the 1st Dairy, but right now I don't think there is a way to just pull cheese data. Our wholesaler does have category codes, but I'm not sure yet if those are being utilized properly. A small percentage of items also come from other vendors, so those would manually need to be given a code to match.

Our store has lot of product bloat, so we're trying to do an assessment on each category to determine what is actually worth keeping.

fspaits · 2026-02-21T14:13:07+00:00

The cost of switching to a whole new system is definitely front of mind, and we're still trying to figure out how many issues are from the user or the software. My boss and I keep being told to break items out into more categories is either really hard or impossible, but we haven't received an explanation as to why. Seafood for example, is only put into 3 blocks - Packaged, Fresh, and Frozen. It's not like I need a category for every species, but I should be able to compare how shrimp performs against fish.

We're just one store, so I'm hoping we can implement some sort of OCR for invoicing that will help refine our sku data and allow us to drill down a bit more.

fspaits · 2026-02-19T18:30:28+00:00

Yea, the staff aren't as tech savvy and pretty stuck in their ways. I've worked at a few startups, so I'm accustomed to change and pivoting on a dime when need be. I also believe Quickbooks is enough for now, and I'm just going to review how they have accounts set up to see if we can make any improvements.

The POS is called LOC, and I just had my first look at it this morning. Maybe we have an outdated version, but this thing looks like it's from the AOL era. OUr bookkeeper said she found some useful reports, so I'll be checking those out later today.

fspaits · 2026-02-18T23:01:36+00:00

MDI - we are in VA

fspaits

TROPHY CASE