A refined version of Monette’s Market is set to open today two doors down from its old location.

Monette’s Market had been in business since it was started in 1957 by current owner Nicole Monette’s grandfather, Francis Monette. The business was passed on to Monette’s parents, Ranee and the late Alan Monette, in 1982.

Ranee is still involved with the business as co-owner. Nicole Monette is the third generation to run Monette’s Market.

Monette grew up in the business and started working at the store when she was 14 years old. She had a wide variety of jobs through the years, including stocker, cashier, meat wrapper, sandwich maker and baker before taking over as manager 10 years ago.

THE NEW MONETTE’S MARKET at 393 Woodward Ave. in Kingsford. (Jim Paul/Daily News photo)

Monette’s Market was known for its customer service, fresh bakery and especially their fresh-cut meats, including their award-winning porketta.

When Monette’s Market shut down at the 375 Woodward Ave. location in September, staying closed was not the plan, Monette said.

“We were too small to be an actual grocery store anymore and too big to be a small market,” Monette said. “After the pandemic everything changed and with the new stores coming in, the Kwik Trips and ALDI, we just realized that we needed to downsize and focus on our specialty items.”

Keeping the neighborhood market feel was important to Monette. It was by luck that there was another building for sale right near the old location.

They purchased the new building in June and began work to convert it into the market. Walls were moved, electricity was rewired to handle several new coolers and more plumbing was installed.

Monette is working on some new concepts for the new location, including serving coffee, lattes and macchiatos to go with the baked goods.

Monette’s Market also will feature imported foods, soup mixes, canned tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, jam, crackers, all-natural potato chips, along with gift items such as T-shirts, tumblers and cups. They will carry Goshen Coffee from Illinois and Tapuatcha Kombucha from Wisconsin’s Door County.

A new item Monette is particularly excited to be offering is porketta butter — the spice blend used in their award-winning porketta infused into butter.

The new Monette’s Market will provide a meal prep service as well. “If you need a healthy meal that gives you all of the nutritional information so you can follow a diet, you can order those meals here and they will be made for you,” Monette explained.

But customers looking for their old Monette’s Market favorites need not worry — those are coming back.

“We are keeping our porketta, sausage, sub sandwiches, pizza, beef jerky, chili, spaghetti sauce and deli items,” Monette said. “We tried to keep everyone’s favorite items because we have a lot of people that come in every day for their stuff. We did not take away anything that was anybody’s favorite; we kept all those things.”

The bakery will feature bread, muffins, cookies, cinnamon rolls and brownies. The very popular Special K bars are back, too.

In addition to her mother, Ranee Monette, Monette is currently assisted by two other employees, both holdovers from the old store; the crew at Monette’s is all female. Monette describes the work at the store as a group effort, with everyone teaming up to handle the baking, meal prep, sausage and porketta making.

Along with the grand opening today, Monette’s Market had an open house Dec. 11, giving away free tote bags along with some other goodies and snacks. Nearly 100 people turned out, Monette said.

Monette’s Market is at 393 Woodward Ave. in Kingsford and will be open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.