LeeAnn Zubay’ opened This is The Retail Shop at 212 First Ave. SW as a 'brick-and-mortar' space to sell high-end cheese and foods plus “fun tabletop wares and vintage finds."
Her passion has always been connecting people with specialty cheeses and other ingredients that they might not otherwise have known about. She started with a spot in the Rochester Produce grocery, which led to her opening the Culinary Market shop in downtown Rochester.
Zubay followed that with Zzest, which started out as a market with a small lunch counter before it involved into a restaurant. In the wake of Zzest becoming
Hot Chip, she added a small food market to Lettuce Unite in the downtown skyway food court.
When Lettuce Unite closed, “I started thinking how much I wanted this stuff back. Then I wondered if others wanted it back, too,” Zubay said.