Rosette Market brings a neighborhood grocery to Corktown's Perennial building

A neighborhood grocery store has opened on the ground floor of the Perennial Corktown apartments at 1611 Michigan Avenue, filling a retail slot the developer had built the project around.

The building, a seven story complex with 188 apartments and seven townhomes, opened in late 2023 with more than 12,000 square feet of ground floor retail. The developers, Oxford Capital Group, Hunter Pasteur, and The Forbes Company, had named a full service grocery as the building's first confirmed tenant from the early plans, a roughly 2,000 square foot market meant to anchor the corner. That space is now Rosette Market plus Cafe.

Rosette comes from the team behind Kitab Cafe, the coffee house and bookstore that started in Hamtramck and added a Midtown location. The Corktown market is their next step into groceries, run by Ahmed Alwhysee, who founded Kitab with his wife Asma Almulaiki, alongside partner Hadwan Hadwan.

The store stocks what a conventional grocery would, from produce and canned goods to ice cream and toiletries, and leans on local and specialty brands. The cafe side carries fresh bread and pastries from Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, with sourdough and baguettes sliced to order, plus a deli, coffee, and a small seating area. The owners have said the market will employ around 15 people.

The pitch is access. Detroit has long been short on full service grocers, and a market inside an apartment building gives residents and the surrounding Corktown blocks a place to shop without a car trip. "My biggest thing is we're filling a void," Hadwan told BridgeDetroit. "There's a huge void in this area." Alwhysee has framed the hours the same way, as a spot people can reach after work.

The market is open 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Rosette Market plus Cafe, 1611 Michigan Avenue, Suite 200, Detroit.