The “Kroger Bar,” affectionately known as “KroBar” to many who frequent the watering hole inside of the Wilmington Island Kroger, is closing sometime in early 2025. A store manager at the location spoke to Connect Savannah on Wednesday morning about the rumors spreading on social media that the bar (beer and wine only) was closing, or else already closed.

“The Vice President of Operations (for The Kroger Company’s Atlanta Division) came in, this was (Tuesday) when they told all of us (employees) that the beer and wine bar was closing unfortunately,” said the Wilmington Island store’s shift manager on Wednesday. “We have conference rooms and offices upstairs, but no elevator. So, they are doing some remodeling to put offices on the other side of Starbucks (within Kroger), and the inventory currently there will need to be staged where the bar is now.”

“But this won’t be until 2025. Customers can still come to shop. They can still come up to the bar too, for at least a few more months, maybe even longer than that.”

A unique operation, the Wilmington Island store (495 Johnny Mercer Blvd.) is the only “Kroger Marketplace” store in the Savannah area with a beer and wine bar located inside. It’s not the only one of its kind, however. There are more than 167 Kroger retail stores in Georgia and more than 2,000 in the country.

The “Marketplace” concept was designed to be a “hang-out” spot in Kroger stores, something executives in Cincinnati no doubt hoped would attract customers to return to buying groceries in the shopping aisles, rather than getting them through online ordering or grocery delivery services like “InstaCart.”

There are approximately 100 “Marketplace” Kroger stores in the country, and in states where consuming alcohol on-site is allowed (like Georgia), the Marketplace locations include the bar feature. Multiple “KroBars” are seemingly thriving in north Georgia, including several Atlanta locations and a Cartersville store that routinely has live music or other forms of entertainment to pair with draft brews, specialty beers from the cooler, and a large selection of wines to choose from.

Customers in states where consumption is not allowed on site can find freshly made deli sandwiches or gourmet sushi available for purchase to serve the same purpose as the stores with bars. The manager at the Wilmington Island Kroger Marketplace store said the store will not close even once the remodel project begins early in 2025.

This article appears in Connect Savannah I July 2024.