Store Profile: Koppa’s Fulbeli Deli
I usually profile stores where you can buy stuff to decorate your house with. Allow me to deviate slightly today to write about a grocery store.
Koppa’s is a cozy little grocery store and deli located on Farwell Ave. in Milwaukee. It takes the folksiness of Trader Joe’s and kitsches it up a notch: TJ’s may have funny signs, Koppa’s throws some taxidermy at you while you’re shopping for coffee beans.
Did I mention the free Atari?
Space Invaders, Frogger, Pole Position… Koppa’s has them all. I think some people think it’s just an ironic set-up, but every time I went in there (Jem lived down the block for a year) I would play a game of Pitfall. Man, that game is hard. I think I was better at it when I was 5 than I am today.
Wisconsonites love their cheese — and journaling!
I like that Koppa’s said, “Yes, we know people are here to buy lunch meat, and maybe taxidermy would put some people off. But those aren’t the customers we want shopping here. So let’s make a coyote-Coors Light diorama on top of one of the coolers.”
Maybe you think it’s too kitsch, too quirky. And maybe you’re right. As adults, we wander into places like this and think, “Very funny.” But what I like about Koppa’s — and maybe it’s the Atari that does it — is it reminds me of one of those places I loved to go as a kid. Not a place like Showbiz Pizza or Toys R Us, but weirder places.
I loved to visit Blandford Nature Center because they had a live owl perched in a nook in the lobby. He just sat there. And the bookstore at Breton Village Mall, which had a cubby in the children’s section in the back with a little door that you could open, with stuffed animals inside. And then there was The Matterhorn, a Swiss-inspired restaurant in Standale with all manner of taxidermed elk on the walls. When I was 5 I think I preferred the Matterhorn to Showbiz, even.
Think of all the places you went to as a child that had secret spaces or cool stuff for you to look at. As soon as you got inside you flocked to some corner to see what had changed, or not changed. Koppa’s makes me feel that way as an adult. And very few places do.
Obviously a Coors light coyote diorama!