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    Piada Announces Grove City Location, Partners with Local Community Organization

    After establishing several markets across the Midwest and in Texas, Columbus-based Piada will open its 44th store in Grove City, off Stringtown Road. It’s a move they’ve planned since opening their fourth restaurant, and it’s part of Piada’s grander business plan to build out the markets they’ve broken into over the last seven years.

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    “We’ve always had it earmarked,” said Matt Eisenacher, VP of Marketing & Brand Development for Piada. “It is a place we’ve wanted to go, we just haven’t found a site that we’ve been happy with. We obviously wanted to be in the Stringtown Road area where a lot of people are … That road is the heart of Grove City.”

    While not directly on Stringtown Road, they might as well be. Their brand new building sits at 4139 Buckeye Parkway, at the intersection of that street and Stringtown. It offers 2,400 square feet of space, enough for a combined 60 seats inside and on the patio.

    It’ll offer the same menu of Italian street food, including piadas, salads and pastas. Parts of the menu will change seasonally. For example, this summer they’re offering the farmers market salad, a summer avocado piada, a roasted corn salad and blackberry hibiscus lemonade.

    The familiar build-your-own menu has permeated cities throughout Ohio, the Midwest and the Southern U.S. Outside Columbus, it’ll be found in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton. It’s in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and Detroit. Houston and Dallas had their first Piadas at the end of 2015. As Piada expands it’ll continue filling out those municipalities, with seven more stores set to open by the new year, including one in Columbus (to be announced). Eisenacher said they don’t have plans to enter any brand new markets any time soon.

    “We are looking at other sites in Columbus. In fact we have a couple that we like a lot,” Eisenacher said, without disclosing exact locations.

    Grove City’s Piada will likely celebrate a grand opening in January 2018. Per Piada tradition they’ll host three or four days of soft openings, where guests will be one of roughly 1,000 pre-opening VIPs.

    They’ll partner with a local charitable organization as well. Grove City’s Buddy Ball, a program that removes barriers that keep children and adults with mental and physical disabilities off the baseball field, will receive 100 percent of the VIP event proceeds, a sum that usually amounts to several thousand dollars.

    “It is about making new friends, building self-esteem and treating everyone equally,” Eisenacher said after attending one of the games.

    Buddy Ball board member Wayne Kintz said it’s relationships like these that have allowed the program to grow since its kick-off in May 2016. They’ve partnered with at least eight other businesses and community organizations that support their core mission “to give children and adults, with unique needs, the opportunity to make their dream of playing baseball come true.”

    “It goes without saying how excited our board members and core team volunteers were to learn about this wonderful collaborative opportunity,” Kintz said. “We look forward to welcoming the Piada family into our community over the coming months!”

    For more information on Piada, visit mypiada.com/grove-city. To learn more about Buddy Ball, visit gcdreamfield.com.

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    Lauren Sega
    Lauren Segahttps://columbusunderground.com
    Lauren Sega is the former Associate Editor for Columbus Underground and a current freelance writer for CU. She covers political issues on the local and state levels, as well as local food and restaurant news. She grew up near Cleveland, graduated from Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism, and loves running, traveling and hiking.
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