Drive Beechmont Avenue past the Kroger and the AMC marquee and it still looks like the same corridor it's been since the Lindner brothers built Beechmont Mall in 1969. Same six lanes of traffic, same low glass storefronts, same Anderson Towne Center sign out front. But in the space of ten months, two companies picked this exact stretch of pavement to do something they had never done anywhere else in the market they were entering. One brought its first Ohio location, period, to a strip mall next to a grocery store. The other skipped past every other Cincinnati suburb to open its second area location a few doors down.
That's not a coincidence you notice from one visit. It's a pattern you notice from two, and Anderson Township residents have now had both without anyone connecting them out loud.
The Salad Chain That Skipped the Rest of Ohio
Crisp & Green opened at Anderson Towne Center on October 9, 2025, and the detail that matters isn't the salads and grain bowls, it's the geography. The chain was founded in downtown Wayzata, Minnesota, in 2016 and has grown to nearly 50 locations across 16 states. When it finally crossed into Ohio, it didn't land in Columbus, Cleveland, or one of Cincinnati's denser urban neighborhoods. It landed at 7414 Beechmont Avenue, inside a shopping center anchored by a grocery store and a movie theater.
For a fast-casual chain sizing up an entire state for the first time, that's a specific bet: that a suburban township corridor with heavy daily traffic counts is a safer first test than a trendier zip code.
The Bakery That Skipped the Rest of Cincinnati
Ten months later, on August 7, 2026, Tous les Jours held its grand opening on Beechmont Avenue. This wasn't the chain's first Ohio move. That already happened in Mason. This was the second Greater Cincinnati location, and the company had the entire region to choose from for that second bet. It chose Anderson Township.
The new bakery runs about 4,000 square feet and seats 96, built around a French-Korean pastry program: breads, cakes, espresso drinks, and the chain's signature Cloud Cakes. It's locally owned and operated, which means someone put real capital behind the idea that Anderson's Beechmont corridor could support a second regional debut in under a year.
Here's the side-by-side that makes the pattern legible:
| Crisp & Green | Tous les Jours | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | Oct. 9, 2025 | Aug. 7, 2026 |
| What it represents | First Ohio location | Second Greater Cincinnati location |
| Prior footprint | ~50 locations, 16 states | First Cincinnati-area store in Mason |
| Location | Anderson Towne Center, 7414 Beechmont Ave | Beechmont Avenue |
Two different companies, two different products, two different reasons for expanding. Same street, ten months apart.
What the Leasing Paperwork Already Says
You don't have to guess at why. Commercial real estate flyers for Beechmont Avenue storefronts describe the corridor in language that reads almost like a forecast: space available to "join Anderson's explosive growth" in a "super regional trade area," with easy access to Interstate 275 and a signalized intersection carrying heavy daily volume. That's marketing copy, written to lease empty suites, not a market study. But two chains made moves in the direction it points, one after the other, and that's the part a flyer can't manufacture.
A township corridor built around a 1969 mall doesn't usually get first crack at a company's statewide debut. Anderson did.
The Corridor Never Actually Cleared Out to Make Room
What makes this more interesting than a simple "new restaurants opened" story is that neither arrival replaced anything. Anderson Towne Center has spent the last decade adding retail eras on top of each other rather than swapping one out for the next.
The Kmart that anchored the north end of the property closed in 2014. Instead of sitting vacant, that footprint became an AMC Theatres multiplex and a Crunch Fitness location in 2019, the same year Sky Zone trampoline park and Bar Louie moved in and Macy's expanded with its discount Backstage division. Kroger built one of its largest stores anywhere at the center's south end. None of that went away when Crisp & Green or Tous les Jours arrived. It just got a new layer stacked on top.
That's the part worth sitting with if you already live here. The corridor isn't churning through restaurants the way some commercial strips do, where one operator closes and another takes the same address six months later. Beechmont Avenue keeps adding, not replacing, and the two most recent additions both happen to be the kind of chains that treat a location as a statement about the whole market, not just the block.
What a Weeknight Errand Loop Looks Like Now
If you're running the usual Anderson Towne Center circuit this fall, the stops have quietly multiplied. Groceries at Kroger. A workout at Crunch Fitness. A movie at the AMC. Now you can add a bowl at Crisp & Green on the way in and a pastry from Tous les Jours on the way out, in the same parking lot, without moving the car.
For a sit-down dinner instead of fast-casual, Anderson Tap House on Beechmont Avenue still runs its full food menu, 30 beers on tap, and a stage for local musicians most weekends, plus a patio if the weather holds into October. A few minutes off the main strip, Clough Crossings has been serving the township out of the former Clough Pike School building since 1997, with Chef Pedro Rangal now running a menu of steaks, seafood, and seasonal dishes inside a building most longtime residents remember as something else entirely before it was a restaurant.
None of that is new information to anyone who already eats around here. What's new is that the corridor now has a fast-casual and bakery layer sitting on top of the sit-down layer that was already there, and both of the newest additions arrived as a company's first or second move into an entire market.
Why This Is Worth Noticing Now
Retail chains don't usually explain their site selection to the public, so residents rarely get to see the reasoning behind a new storefront. But when two unrelated companies make the same unusual bet inside a single year, on the same half-mile of the same road, the reasoning becomes visible whether anyone announces it or not. Anderson Township's Beechmont corridor is functioning less like a typical suburban strip and more like a testing ground for the entire Greater Cincinnati market, and residents are the ones getting first access to whatever comes through next.
If you've watched Beechmont Avenue for years and assumed it had settled into its final shape around the Kroger and the AMC, this is the signal that it hasn't. Two firsts in ten months isn't a trend line yet, but it's not nothing either.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values along the corridor, or you're weighing a move within Anderson Township and want a read on how these kinds of retail shifts tend to play out over time, Close to Home Consultants knows this stretch of Beechmont as well as anyone. Reach out anytime to talk through what you're seeing, or get your home valuation to see where your own address fits into the picture.
