Two openings happened in Plymouth this year that had nothing to do with each other and everything to do with each other. One was a 75-acre redevelopment anchored by a regional grocery chain. The other was a single guy buying the neighborhood tavern down the road. Both landed in March. Neither borrowed a page from the other's playbook. That's the story worth telling, because it says something about how this city eats now that a simple "look what's new" roundup would miss: Plymouth didn't get bigger or more local this year. It got both, at the same time, in different corners of town.
The Big Bet: Coborn's Market & Table At The Boulevard
If you've driven past the old Prudential campus near I-494 and Bass Lake Road lately, you've watched it become something else entirely. The site is now home to The Boulevard, a mixed-use redevelopment from Roers Cos. and Scannell Properties that will eventually bring up to 800 housing units, a business campus, and a park to that stretch of Plymouth. The first major tenant opened its doors on March 12: Coborn's Market & Table, a flagship grocery concept from the St. Cloud-based chain that's built around the idea that a grocery run and a night out don't have to be two separate errands.
Inside, the store pairs a full produce, meat, and bakery lineup with a food hall built by two names that matter here. The Buttered Tin, known for scratch-made breakfasts and lunches, is run by Alicia Hinze, a former champion on Food Network's "Cupcake Wars." This is her third location, joining spots in northeast Minneapolis and St. Paul, and it's counter service with food brought to your table rather than a full sit-down setup. Alongside it sits The Global Table, three fast-casual concepts from Minneapolis chef David Fhima: Basta Pasta, Abuela's Mexican Kitchen, and Brother's Burgers, all under one roof with a shared performance stage and a small playground built into the space.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. A grocery store with a stage and a playground isn't just selling groceries. It's betting that Plymouth families will treat the store itself as a destination, not just a stop.
The Small Bet: Rock Elm Revival
Across town on County Road 24 East, a different kind of investment was happening at the same time. Rock Elm Tavern, a neighborhood fixture for about a decade, had a new owner as of fall 2025: Randy Ehlers, a Plymouth resident who officially relaunched the space as Rock Elm Revival on March 1, 2026, just eleven days before Coborn's opened.
Ehlers didn't build a food hall. He built a smoker.
"We smoke it overnight, we pull it out each morning and whatever we don't use at the end of the night gets tossed," Ehlers said. "We're only serving fresh barbecue."
The new menu includes the Revival Shrimp appetizer tossed in a dynamite sauce, the Vat 17 Burger topped with white cheddar, arugula, and candied bacon, and a Pitmaster Full Smoke plate with brisket, pulled pork, hot link, gouda hash browns, and coleslaw. Ehlers also converted a space that used to house golf simulators into what he calls "The Revival Room," a dedicated area for private events and live music. Sixty days after the relaunch, he described it as exactly the outcome he'd been chasing.
If you're making an afternoon of it, Rock Elm Revival sits close enough to Honey & Mackie's, the scoop shop on the same stretch known for its ice cream and hand-cut fries, that the two make an easy pairing without needing to move your car.
What The Same Month Tells You
Here's the comparison stripped down:
| Coborn's Market & Table | Rock Elm Revival | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | March 12, 2026 | March 1, 2026 |
| Backing | Regional grocery chain, part of an 800-unit mixed-use redevelopment | Single local owner, existing building |
| Signature food | Three chef-driven fast-casual concepts plus a bakery | House-smoked barbecue, scratch tavern menu |
| What it adds to daily life | A destination built around groceries, with a stage and playground | A neighborhood bar with a dedicated live-music room |
Neither of these openings is trying to be the other. Coborn's is scale, outside investment, and a food hall model that treats a grocery trip as an event. Rock Elm Revival is one Plymouth resident doubling down on a single building he already knew. Both are genuine additions to how people in this city spend a weeknight or a Sunday, and they happened close enough together that residents got two very different upgrades without waiting years between them.
The Hilde Did The Same Split This Summer
The pattern shows up again if you look at how Plymouth's public gathering space handled 2026. The Hilde Performance Center has run Music in Plymouth for decades as a free community concert, and this year's edition on July 8 featuring the Minnesota Orchestra marked the tradition's 54th year. That's the free, everybody's-invited side of the ledger, and it's still very much intact. The city's Hilde Nights series ran again this summer too, a free monthly concert series with food trucks and lawn seating that anyone can walk into without buying a ticket.
But this year the Hilde also added something it hadn't done before: Hilde Amplified, a two-night ticketed concert series that put national touring acts on the same stage that usually hosts free community shows. It's the same venue, the same lawn, doing two different jobs depending on the weekend.
That's the throughline across Plymouth's 2026 calendar. The Boulevard didn't replace Rock Elm Tavern's role in the neighborhood, and Hilde Amplified didn't replace Hilde Nights. The city added a bigger version of itself without shrinking the smaller version that was already working.
Where This Leaves You This Fall
If you haven't been out to either end of this split, fall is a reasonable time to close the gap. The Plymouth Farmers Market runs Wednesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. at Parkers Lake Playfield through the end of September, which is your last easy chance this year to grab something local before the season turns. If you want a preview of what a Plymouth weekend can look like, Rock Elm Revival's Sunday brunch and Coborn's food hall are about as different from each other as two lunch options in the same city can get, and that's exactly the point.
None of this is a reason to move here. If you already live in Plymouth, you already know the streets, the schools, and the traffic patterns that make this place what it is. What's changed is what's available to you on an ordinary Tuesday night, and it changed in two directions at once.
If you're weighing what a Plymouth home is actually worth given everything opening around it, or you're a Plymouth homeowner curious how the Boulevard project might shape values near I-494 and Bass Lake Road over time, that's a conversation Jesse James Forsell has with clients across this corridor every week. Reach out anytime to schedule a free consultation and talk through what's happening in your specific pocket of the city.
