Harry & David opens at Centerra in Loveland

LOVELAND — Harry & David, best known for its direct-mail and online sales of gift-packaged foods, has opened a retail store in the Promenade Shops at Centerra in Loveland, and will host a grand opening Sept. 19.

In addition to the new store, Harry & David will run a food truck in the Fort Collins, Loveland and metro Denver areas Sept. 19-21, featuring recipes from the company’s executive chef, Tim Keller. The “Epicurean Express” trucks stops will be listed on Harry & David’s Facebook page.

The Medford, Ore.-based retailer, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary, specializes in fruit baskets, chocolates, baked goods and other confections as well as home-décor accessories. It also has begun to focus on epicurean offerings, specifically tapping products and merchants from the Pacific Northwest, the company’s home region.

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The Loveland-area store is located across from Bent Fork Grill in the Centerra shopping area, northeast of the intersection of Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34. The store’s official address is 5865 Sky Pond Drive, Suite G-168.

Bebe, a women’s apparel store, had occupied the space until July 2012. It had then briefly housed an Angels shoe and jewelry store and a seasonal calendar store until Centerra management divided the space in half, according to a spokeswoman for Donald Foster, general manager of the Promenade Shops at Centerra.

The 2,514-square-foot Harry & David store occupies part of that space, and the other half will be an Oakley retail outlet, selling the brand’s line of sunglasses and outdoor-sports apparel, the spokeswoman said Friday.

The interior of the Harry & David store, which had a “soft opening” on Aug. 28, features a wall made from reclaimed wood crates used to harvest the company’s pear orchards. At a gathering table, customers can sample several coffees featured daily and peruse books featuring ideas for decorating and entertaining.

“We’re excited to open this beautiful new store in the wonderful city of Loveland,” said Catherine McCabe, a Harry & David vice president in charge of its retail stores. “Loveland is a magnificent city with such great residents, and we’re thrilled to be reintroducing this location and to showcase the future of the Harry & David retail experience to local customers. The store will be led by Tom Ward, who has worked hard over the past year to connect with Loveland residents and develop a strong sense of community.”

The company is named for Harry and David Rosenberg, who took over the family orchard in the Rogue River Valley of southern Oregon in 1914 after the death of their father, Samuel Rosenberg, The brothers decided to specialize in Comice pears, a favorite of the grand hotels and restaurants of Europe, and renamed them “Royal Riviera” to set them apart from other varieties of the pear grown elsewhere. When that affluent export market vanished during the Great Depression, the brothers came up with the idea of selling their pears by mail, and the Harry & David mail-order business was founded in 1934.