El Rey Carnaceria is now El Rey Supermercado.
The Nunez family has moved their butcher shop into more spacious quarters across Waughtown Street, in the process transforming from a butcher shop with a few groceries into a full supermarket with a full butcher shop, bakery, tortilleria and taqueria.
Juan and Noelia Nunez started El Rey Carniceria in October 2009 at 2946 Waughtown. Years ago, they bought out a partner (who now runs an El Rey in Greensboro). And they have been wanting to expand for a while now.
The old location "was way too small," Noelia said.
"Even the parking lot was too small," said her 25-year-old daughter Nataly, who helps manage the store. "It was just crazy. Days when we were getting merchandise, people couldn't even walk through the aisles."
Juan started out as a butcher, and that was the focus of the original business, but they gradually added more groceries. They even had some fresh baked goods - but they had to be baked off-site because the building was so small.
And what was missing completely was a taqueria, a popular feature of many Hispanic markets, where customers can grab a hot meal while they're doing their shopping.
El Rey Supermercado at 3015-A Waughtown St. in Southeast Plaza alleviated all their space problems. Even though it takes up just about half of the former Compare Foods location, at 14,000 square feet, it's easily triple the space El Rey had down the street.
They now have several checkout lines in front. The produce area is compact but is big enough to offer bulk selections of popular chiles and dried beans, in addition to fresh chiles, cactus, tomatillos and other vegetables and fruits.
The new space allows El Rey to carry more items from more Latin American countries, Nataly said.
There's a large frozen food section now, as well as aisles and aisles of cookies, hot sauce, spices and other nonperishable goods.
Even the butcher shop is larger. Juan said he added 12 feet of refrigerated cases in the new store. The expanded seafood area now offers snow crab legs, as well as octopus, head-on shrimp, and whole catfish and snapper.
The meat case has a wide variety of beef, goat, pork and chicken. There's goat meat for stewing, beef short ribs and flank steak, chicken necks and feet, pig's feet, cow stomach for menudo, and much more.
The shop also sells house-made chorizo, and a lot of beef, chicken and pork cut and marinated for such fare as fajitas, carnitas, and al pastor tacos.
All the baked goods are made fresh on site. If you look through the display case, you can see head baker Joel Morales at work, turning out elephant ears, bolillos, donuts and more.
There also are flans, choco flans, tres leches cakes, mocha cakes and more. Custom cakes for special occasions can be pre-ordered. The Nunez's 17-ywear-old son Gabriel does cake decorating.
(The Nunez's other children, 15-year-old Eduardo and 23-year-old Jacqueline, also help out in the store part time.)
The brand-new tortilla machine will be cranking out fresh tortillas daily.
The taqueria has seating for 48 people. A steam table will always have rice and beans, but will feature a rotating selection of such entrees and barbacoa, ribs, chicharrones in salsa verde, and more. The taqueria also offers tacos with freshly made red and green salsas.
There are house-made agua frescas, too.
Along a wall in the dining area is a large mural that depicts the Nunez's native Mexican coastal state of Nayarit and city of Ixtlan.
336-727-7394
@mhastingswsj
El Rey Supermercado
Address: 3015-A Waughtown St., Winston-Salem, N.C. 27107
Phone: 336-788-8699
Hours: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Instagram: @el.rey.supermercado
Facebook: @ElReyWS
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