Market Square Expands
Exterior rendering of Market Square on Woodward.
Local grocer keeps growing company a family affair
Left to right: Johnny Karmo Jr., Johhny Karmo Sr., and Laith Karmo.
By Paul Natinsky
Market Square owner Johnny Karmo says he has known Papa Joe’s owners Tony and Joe Curtis for years and knew they had been looking to sell the upscale Birmingham grocery store. Early this year, a Realtor contacted Karmo’s son to see if they would be interested in purchasing the store after previous deals fell through.
The timing was fortuitous. Two of Karmo’s four children, both of whom had pursued careers outside the family business, were looking for a way to return.
Karmo opened the original Market Square on 14 Mile Road in Birmingham in 1988, followed by a West Bloomfield location in 1995. He purchased Market Fresh at 13 Mile and Southfield roads in 2005 and acquired Papa Joe’s in January 2026.
His two sons were already working in the business, while his two daughters were raising families after pursuing careers in other fields. Both were looking for the flexibility to balance work and family life.
“Working for your dad, no one is going to fire you,” quipped Karmo. “I gave them all positions, I gave them all duties. They are working at all four stores.”
Karmo is completely renovating Papa Joe’s and turning it into a Market Square. “We’re completely gutting the entire store. We’re throwing out all of the old equipment and bringing in all new equipment,” he said.
The goal is to create a state-of-the-art store with the feel of upscale markets in New York and California.
“It’s going to be as nice as some of the other independents you see around town,” Karmo said. Hot food and salad bars will be a part of this updated mix. Soups, pot pies, rotisserie chickens, and other items are made on premise or at the company’s commissary. The store will be rebranded as a Market Square.
Communication Breakdown
Karmo said disagreements between Papa Joe’s owners contributed to the store’s decline.
“They couldn’t get together, they argued about everything,” he said.
According to Karmo, the owners had not invested in the store since it opened in 1987. Much of the equipment was more than 30 years old, he said, and had long outlived its useful life.
After the equipment purge, Karmo and company turned their attention to the store’s layout. “It was a mess. The layout was kind of a goofy layout, you had to zig-zag through the store to shop it,” said Karmo.
The store also lacked the inventory needed to meet the expectations of its clientele and had fallen behind trends shaping high-end grocery stores across the country, Karmo said.
“They were still a gourmet market, they had a great produce department, a great meat and seafood area—they had some nice things going for them. At the same time, they had a lot of things that were not up to date.”
In addition to the Birmingham store, Papa Joe’s has a location in Rochester Hills and inside several area hospitals. Those locations remain under original ownership.
Born and Raised
Karmo grew up in the grocery business. His father had a store at Kercheval and St. Jean, near the Detroit-Grosse Pointe border, that he opened in 1960. As a 10-year-old, Karmo would catch a bus after school to go to work at the store. He did everything, from cutting meat to ringing up customers.
When Karmo was in his early 20s he took over his father’s businesses, buying the stores with his brother. After remodeling the original store, they opened another Detroit store called Liquor & Company.
After his partner in the business decided on a move to California, Karmo made the move to Birmingham and opened the original Market Square, selling both Detroit locations in the process.
His oldest son, Johnny Jr., bypassed college and went straight to work in the stores with his father. When Karmo expanded to West Bloomfield, Johnny Jr. took that store over.
His other son, Laith, attended art school and subsequently worked as an art instructor at Wayne State University. He came back to work with Johnny partly because the grocery business paid better than teaching and Laith was preparing to get married and have a family. Laith ended up as CEO for the company.
”He does everything,” says Karmo, ranging from day-to-day operations to management hiring to store design.
Karmo’s two daughters have also entered the picture. The oldest, Danielle, is a graduate of Chicago Art Institute who worked in New York for several years in the fashion industry. Tired of the New York City lifestyle, she came back to Michigan and worked as the lead leather designer for Shinola in Detroit. She has since married a restauranteur who will develop projects with Market Square.
His youngest daughter, Natalie, graduated from Wayne State’s medical school and spent four or five years as a pathologist at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. She then came home to Detroit and worked at Henry Ford Hospital in pathology. After marrying and starting a family, she felt she needed a job with more flexibility and returned to the family business.
Serendipity
Karmo says a two- or three-year span found all of his children returning to the family business for their own reasons.
Danielle handles the company’s marketing endeavors, while Natalie handles financials and banking.
The newest store is in the children’s names and by early 2028, the other three stores will be transitioned to them. Karmo is 76 and would like to spend more time at his property in Naples, Florida, where he likes to golf. He still plans to be involved, but on his terms. He says his kids need the contacts he has made over a lifetime in the Detroit-area grocery industry.
“I gotta let them know who to call and how not do some things that I’ve done so they don’t make the same mistakes I have,” he said.
As Market Square’s founder prepares to spend more time on the fairways of Florida, his family prepares to put their energies into Johnny’s entrepreneurial entities.