Here's how Royal Oak's Holiday Market is celebrating its 70th birthday

For Holiday Market, the hip and popular Royal Oak market on Main Street, it's been a decades-long ride growing from a small specialty store and butcher shop to a full-service grocery and much more.

An independent grocery store, Holiday Market is now celebrating seven decades in business.

At its current location, the store spans nearly a city block at 1203 S. Main Street in Royal Oak.

Tom Violante, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 95 , started Holiday Market in 1954 with Janet, his wife of 70 years.

On Friday and Saturday, the market is having a 70th birthday celebration throughout the store. For the celebration, the store will have demonstrations, and special deals on a variety of items including its chef-prepared meals, Smokehouse barbecue sauces and items, shish kebabs, New York Strip steak, according to its website.

There will be raffles of $70 Holiday Market gift cards with a $70 value, gift basket, Detroit Lions tickets, big screen TV and other items.

At 9 a.m. Saturday, the market will have a special release of a birthday bottle of Four Roses single barrel bourbon.

How it started

The late Violante grew up in the grocery industry. His dad had a small market on John R and McNichols in Detroit, where Violante and other family members worked. Later, in 1954 Violate and his wife Janet opened the store as a small neighborhood butcher shop and specialty store.

Holiday Market's name came from Violante's having seen the movie "Roman Holiday," Janet Violante told the Royal Oak Daily Tribune in 2004 for the market's 50th anniversary. Its name also refers to the market being open seven days a week, one of the first to do so, as well as its hours.

More: Founder of Holiday Market, Thomas Violante, dies at 95

Tom Violante and Gina Mangold, Violante’s children, now have run the store for years, but often the late, senior Violante would be there several days a week.

Over the years the beloved and hip neighborhood market expanded from that one small grocery store to a facility that's more than 60,000 square feet. The store occupies nearly an entire city block on the south end of Royal Oak. There's a catering arm, bakery and smokehouse. Holiday Market is also known for its wide selection of prepared meals, cheese, meat and seafood offerings and for carrying many local and Michigan-made items.

In 2008, the store opened Mirepoix (meer-pwah) cooking school. Each month Mirepoix offers a selection of hands-on cooking classes from learning to make fresh pasta and ethnic cuisines to private and corporate team-building events.

There’s also a Holiday Market Select store on Maple in Birmingham. Holiday Market employs nearly 300 people. For more information on the market’s birthday celebration, visit holiday-market.com .

Contact Detroit Free Press food writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news to: sselasky@freepress.com. Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Here's how Royal Oak's Holiday Market is celebrating its 70th birthday