Office workers in downtown Tampa will soon have a new option for lunches and dinners to go.
Fitlife Foods, which sells low-calorie, low-sodium prepared meals, will open in a 500-square-foot space in the Bank of AmericaPlaza on Jan. 12, Founder David Osterweilsaid.
Brian Bern, a senior director with Franklin Street, represented Fitlife Foods in the transaction. Erica Waltermire, a sales associate with CBRE Group Inc., represented the landlord.
Osterweil declined to disclose construction costs for the location. He said it will have four employees to start.
Downtown Tampa has been a challenging environment for retailers in recent years, though that could start to change soon, as the base of office workers and residents continues to grow. Osterweil said he is catering specifically to office workers, and will be open Monday through Friday until 7 p.m.
Though the location wasn’t driven by ongoing revitalization efforts, Osterweil said he is a proponent of downtown Tampa as a fourth-generation native.
“I’m a huge advocate for the city of Tampa‘s growth and anything we can do in our small area to make it more dynamic,” he said.
It’s the seventh Bay region location for Fitlife Foods. The company was founded in Tampa in 2011, and Osterweil said he started getting requests for a downtown location shortly after the first store opened. Customers in outlying areas have been asking for a Fitlife downtown that they could visit during work hours, he said.
“A lot of people in the downtown market want something delicious, something cravable and something that’s going to do something for them beyond fill them up,” he said.
