With the same brown awnings and familiar name, Mulberry’s is opening a new store along Piedmont Avenue. Unlike the original, Mulberry’s Market co-owners Chad Olcott and his wife, Laura Pochop, will not be establishing a new grocery store.

Instead, sofas and ottomans will surround a fireplace, a back door will lead to a small garden, chandeliers with price tags will hang from the ceiling and big, red block letters with carnival lights reading “HOME” will be seen from the entry way.

The new Mulberry’s Home, which opens on Oct. 16, will be a home store, carrying furniture, a few design books and hopefully a seasonal garden section in the tight space behind the store.

“Laura and I had been thinking about the idea of opening a home store because it’s my passion,” Olcott said. “We just never found the right spot.”

Olcott and Pochop had hoped to fill the Piedmont niche of a small town shop when they first opened Mulberry’s Market in 2007. Now, seven years later, Olcott is trying to fill a new one.

“We did the grocery store because our passion was Piedmont, and we thought that that’s what it needed,” Olcott said. “But this store is about what I’m actually passionate about, which is home design.”

With a Peet’s, Starbucks, Gaylords and Piedmont Grocery, everything provided by Mulberry’s Market was already present on Piedmont Avenue.

“There’s plenty of grocery stores, there’s plenty of coffee shops, so the idea of just opening a Mulberry’s Market never would’ve worked,” Olcott said.

In the larger scheme of the Bay Area culture, Olcott believes that the new home store will open at a time when Oakland is rising.

“There was an article in the New York Times, huge cover of the Sunday, ‘Oakland is the new Brooklyn,’” Olcott said. “Oakland’s on the move. San Francisco’s unaffordable, so the artists, the chefs, they’re all moving over here to do their stuff. I think we’d like to ride that wave.”

Not only is it what the city needs, Olcott said, but the timing is right for him.

“Just when we became aware of this space, Laura was like, ‘I think it’s ready, I think Mulberry’s Market can do this without us there every day,’ and I think it’s true,” Olcott said.

Devoting his time to this new venture has, for the most part, taken him away from the market. Since he learned about Olcott’s plans for a new home store, Mulberry’s Market general manager Sal Viveros has taken on almost all of his responsibilities, as well as those of Pochop and Virginia Davis, the third co-owner of Mulberry’s Market.

“It’s been a little crazy, a little hard getting used to it,” Viveros said.

Despite how much has changed, Olcott says it has been a smooth transition. Viveros used to be the general manager at Specialty’s Cafe and Bakery in San Francisco, where he held many of the same duties he does now.

While Viveros is returning to what he used to do, preparing Mulberry’s Home has been a new experience for Olcott.

“It’s really just me right now,” Olcott said. “I was at the New York Gift Show for five days, I was in Las Vegas at a furniture show for three days, I was in LA for their gift mart for two days and I was back at an antique store in September back in Massachusetts.”

Despite the commitment, he still has the original Mulberry’s Market on his mind and holds it dear to him.

“I try to be there at least once a day for an hour or two just to make sure it’s all still going well because I do not want to turn my back on that,” Olcott said. “That’s our bread and butter. That’s our first love. That is my community.”