Grocery Stores
Well, score one for the east and west coasts: California and the Northeast have much better grocery stores than Minneapolis. We've tried 5 or 6 of the major stores around here (mostly Cub Foods and Rainbow Foods) and have been left rather unimpressed. Our peeves are:
1. Narrow aisles. Which leads to the recurring feeling that someone else's shopping cart is in your way. Which can lead to shopper's rage, an ugly thing.
2. Lousy deli sections. They don't have much variety of either deli meats or prepared salads and sides. And they don't slice the deli meat for you -- it's sitting there pre-sliced. And it's not sliced very thin. I found this a little surprising because it's not like the deli sandwich is not a big thing out here -- I've already eaten at 3 or 4 very good sandwich shops during my lunch hour. But evidently Minneapolitans do not enjoy the luxury of the quality grocery store deli counter, and maybe this is an area in which folks on the coasts are just spoiled. Apparently, in order to get good, cut-to-order deli meat, you have to go to a fancy-schmancy store.
3. Mediocre meat section. Meat prices are, on average, the same or worse than they are in the Rhode Island, which I found off given that we are geographically closer to our nation's slaughterhouses. But my big peeve was the some meats are listed in price per pound -- as one would expect -- while others are listed in price per ounce. Which is just bizarre. I actually found myself mutiplying by 16 in my head just so I could compare prices on pork. Weird. B managed to find one Rainbow foods in Uptown that puts up signs noting which products are on sale, making it the best grocery store we've seen here.
4. General lack of aesthetics. Unfinished warehouse-type ceilings, extremely no-frills look. This is not such a big deal, but it makes me feel like I'm shopping in a Costco or Sam's Club rather than a major grocery store chain. On the other hand, the high-end stores are entirely about aesthetics. Nothing in between.
5. No help bagging one's groceries at the big stores. I've bagged plenty of groceries in my life, but honestly, I don't think I've ever had zero help from the cashier. If you buy a lot it can be pretty hectic to bag it all yourself before the next person in line's stuff starts flowing off the belt into yours. But this is the norm -- it's not like we just got 1 or 2 unhelpful cashiers.
There, I got those complaints off my chest. Normally I like to accentuate the positive in this here blog, but the mediocrity of the grocery stores really stands out in contrast to how nice most things are here.
Folks have recommended some higher-end stores -- notably Lunds, Kowalski's, and Byerly's -- for deli meat and prepared foods. And they are very nice (think Whole Foods but with even more ambiance), we just can't really afford to shop here for very much. And of course some people like the co-op markets for veggies (the Seward Co-Op by us doesn't really sell meat--unless you count the frozen, free-range, organic buffalo), especially if you only buy organic and such. So the norm seems to be to shop at different food stores for different items. Which is fine. I guess we're just more used to one-stop shopping.
There are a couple nice points about the grocery stores:
1. Great produce section. Good prices, great selection, high quality stuff. Which makes sense given that we were are in a more agricultural area of the country.
2. The grocery stores sell beer -- albeit only "3.2 beer."
But 3.2 beer is a topic for another post. . . .
Update, August 9, 2005: Byerly's
1. Narrow aisles. Which leads to the recurring feeling that someone else's shopping cart is in your way. Which can lead to shopper's rage, an ugly thing.
2. Lousy deli sections. They don't have much variety of either deli meats or prepared salads and sides. And they don't slice the deli meat for you -- it's sitting there pre-sliced. And it's not sliced very thin. I found this a little surprising because it's not like the deli sandwich is not a big thing out here -- I've already eaten at 3 or 4 very good sandwich shops during my lunch hour. But evidently Minneapolitans do not enjoy the luxury of the quality grocery store deli counter, and maybe this is an area in which folks on the coasts are just spoiled. Apparently, in order to get good, cut-to-order deli meat, you have to go to a fancy-schmancy store.
3. Mediocre meat section. Meat prices are, on average, the same or worse than they are in the Rhode Island, which I found off given that we are geographically closer to our nation's slaughterhouses. But my big peeve was the some meats are listed in price per pound -- as one would expect -- while others are listed in price per ounce. Which is just bizarre. I actually found myself mutiplying by 16 in my head just so I could compare prices on pork. Weird. B managed to find one Rainbow foods in Uptown that puts up signs noting which products are on sale, making it the best grocery store we've seen here.
4. General lack of aesthetics. Unfinished warehouse-type ceilings, extremely no-frills look. This is not such a big deal, but it makes me feel like I'm shopping in a Costco or Sam's Club rather than a major grocery store chain. On the other hand, the high-end stores are entirely about aesthetics. Nothing in between.
5. No help bagging one's groceries at the big stores. I've bagged plenty of groceries in my life, but honestly, I don't think I've ever had zero help from the cashier. If you buy a lot it can be pretty hectic to bag it all yourself before the next person in line's stuff starts flowing off the belt into yours. But this is the norm -- it's not like we just got 1 or 2 unhelpful cashiers.
There, I got those complaints off my chest. Normally I like to accentuate the positive in this here blog, but the mediocrity of the grocery stores really stands out in contrast to how nice most things are here.
Folks have recommended some higher-end stores -- notably Lunds, Kowalski's, and Byerly's -- for deli meat and prepared foods. And they are very nice (think Whole Foods but with even more ambiance), we just can't really afford to shop here for very much. And of course some people like the co-op markets for veggies (the Seward Co-Op by us doesn't really sell meat--unless you count the frozen, free-range, organic buffalo), especially if you only buy organic and such. So the norm seems to be to shop at different food stores for different items. Which is fine. I guess we're just more used to one-stop shopping.
There are a couple nice points about the grocery stores:
1. Great produce section. Good prices, great selection, high quality stuff. Which makes sense given that we were are in a more agricultural area of the country.
2. The grocery stores sell beer -- albeit only "3.2 beer."
But 3.2 beer is a topic for another post. . . .
Update, August 9, 2005: Byerly's
posted by James at 6:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home