The average supermarket is a pretty uninspiring place. It’s filled mostly with packaged, processed foods, and even the good stuff around the perimeter isn’t all that attractive. That’s why more and more specialty and gourmet grocery stores are popping up across the country. Here in Chicago we’re seeing a lot of Whole Foods and Mariano’s locations pop up, but we also got a special treat with an Eataly outpost. They are a New York, NY and Chicago, IL based gourmet Italian marketplace inspired by the famous chef Mario Batali. Their motto is: “We cook what we sell, and we sell what we cook.” It’s still a grocery store, but it’s also way more than that. Eataly is the kind of place that treats food how it should be treated.
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I went grocery shopping yesterday at Whole Foods. Usually at 2 PM on a weekday, it’s a ghost town, but not during Thanksgiving week. I actually like grocery shopping, so it was fun to be a part of the madness, but I know a lot of people who hate it. Some use services like Fresh Direct or Peapod. I tried the latter once, but it feels like your groceries were picked out by a robot. That won’t cut it if you’re buying meat or produce. Instacart offers a different kind of grocery delivery service. They are a San Francisco, CA based startup that offers personal grocery shopping in a growing number of markets (Chicago and Bay Area right now), and sometimes they can get you your groceries within an hour.
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I didn’t start cooking until my sophomore year of college, but I picked it up pretty quickly once I was off of a meal plan. If I was trying something new, I’d look up a basic recipe, but for the most part I just learned a few basic concepts and used those to come up with my own preparations. This made trips to the grocery store fun. I’d invent a meal based on what I saw at the store, and then try to make it at home. I’ve been doing that ever since, and I love it, but some people don’t want to spend the time shopping and creating meals even though they still would like to cook dinner at home. HelloFresh is for them. It’s a New York, NY based company (actually it’s Berlin, Germany, but the U.S. business is based in NYC) that offers weekly subscription packages that include recipes and all of the ingredients to make healthy, delicious meals. It’s kind of like those brownie mixes that come in a box (all you have to do is follow the instructions), except the end result is a dinner that your mother would approve of.
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I’ve suffered through many meals where I’ve convinced myself that I could run the restaurant better than the current management–even if I was blindfolded and had my arms tied behind my back. There are probably a few cases where that’s true, but for the most part regular people with no industry experience have no business running restaurants (just watch Kitchen Nightmares if you’re not convinced). The truth is that running a profitable restaurant is a huge accomplishment. The Culinary Edge is a San Francisco, CA based consulting firm that specializes in helping restaurants and other food-related businesses strengthen their brands, extend their reach, and increase their profitability. While it would be nice if they did work for small mom and pop type restaurants, the reality is that this kind of consulting is geared towards much bigger clients.
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I used to be perfectly happy to shop at a regular grocery store–I even got annoyed by the fancier stores. As I’ve gotten more yuppified, that has completely changed (it’s actually because I’ve learned to cook). Now I go to Whole Foods for produce and local specialty stores for meat and fish, but most people still do all of their shopping at a single grocery store. These are the kinds of people that big brands want to reach with marketing messages. MyWebGrocer is a Winooski, VT based company that makes that happen. They provide “leading-edge eCommerce and eMarketing solutions to the grocery and consumer packaged goods industries” including solutions like “website design, specialty modules for websites, hosting, sophisticated email strategies and consulting services.”
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I woke up this morning to smell of the donuts that my mom was baking on her new donut making machine. Usually we have waffles and kielbasa, so it was a change from our normal Thanksgiving tradition. The change continued when my mom said, “It’s Thanksgiving, you should write about Stew Leonard’s.” It’s not new for her to present me with ideas, but it is new for me to politely accept them. Stew Leonard’s is a small Norwalk, CT based chain of four grocery stores that are far more than just grocery stores. It’s a very unique place, and a wonderful place to buy all of your Thanksgiving essentials and fixings. I haven’t been there in a long time (it’s a decent drive from my parents’ house), but I have wonderful childhood memories of animatronic produce doing song and dance shows, winning a free ice cream in the checkout line, and a petting zoo.
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I don’t know about you, but I love the smell of gasoline–at least in limited doses. Oddly enough, I absolutely hate the smell of coffee, so I’m not sure how I’d do if I had to work at a RaceTrac. They’re an Atlanta, GA based chain of more than 525 gas stations and convenience stores that stretch across twelve southeastern states. The odd thing about them is that their home page puts more emphasis on their coffee than on the gas. I guess gas is pretty much the same at every gas station, but good coffee will actually bring people through the doors. Besides the coffee RaceTrac differentiates itself with its size–their stores are typically over 5,000 square feet with more than 4,000 items and 20-24 pumps. If I owned a chain of gas stations, I’d probably use clean bathrooms as a point of differentiation. I think it would be a goldmine, but RaceTrac’s $8 billion in annual revenue makes them the third largest private company in Atlanta, so maybe coffee is the right choice.
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Sweet 16! And if I’m going to find a way to get to the game, I’m going to need to start shopping at ALDI, because flights to Syracuse aren’t cheap. Luckily, the groceries at ALDI are. I’ve never stepped foot in an ALDI store, but I’ve heard plenty about them from friends and articles. They are unlike all other grocery stores. They almost never stock name brands—they have their own private labels. They don’t have shelves—they use pallets. They charge for reusable bags, and taking a shopping cart requires a 25 cent deposit. ALDI also doesn’t take credit cards, and they stock far fewer items than your typical supermarket. ALDI may not offer a luxurious shopping experience like Wegmans does, but they make up for it by offering insane value. If you’re pinching pennies, you have no excuse not to shop at ALDI. Even with their limited selection of products, they’ve found that most of their customers “can do as much as 90% of their weekly shopping at ALDI.”
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