Secrets of the City

The thought of this is really going to take the joy out of washing down my caviar & blinis on NYE with Cristal.

In all seriousness, this is an absolute travesty, especially in regards to the children who live in these areas. Unfortunately, free market capitalism doesn’t provide any sort of solution for them. No grocer in his right mind is going to go where the money ain’t, and these are people who, by and large, don’t have the means to pick up and move to Woodbury. So, @ the risk of sounding like a socialist, there needs to be some sort of government intervention (tax abatements for ghetto grocers?) where the free market is failing these people.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Target? They like tax abatements.

For some reason, that article omits any reference to “Cup Foods” at 38th and Chicago. I’m shocked! Shocked, I say.

In all seriousness, I’m not sure I buy the focus on supermarkets. There are a lot of small markets in Minneapolis — including excellent ethnic markets — that appear to have gone unnoticed. I’m no expert on Mpls neighborhoods, but I’m not even certain the map of grocery stores shows United Noodles!

Kenny’s Market on Chicago and 14th used to be just awful. Overpriced food is one thing, but overpriced expired food is another. You know it had to be a desperate situation when Target moved into downtown and became the best grocer around.

My wife and I were talking about this the other week, thinking that what would be really great for some neighborhoods would be a small coop grocery store. Not a granola/yuppie store like Seward or The Wedge, just something that would carry quality produce, and staples that the each particular community needs. And by making it a coop, hopefully the community would have more involvement and input into what the store would have.

A lot of areas have these little old convenience stores, but everything is marked up like mad, and the produce is kinda scary.

Maybe it’s my million dollar idea or maybe it’s not, but it seemed like a good idea.

Any possibility that anti-big-box neighborhood “activism” might also be a factor? Witness how much hassle it was to get a Walmart on University. Why would a grocer put up with it when there’s a friendly suburb up the road?

The East Side Co-op is not on the map either.

Is this more an issue of people not really knowing where their nearest grocery store is located? The guy that it takes 2.5 hours to get to the store and back. Is this bad planning?

Weren’t y’all just talking about this in the fight over whether North Minneapolis sucks or not? This, to me, is a big reason why it’s not one of the best places to live.

what would be really great for some neighborhoods would be a small coop grocery store. Not a granola/yuppie store like Seward or The Wedge, just something that would carry quality produce, and staples that the each particular community needs

When I think of a co-op, this is what I think of. Not The Wedge. I hate The Wedge. Actually, I just hate trying to navigate around the Wedge because traffic there is ridiculous sometimes. I thought I had just read about a place like this opening up somewhere in Minneapolis in the last couple of months or so, but now I can’t find it. Good story, I know.

The story appears to be more about how difficult grocery shopping is without a car. Guess what: grocery shopping without a car in the suburbs is even more difficult.

According to this related Pioneer Press page, the ratio of grocery stores to people is worse in Deephaven than in Minneapolis, so shouldn’t we be more concerned about those poor Deephaveners/Deephavenites ??

excuses, excuses, excuses…there’s plenty of grocery stores. if you live in st paul and can’t find a bus to university avenue…well…buying groceries is the least of your concerns.

besides, i don’t buy that access to good food = healthy living. fat people are everywhere…even woodbury.

There isn’t a grocery store within 20 minutes of where I sit right now.

In the world outside the city.

Not having a car would suck. It would suck so bad, it would make me want to get a job so i could go buy a car, that’s how bad it would suck.

I can’t understand why some of the larger grocers haven’t thought to open something in downtown St. Paul. There is a HUGE, well-heeled, grocery-gettin’ residential component here that’s only getting larger. It’s a potential goldmine for a medium to large sized market.

Every time I take out my trash I’m shocked at how many Simon Delivers containers I see waiting for pickup. That company makes a killing off of condo dwellers.

I hope Mr. Lunds or Mrs. Kowalski is reading this. We need you in downtown St. Paul!

I ask for a dolla, and the man only give me fiddy cents!

It’s tough to pin cause or blame for the disparity. Yea, relatively less grocery in Deephaven, and plenty of fat folk in Woodbury, etc., so some of the correlations are muddy, but one thing that arches over the story here is Big Grocery price squeezing little grocery.

Since I live among the spoils of many grocery opions, what the article made me think about is the incessant push to let grocery stores sell wine and eventually beer. You think neighborhood grociers are geting scarce, just wait until you have to drive to Apple Valley to get your Summit.

Recall what happened when Musicland, Target and Best Buy got into CD price wars – it was the beginning of the end for many good local music stores. Let Cub and Rainbow battle for sales of Miller Lite and boxes of white zinfandel and you can start kissing your local bottle shops goodbye.

Also, it was refreshing to see real, local reporting in the paper today.

When I lived in North Minneapolis, the one grocery store that was close by was an effin Kowalski’s. Kowalski’s has no business being in North Minneapolis. (Which is probably why it closed).

I like how we capitalize the “big” in Big Oil, Big Insurance, etc.

Dudeman’s got a good point about the neighborhood activists who got all up in arms about Wal-Mart taking over the closed up K-Mart on University Ave. If I was Tres Lund, Jim Kowalski or Bob Ulrich and I wanted to put up a store in an inner city neighborhood that I felt would make money for my company and be good for the people in the area, but had to put up with a bunch of loud mouthed, knee jerk radical activists who most likely didn’t think through how beneficial a move like this would be, I’d say “piss on you, I’ll see you out in the burbs”!

The idea that there isn’t high quality food for people in the inner city and that’s why their diets are poor and obesity is quite rampant is bullshit! You’ve got 2 good stores over on University Avenue – Cub Foods and a recently remodeled Rainbow, both of which I shop when in that area. Just look around at what some overweight and obese people put into their carts at these stores and most likely you’ll see food products that are nothing but high in fat, sodium rich, sugared, preservative laced and fried…..this ain’t the fault of the grocery chains, it’s the fault of the idiots buying the crap! Your diet is as good as you want it to be, regardless of your income.

Somehow, Ace hardware hangs on in the age of Home Depot. I think it has something to do with being able to get a knowledgeable staff member’s attention. Maybe something like that will happen if grocery stores can sell beer/wine (as they do in many, many states). PYHOOYA, Octaneboy.

As disappointed as I am with the reality of the new east bank Lunds, I’m still glad there’s finally a grocery store in our neighbourhood again. That year we had to go between Rick’s and Lunds was fucking ridiculous and asinine. Great, yeah, nowhere to buy your groceries for fucking MILES in any direction. Sweet!

I just wish Lunds would realize the frou-frou condo-dwelling yuppie asshats in the immedate neighbourhood aren’t the only people that shop there. They also serve a very large moderate income neighbourhood, but you couldn’t tell that from the prices and selection in there.

The story appears to be more about how difficult grocery shopping is without a car. Guess what: grocery shopping without a car in the suburbs is even more difficult.

Well, just living in the suburbs without a car is infinitely more difficult too. It’s kind of assumed that if you live in the burbs, you have a car. City-dwellers typically don’t have to own a car as a necessity of life … except of course for the fact that many can’t bus or walk to a grocery store.

Yes, those were generalisations, but just try to refuse that they are in general true. Come on!

No, your personal anecdote doesn’t count as a refutation, either.

When I lived near Lake and Chicago, (until a few months ago) I bought tons of groceries at the Midtown Market, both because there was a wealth of good stuff and because I could walk there.

Previously, when I lived near (what is now) the Franklin light rail station, I would stop at North Country Co-op on my way to the U, or go further east on Franklin to the Seward Co-op. (This was pre-Aldi-on-Franklin.)

I don’t go for the idea that all groceries have to come from huge chain stores.

I will say that the small places are more expensive though… so there’s that factor too.

Anyway, to continue my random thoughts:

North Minneapolis is SO READY for a co-op and/or small greengrocer. If somebody doesn’t open one up soon, I’m gonna do it myself! I am convinced that the market is there to support such a place. (one, anyway)

The new Lund’s isn’t what I was hoping it would be, instead it really is more like a boutique market for the condo dwelling wine & cheese crowd. Rick’s market was more of a typical grocery store when it was in the old mall.

Up until about the late 1970’s, there was a full scale grocery store in the downtown area. It was a National Foods store that sat on the site where Surdyk’s and West Photo are now. Also, there was a Rainbow Foods store on University Ave., between 18th & 19th Aves. NE…..yeah, it was a real dive and Rainbow eventually washed its hands of that location and for about another year afterwards, it ran as a real low end independent grocer before it finally closed up and was torn down about 4 years ago. A senior high rise apartment complex sits on the site now.

Ranty –

I wonder if the old Kowalski’s location in North Mpls. would make it as a co-op / independent grocer? That building got quite a renvoation when Kowalski’s had it and it’s smack in the middle of a dense neighborhood as well. Would be a shame to let it go to waste!

Avoid the riff-raff. Make them bring it to you:

simondelivers.com

lunds.com

Buy your produce and vegan specialty items at Seward Coop or stop on in the midtown global market.

Anybody have an idea what those “frou-frou condo-dwelling yuppie asshats” are paying in property taxes?

It’s damn expensive. They’re paying more than their fair share. Are you?

That’s ok. They’re probably liberals anyway.

TMAY seems like a fairly smart guy so someday he’ll start making a bit more money and realize he needs to do something with it besides pay rent. Then he’s going to realize he can’t afford a single-family home unless it’s in Otsego. So he’s going to buy a condo so he can afford to buy and still stay in the city. Then someone’s going to call him a “frou-frou condo-dwelling yuppie asshat”. Yea, that’s going to be sweet!

I would have to agree with the opinions of most on this blog about neighborhood grocery stores. The smaller convenience marts are geared towards smokers and fast food junkies. How many types of Hostess products can you carry and their off brands in addition to various flavors of pork rinds? Hmmm…..interesting.

Very rarely can you find a “neighborhood store” which carries fresh produce other than a token banana at the register which seems to have seen better days or fallen off a truck.

I reside in the Midtown Exchange building and the Midtown Global Market is uber expensive. Anything remotely necessary in the way of foodstuff and or staples are overly priced. Plus, I love how Holy Land Deli and Grocery store is selling Target Store Archer Farms spaghetti sauces and other products as their own and with a 50% mark up. So, Archer Farms marinara which is usually about $.99 a jar is now $2.00.
Brilliant and apparently RT Rybak is a “fan or regular” at this place. I guess this is the way he “gets in touch with his minority constituents” . Hmmm, I think he’s in bed with Ryan Companies or someone’s on the receiving end of a mayoral blow job.

Inner city grocery stores are a thing of the past and it is due to the liability of being a sole ownership type business. If your life was held accountable to the cold steel of a flint lock would you be so brave?

I think it is in most sole propietor’s minds just to be viable and try to make it. If any corporate grocers are interested in investing their monies in the inner city it would only be self serving and for their best interest e.g. tax abatements.

Don’t get me started about the Lund’s in NE Minneapolis. Rick’s Supermarket was my favorite little grocery store. You could find fresh crisp cilantro and beautiful cuts of meat and fish. Plus, they had a good selection of national and organic brands.

I dunno the solution but, grape soda and pork rinds are not part of a healthy diet. The owners are stocking their stores to meet the needs of the neighborhoods; someone’s buying and the owners will keep restocking…..it is about choices.

Global market is probably where Rybak picks up his wheat grass juice to powerchug! Couldn’t believe he listed that as his favorite food…..UGH!

The words “pork rinds” sound gross, but I hear Dubya and his daddy love ‘em?

Being an owner of a inner city grocery ranks up there with being a cabbie for having hazardous jobs.

TMAY seems like a fairly smart guy so someday he’ll start making a bit more money and realize he needs to do something with it besides pay rent. Then he’s going to realize he can’t afford a single-family home unless it’s in Otsego. So he’s going to buy a condo so he can afford to buy and still stay in the city. Then someone’s going to call him a “frou-frou condo-dwelling yuppie asshat”. Yea, that’s going to be sweet!

Thanks! But my issue isn’t with the fact that they live in condos, because yes, I probably will someday too, but moreso with the fact that everything has to be ritzy and expensive and botique-y. Even if I do ever buy a condo, I’ll probably still want to buy things that aren’t overpriced for no reason other than being status symbols.

Seriously, where’s the greasy chinese food joint in my neighbourhood? Nowhere, and there won’t be one because only ‘upscale’ development seems to be allowed or viable or desireable or whatever now, thanks largely to the people who seem to think that condo = ritzy/luxury/rich exclusively and couldn’t give a shit about everyone else in the area. THAT is what bugs me. But it doesn’t help that everyone in the condos/townhouses around me seem to either be over 60 or extremely unfriendly towards their neighbours (or maybe just their renter neighbours?).

The new Lund’s isn’t what I was hoping it would be, instead it really is more like a boutique market for the condo dwelling wine & cheese crowd

that hasn’t been my experience at all. i shop there every week…trust me, i’m neither a wine or cheese crowd…i’ve got the case of budweiser on my back porch to prove it the new lunds is nowhere near as pricey as i anticipated. their generic label is pretty cheap, actually.

i can’t believe people are pining for the old Rick’s market. come on, that place was terrible.

eh, it still seems like rick’s was bigger, even if it’s wasn’t really. (Was it?)

Also rick’s seemed like a real grocery store. The whole ‘market’ thing lunds is trying is quaint, but not really very practical. The line that builds up at the rear checkouts is ridiculous (but most people are too dumb to use the ’secret’ front checkouts, so that’s their problem).

I’m sorry, but they just don’t need that big of a deli and cheese selection with surdyk’s and kramarczek (sp?) across the street. The neighbourhood has both of those fronts well-covered already and they wasted a huge chunk of their floorspace on that shit. The whole front half of the store is ready-made food! A grocery store is supposed to be a place where you buy food to take home and cook, not somewhere you go to get take out!

I’d seriously love to see less of that crap and more actual GROCERIES in there. Get me some selection! They don’t even have chubs of cookie dough! What kind of lameness is that!? I don’t want 10+ varieties of canned oysters, people! Who does their ordering, seriously? That person needs to find a new job.

so you’re bitching that they have a great selection of deli and cheese, in fact so great that you can get it all in one place…and that’s a complaint? i don’t get it.

A grocery store is supposed to be a place where you buy food to take home and cook, not somewhere you go to get take out! well, maybe that’s what YOU want, but obviously there’s a demand for ready to eat food, too. what, every other grocery store on earth doesn’t have a ready-made food section?

how did rick’s seem like a “real” grocery store? you mean like, they sold food?

the check out lines have a learning curve of about 30 seconds. come on, there’s NO WAY you wait longer at that line than any other grocery store. in my experience it has been much quicker than other stores.

you should at least give them props for the free parking ramp.

i don’t mean to come off as a lund’s spokesman or something. i’m not, i’m just fired to have a really good grocery store so close to my house, and i don’t get why people just have to bitch about every. damn. thing. some dogs just like to howl i guess. oh well.

I’m bitching that they’ve got too big a selection of deli stuffs/cheese at the expense of their selection of other foods that one can’t get elsewhere in the neighbourhood. It’s like, look, we already have one neopolitan pizza place in the area, why the fuck did punch feel like it had to come in one block away with the exact same stuff?

I would assume I’m not alone in wanted to buy actual GROCERIES at a GROCERY STORE, but I could be wrong there. Maybe those people in the ritzy condos upstairs don’t really want to use their gold-plated kitchens because they might get dirty! But at $8/lb that food isn’t priced for normal working folks!

Yeah, Rick’s actualy sold groceries. It was mostly groceries in the grocery store, not a deli and flower shop and coffee shop and what the fuck ever else like Lunds. You went there and could find a good variety of foodstuffs to buy and take home and cook, like one should expect of a grocery store. The Lunds does not deliver when it comes to that.

I don’t really use the back line usually anyway, but it’s kind of an awkward setup, especially when you get people coming in confused about where to go and trying to cut back up the waiting line getting in the way of people trying to navigate over to a checkout. It seemed like a neat idea when they first opened, but I think seperate checkout lines really do work better.

I guess the free parking is ok, but I live across the street and don’t drive anyway. I have a free parking space in my own ramp that I already don’t use.

It’s cool, I understand that feeling, because I was excited at first too. It’s just not what I wanted out of it, so I’m bitching about the problems. I don’t have the option of taking my business elsewhere, so I’m stuck with whatever I have to take from them. If I can’t find a grocery item at Lunds, I’ve either got to truck it downtown and *hope* target’s half-assed grocery store has it or just give up on finding it.

Seriously, there’s like fifteen kinds of canned oysters. Isn’t there a better use of shelf space?

The Rainbow at the Quarry is only about 9 min away from Lunds on the 4 and they run every 12 minutes during Rush hour and every half hour other times. This would also be about a 10 minute bike ride .

NOI’m bitching that they’ve got too big a selection of deli stuffs/cheese at the expense of their selection of other foods that one can’t get elsewhere in the neighbourhood. they can’t be all things to all people. yes, lunds is an “upscale” grocery store. it’s not aldi, it’s not cub. i was afraid lund’s would be too “wine and cheese” for a normal guy like me, but it’s not. i was happy to find generic brands and decent prices. and for my admittedly limited cooking repertoire, i have never once been restricted by their selection. what the hell do you cook that lunds doesn’t have, but you would reasonably expect any other grocery store to stock?

But at $8/lb that food isn’t priced for normal working folks!. that’s true…and that is high…but don’t buy it. i’m sure if that stuff isn’t selling and they get complaints about not enough selection in other areas, they’ll adapt. it’s a new store…give them time.

it seems odd that anyone without a car would complain about a deli, coffee shop, flower shop, and dry cleaner in one convenient location.

I guess the free parking is ok. NO. the only acceptable answer is “the free parking rules”. get a car, hippie. (kidding!)

this has probably run it’s course. i’ll see you in the oyster aisle.

Yeah, I’m going to ride my bike up the quarry in the winter. Great idea. While I’m at it, I’ll figure out how to get a big pile of groceries onto my back without tipping over!

Every half hour for the four sounds good until you’re standing in that shitty little bus stop without a heat lamp in the cold for about 29 minutes. It’s easy to talk shit, but I actually did that for a year and I will not do it again.

I suppose this isn’t the proper venue to air my complaints, it’s true. I should take them to the store management itself so perhaps something will get done about it. It just feels good sometimes to vent, though.

I love delis, coffee shops, flower shops, etc! Except all of the above already existed in the neighbourhood and (except maybe the flower shop) are better than what lunds offers. If one can’t walk half a block between the various places there’s a problem.

Free parking destroys cities, though ): Look at LA. Lots of free parking out there, not much urbanity to speak of.

But you’re right, that’s enough out of me.

PS- How many brands of frozen pizza do you really need?
A- it doesn’t matter becuase the line for the checkouts blocks your access to the bevvy of brands they offer!