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Originally Posted by EastChestnut
Funny... Genaurdi's will put up with driving into Center City---and yet they refuse to open a store in Center City. And don't tell me there's no space for one... we got plenty of abandoned buildings left available... they just have to get used to a multilevel format.
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I had understood that the reason there are no Genuardi's stores within city limits is because the Genuardi family didn't want to have to deal with unionized employees. You may recall that the UFCW tried to capitalize on Safeway's ham-handed takeover of the company, which produced the bizarre spectacle of TV commercials featuring store employees
apologizing to their customers, with an organizing drive. I think the drive was unsuccessful.
Genuardi's, FWIW, isn't the only chain that does business in the metro area but not in the city proper. You won't find any Giant (Carlisle) stores or Clemens Family Markets/Foodsource by Clemens locations within the city limits, either. The latter chain seems to be the prime beneficiary of Safeway's missteps after it acquired Genuardi's.
And I predict that it will be a long, long time before Wegmans colonizes the city proper as well. (Not that they're going to blanket the 'burbs in a hurry, either: so far, their area stores number two--one in Downingtown and one in Cherry Hill.)
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Meh. I'll eat there occasionally. Fresh Grocer gets all my money since they're daring enough to test West Philly (and they're thriving there).
TESCO's in London is a good example of urban Wal-Mart-ish grocery (Walmart owns them). A lot of TESCOs in Central London, especially where I was living (Earl's Court) and in Hackney were 2 or 3 level grocery stores. When you need to go upstars you push your cart onto the cart-o-lator thingie and follow behind it.
Most of the frozen foods, Internet Cafe and quick sundries on the first floor, dry goods on the 2nd floor. If the store was 3 floor format then your dog food, housewares, greeting cards and seasonal stuff was on the top floor. You can check out on all the floors and take an elevator just on the opposite side of the checkout to get back to ground level with your goodies.
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Your point about multifloor urban supermarkets is well taken, though. A&P runs at least one such store in Manhattan under the Food Emporium banner. (Though that chain's best-known city supermarket is the one they opened about two years ago in the west abutment of the Queensboro Bridge. Memo to the Delaware River Port Authority: You've got some leasable space in the Ben Franklin Bridge anchorages, which contain trolley stations that were never used. Maybe you can try something similarly creative?)
Edited to add: BTW, agreed completely that Freshgrocer rocks. I may have said this before here, but it knocks the socks off any Center City supermarket I've been in, Whole Paycheck excepted. Of course, there's a big difference between Freshgrocer and Whole Foods: You can afford to eat what Freshgrocer sells.
05-30-2006, 10:16 AM
