Read business
reporter Nigel Jaquiss' article on the Nature's defection
("Nature's Abhors a Vacuum," WW, Sept. 29, 1999)
at
www.wweek.com/html/business 092999.html
Mayor Vera Katz
and Commissioner Charlie Hales helped announce that the
newest New Seasons Market will occupy the site of a former
United Grocers store at Northeast 33rd Avenue and Killingsworth
Street.
The Sellwood
market aims to open this summer; the Concordia market plans
to cut its ribbon in late summer 2001.
Nice touch:
stir-fry station, mainstream and natural products
Picks:
Bandon Creamery extra-sharp cheddar and imported Rustichella
di Abruzzi pasta.
I like grocery shopping. When I'm buying food, I'm thinking
about cooking and eating, and dinner usually depends on
how the produce looks or what's on sale at the butcher counter.
The grocery store of my dreams would carry lots of locally
grown, organic fruits and vegetables, meat raised naturally
by small producers, Northwest seafood, bulk staples like
rice and beans, freshly baked bread, imported products like
pasta and olive oil that taste much better than anything
made domestically, and at least a thousand different kinds
of cheese.
New Seasons Market doesn't quite fulfill my fantasy, but
it's closer than anything else in town.
Portland's newest supermarket chain (only the Raleigh Hills
store is open, but locations in Sellwood and Concordia are
being developed) rose from the ashes of the acquisition
of Nature's Fresh Northwest. The homegrown natural-food
stores were purchased three years ago by vitamin giant GNC,
then sold last year to California-based Wild Oats. Former
Nature's managers, unhappy with the new owners' emphasis
on the bottom line, started New Seasons with some help from
Nature's founder Stan Amy.
You get the first clue that New Seasons Market might be
a little different when you pull a shopping cart from the
rack by the front door: It's got a cup holder. But making
it easier to sip a latte while perusing the baked goods
isn't the only thing that sets this store apart. New Seasons
wants to sell you groceries, but it also wants to change
the world.
"We have a social mission," says President Brian Rohter,
one of more than a dozen former Nature's employees at New
Seasons, "and part of that is to build the local and regional
food economy." That means developing relationships with
suppliers who practice sustainable agriculture, like the
Douglas County ranchers raising lambs without growth hormones
or orchardists growing organic apples in Hood River.
Local ownership is another piece of the mission. "We are
a neighborhood store trying to serve the needs of the people
who live in the community," says Rohter. Those needs might
include Spaghetti-Os, Frosted Flakes and Coca-Cola, and
the fact that New Seasons sells such mainstream products
has elicited a little flack from hardcore natural-food advocates.
Rohter responds that New Seasons "is trying to provide a
doorway" for traditional shoppers looking to enter the world
of organic vegetables and free-range chicken.
That doorway opens into a bright store that looks a lot
like a traditional mid-sized supermarket, but with a little
more energy. It's like the old Kienow's with a makeover,
and underneath that traditionally handsome and dependable
façade lay a sparkling beauty just waiting to bust
out.
There are some eerie similarities to Nature's, such as
the way the in-house bakery displays its bread, an artfully
arranged cheese case, the gravity-defying vertical produce
and a selection of olives in exactly the same plexiglass
tubs with sneeze guards. But New Seasons wisely avoided
the "natural" look of the new Nature's stores, choosing
sunny pastels and squeaky-clean finishes over rusting steel
girders, galvanized sheet metal and unfinished flakeboard
and laminated timber.
New Seasons also carries more "regular" grocery store items.
Along with your honey sesame baked tofu and Nancy's Yogurt,
you can pick up a 16-ounce tub of marshmallow fluff or a
can of WD-40. I found a few of my own more obscure favorite
brands, like the extra-sharp cheddar from the Bandon Creamery
south of Coos Bay and imported Rustichella di Abruzzi pasta.
It's made from just semolina and water, pressed through
brass dies for a better texture and slowly air-dried instead
of baked in an industrial kiln.
A deli is standard issue for a grocery store these days,
and the one here is run by Ron Paul alum Eric Rose and former
Heathman sous chef Andrew Norby. The offerings include whole
chickens roasted on the rotisserie, grilled tombo tuna and
meatloaf. I did see some barbecued tofu, but there's definitely
less soy than you might expect. At the self-service stir
fry, you don't actually step up to the wok. Instead, fill
a substantial bowl with your choice of more than 20 items,
pick one of a trio of sauces, and wait a few minutes while
it's cooked for you.
Prices for specific items at New Seasons might be bit higher
than at Portland's more traditional supermarkets, but a
shopping-basket comparison would probably come out pretty
close to even. And organically grown produce and other natural
foods often taste
better than their industrial
counterparts.
Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry, one of the most
eloquent advocates of sustainable agriculture, said once
that Americans need to "eat responsibly." He explained that
this included supporting local producers and cooking with
more basic ingredients instead of relying on processed food.
If you live near Raleigh Hills, you can start with a trip
to New Seasons Market.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
