"stores" news and stories

Speaking of Dean & Deluca...lately I've been on a bit of a kitchen spending spree. Not only have I been going to the regular grocery store to buy basic things like eggs and milk to force myself to cook and eat at home, but I have been shopping for gourmet food stuff as well as kitchen utensils, gadgets, and equipment.

For the most part I have been loyal to...no one! Because I do a lot of the shopping online, I skip from Crate and Barrel for ice cream bowls to Dean & Deluca for pretty little things like spice tins to Williams-Sonoma for a pepper mill. I even found myself hoarding all those 20% and $5 off coupons to Bed, Bath and Beyond and getting Brita filters there. In other words, I have no favorite.

However, I know that many people do. At the very least, people have favorites for certain types of things, and might include small local stores. Where are your favorite places to shop?

You ever get in one of the modes where you eat the same snack for days and days and weeks?

That is what's happening with me right now with Planters Chocolate-Covered Cashews. They come in cans now (the bags vanished several months ago). They're big cashews, and the chocolate is delicious too. I have no scientific proof to back this up, but it seems to me that when companies cover their nuts with chocolate, they seem to use bigger nuts. It's especially noticable with whole cashews. Maybe they just seem bigger because they are covered with chocolate, I'm not sure. I just know I'm going through whole cans in one sitting while watching television or reading.

When confronted with winter storms, grocery store owners, managers and employees note an interesting phenomenon dubbed the "squirrel effect." The term applies to the fact that when confronted with any sort of disaster or potential disaster, shoppers come into the store and hoard whatever they can lay their hands on, much like squirrels stocking food away for the winter. The same reaction happens when natural disasters - hurricanes, tornadoes, etc - seem to be on the horizon, as well as directly after a disaster occurs.

At one point in time, "stocking up" meant grabbing kitchen staples, water and canned goods. Bread, milk and bananas are all popular items. But these days the definition of a staple food has changed somewhat and more shoppers are forsaking the component parts for the whole. Stores in the northern part of the country, for example, sold out of pizzas and other frozen goods, as well as sodas. Rental videos/dvd were also hot items, with people anticipating that a lot of time might be spent indoors while snow fell outside.

Here in California, I do have an earthquake supply kit (no frozen pizza in that, though), but there aren't many disastrous occasions to anticipate unless you count traffic. What do you - or would you - stock up on if you were to squirrel away some supplies in the face of a storm?

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Skyr isn't carried in too many American stores, but the Icelandic yogurt definitely has its fans. It is thicker than conventional yogurt, largely because it is strained, much like Greek yogurt. You are most likely to be familiar with the yogurt if it is carried at your local Whole Foods, where it is packaged into small containers and flavored like conventional yogurts, with berries, vanilla, etc. Despite the generally positive reaction from consumers, Whole Foods no longer promotes the fact that they carry Skyr, or any other Icelandic products, because of the company's offical policy of dissapproval for Iceland resuming commercial whaling last year.

The average consumer, perhaps the average Skyr fan, in the US isn't aware of the whaling issue and because Whole Foods hasn't promoted it, they're not likely to - especially because Whole Foods is planning to stock more Icelandic products this spring. Whole Foods will be carrying Nói Síríus chocolate easter eggs in approximately 70 stores. To entice WF to stock the eggs, Nói Síríus seems to have offered them at almost no cost, as the marketing director of the chocolate company said "There are no profits involved, this is first and foremost a sales experiment." More will be imported next year if they prove popular. Whether Whole Foods will be promoting them now, or in future, is still unknown, though it certainly seems like it would be a good business strategy to promote the products you carry if you're going to carry them at all.

More than six months ago, Whole Foods decided to ban the sale of live lobsters and soft shelled crabs in their stores because they determined that the practice was inhumane. The sea creatures, in Whole Foods' study, were not "treated with respect and compassion" on their journey from sea to market and until that issue could be resolved, no lobsters were to be put into the sale tanks in the fish department.

Since the ban was enacted, the natural foods store has not found any companies that meet its standards for the human treatment of lobsters. Until now, that is. Whole Foods is opening their first market in Maine next week and the Portland store will be stocking live lobsters. They have contracted with the Little Bay Lobster Co., a New Hampshire-based company, which will keep lobsters in private compartments for transport after catching them to reduce their stress.

Stocking live lobsters doesn't mean that they will be selling live lobsters, though. In the stores, an employee will use a "110-volt shock [to kill them and] to spare them the agony of being boiled alive in a pot of water."

Maine's lobster fishermen aren't thrilled with this plan. First, they are offended that a company that so heavily promotes its support for local farmers and fishermen would choose an out-of-state company when there are so many local ones to choose from. Second, the fishermen say that "they tell us we're doing everything wrong, obviously it doesn't sit very well with us," noting that using "a lobster electric chair" to kill the lobster sounds like a gimmick that won't impress consumers. Especially not in a state that loves its lobsters.

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