Pour one out for Fairway

What will Brad Kane do now?

I know there is a Brad Kane inside joke in here somewhere, but this is upsetting. They have a great store in Red Hook, Brooklyn right on the water that is my "go to"place for weekly food shopping. They hire a lot of locals too. Hope the store stays afloat. (As an aside Jorge, the Red Hook store is also not far from the original location of the Wine Cellarage).

Sorry to read this. They won’t be the first business done in by overly ambitious plans for expansion.

Peter,

Have a chuckle here: http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=686120#p686120

Jokes aside, I still have fond memories from 9 years ago going to the UWS store at 11pm to do my shopping in serene peace and joke around with the Dominican guys behind the butcher counter.

Classic case of overexpanding too fast.

It’s been going downhill for a while now.

Can only speak to the large store in Red Hook. Got hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, but came back better than before.

More specifically, it won’t be the first business done in by a bunch of arrogant idiots from Wall Street. It gives us more proof, which we didn’t need, that many financial professionals don’t understand how non financial businesses work, and are particularly stupid when it comes to retail.

It’s been going downhill since Sterling Investment Partners purchased the stores from the Glickberg family in 2007 and then took the company public couple of years ago. As Michel said, classic case of over expansion while not having your ducks in a row.

I hope they can pull out of it as it is convenient having one across the street, but the quality really has declined across the board and last year, Steve Jenkins, their longtime and legendary cheese buyer, left. Their cheese selections have seen a big drop in selection and quality since, imo. Also, in the instance of my store, a Whole Foods opened up two blocks from it a year ago and it’s really hurt them, even though that Whole Foods is a disaster.

Speaking of Whole Foods, this just in: Whole Foods may build tattoo shops in stores to hook millennials

Ever since Howie and Danny (his son) left, there was no where to go (but downhill).

See also Haggen. Done in by the smarter than everyone else in the room boys of ComVest.

I get the issue with going public and expanding, then not doing so well. Quality has dropped on some items.

However, I usually go to the Woodland Park, NJ location on trips to see my family. Everything is a couple bucks a pound cheaper than the NYC stores, lines are generally not an issue, beer is cheaper, they have a decent wine/liquor store, and no deposit on bottles. So it works out for me. Still some good deals to be had. If you’re on their email/text blast list they do offer daily promos & coupons.

I would not deal with the craziness/lines/waiting in some of the busier NYC stores.

Hopefully the original one survives. It isn’t what it was but it is still the best place to buy food in my hood

I went into one of the new Haggen stores when it opened in West LA (took over the former space of an Albertson’s, IIRC). I walked through it briefly and figured it would be out of business with a year; two years tops. Mediocre selection and mediocre pricing; store staff looked bored.

Bruce

This. It would be so very disappointing to be left with the likes of Gristedes, Whole Foods, or Food Emporium.

Does Food Emporium still exist after the A&P bankruptcy?

i was really excited about fairway opening in kips bay, but it’s generally pretty bad. we use it almost exclusively for staple items. most everything else is average, but priced aggressively. i can’t imagine this is a sustainable proposition.

last time i was there, i asked why there weren’t any carts (store wasn’t full at all) and the manager said the homeless took them all. i asked if they were getting replacements and he wasn’t confident one way or the other.

to my mind, the future of urban food is a combination of high-end specialty (and i would include whole foods here to some degree because if you look at their layout, there’s a ton of prepared food and mixed used space (beer hall, sushi, etc.)) such as Eataly, Chelsea Market, Grand Central, etc, and several delivery options for the basics; Amazon, Fresh Direct, Jet, etc. That doesn’t leave much room for terrible experiences like gristedes, etc.

Interestingly, drugstores seem to be moving heavily into the grocery category. The Downtown Pharmacy which opened across the street from us has a small but high end selection of foods (expensive organic yogurts, high end chips, free range eggs). The A&P Fresh which closed is now an ACME Pharmacy which is indistinguishable from the old supermarket other than taking out the self-service lanes and adding a pharmacy counter. I try to frequent the small corner shop next door to us since they are the only place I know of which carries the brand of Indian style yogurt I like.

The ones by me in midtown are closed. Not sure if A&P intends to rebrand & reopen them.

I’ve shopped at Fairway’s Plainview location regularly since it opened in 2001. The decline in quality over the last three years, particularly in produce and cheese, has been disappointing. The managers who replaced those who were moved to newer stores have shockingly inadequate knowledge of their products. Recently the number of cashiers has dropped and the length of checkout lines have grown.

Time is running out, which will be a shame. Nothing on Long Island could match the combination of full-service supermarket and source for hard-to-find items that Fairway provided in its first 10 years of operation. Then they tried to become Waldbaum’s, and ironically they succeeded, if you know what I mean.