Former Farmer Jacks location

[313WX]

Stasu you don't actually want city government to regulate which grocers can sign leases in the city, do you?

It WOULD be nice if the city actually regulated the quality of food and service these Chaldean-owned Spartan Stores offer.

The vast majority of them SUCK. If it's not bad enough that you feel like a prisoner not being able to take your shopping cart full of groceries to your vehicles because of those metal bars or that some of them treat you like street trash, you're typically shopping in dimly-lit, structurally outdated structures that sell high-priced, low grade food in a limited quantity and variety.

If they can't meet a reasonable standard set by the city when running their stores, by all means I want them to leave.

[stasu1213]

It's actually pretty good. I wouldn't go out of my way to go there but it isn't ghetto. Has anybody here who is flipping their shit over this grocery store ever actually been to the other one?

Why is everyone here being such jerks? People are decrying the new bar on one thread and now the grocery store on this one.

It's a grocery store, okay, and the other one operated by the same people is perfectly fine. It isn't going to solve Detroit's problems. And what the hell is your damn problem with a Metro PCS store or a Beauty Supply store? Neither of those places ever bothered me. I'm not going to shop there but they obviously serve a need and pay taxes so who gives a shit? Why knock it? Open something you like better if you're so smart.

I am a consumer. Don't have the patience to open a business especially in un-small business friendly Detroit. People in Detroit always say "open your own" Tell that to a young family who is looking for a nice community to raise their children. A good school, public safety, and a good grocery store are usually sought after. The man of the family has a job. You don't tell him to open up his own store would you.

[Mackinaw]

I get your point 313Wx. Regulations of general applicability are obviously much more acceptable than the city swooping in to prevent someone from opening up, for one reason or another. If you can develop some sort of city code on that, I may be get behind you. I certainly don't want the city preventing new entrants, though. In the mean time, we can vote with our dollars and shop at the decent places.

[313WX]

Maybe one day Mikes Market or some crime magnet food institution Detroit call a grocery store will open in the area. It will be neighboring your friendly neighborhood beauty supply store and metro pc

The Mike's Fresh Market on 7 Mile and Gratiot has an awful rotten meat smell inside of it. That alone is a huge turnoff for me.

I go to either the Kroger in "The Village" or on Mack/Vernier to get the groceries I need now.

I would like to go to the Meijer on 8 Mile and Woodward, but part of the problem is it's too congested. Also, relative to the side of town I commute from, it's pretty hard for me to get there without going out of my way.

[Hermod]

It's actually pretty good. I wouldn't go out of my way to go there but it isn't ghetto. Has anybody here who is flipping their shit over this grocery store ever actually been to the other one?

Why is everyone here being such jerks? People are decrying the new bar on one thread and now the grocery store on this one.

It's a grocery store, okay, and the other one operated by the same people is perfectly fine. It isn't going to solve Detroit's problems. And what the hell is your damn problem with a Metro PCS store or a Beauty Supply store? Neither of those places ever bothered me. I'm not going to shop there but they obviously serve a need and pay taxes so who gives a shit? Why knock it? Open something you like better if you're so smart.

It is the standard modus operandi on DetroitYes

1. Complain about empty space until someone proposes to fill it.

2. Complain about the type of business proposed because it isn't a high-end cufflink shop.

3. Complain about the brand name and ownership if it doesn't follow the correct politics or isn't green enough.

4. If you get exactly what you want, complain about the proposed architecture.

SimCity, Simcity here we come
There's some crazy wacky people here
To keep the city undone

[GUSHI]

Isn't it funny, the people that came from the desert are single handily help to over come Detroit being a food desert.

[rb336]

It WOULD be nice if the city actually regulated the quality of food and service these Chaldean-owned Spartan Stores offer.

What does Chaldean-owned have to do with any of it? At least it's not a Glory

[poobert]

It is the standard modus operandi on DetroitYes

1. Complain about empty space until someone proposes to fill it.

2. Complain about the type of business proposed because it isn't a high-end cufflink shop.

3. Complain about the brand name and ownership if it doesn't follow the correct politics or isn't green enough.

4. If you get exactly what you want, complain about the proposed architecture.

SimCity, Simcity here we come
There's some crazy wacky people here
To keep the city undone

The polar vortex just reached hell and froze it over. I agree with Hemrod.

You guys are seriously still complaining about grocery options...we now have a Meijer, a Whole Foods, Harbortown, YOBS...

Oh, sorry, the ones you hate are too icky, and the ones you like are too busy. My bad.

That place has been vacant since 2006 and a reputable independent grocer is setting up shop there. Try it, you might not hate it, unlike everything else.

I can't believe I'm the positive one right now.

[313WX]

What does Chaldean-owned have to do with any of it?

Who else owns and operates most of the stores in the city? I suppose just stating that fact is offensive now too...

At least it's not a Glory

Also owned by Chaldeans [[although they technically don't sell Spartan brands, but otherwise they're all the same).

[DetroitPlanner]

Spartan Stores that are not dumps:
Busch's: http://www.buschs.com/
Glen's: http://glens.spartanstores.com/

Metro Foodland [[Okay not a Spartan, Krogers version of Spartan) http://www.yelp.com/biz/metro-foodland-detroit-2

[Gistok]

I can't believe I'm the positive one right now.

Hehehehe.... that hasn't gone un-noticed....

So let me get this straight... this long empty store is NOT going to be another one of those classy DTE Energy Service Center storefronts?

[Dan Wesson]

Isn't it funny, the people that came from the desert are single handily help to over come Detroit being a food desert.

Now here is a successful immigration story.

Christian Iraqi's from Tel Keppe/Tel kaif.
The only neighborhood corner grocer in our area.
60 years in Detroit. If it weren't for them, like you said Gushi.

[sumas]

Riverbend Plaza, THAT'S it! That's the same name that's going into the old Famer Jack.

honky tonk is right the riverbend spartan affliate is relocating to the Jefferson Meadows Plaza. A friend already has a job waiting for her.

[Zacha341]

And currency exchange, advance pay place perhaps.

Maybe one day Mikes Market or some crime magnet food institution Detroit call a grocery store will open in the area. It will be neighboring your friendly neighborhood beauty supply store and metro pc

[Zacha341]

Personally, I prefer to call in my DTE payment.

...this long empty store is NOT going to be another one of those classy DTE Energy Service Center storefronts?

[Zacha341]

There are a couple of non-dump Spartan stores in Royal Oak and Dearborn too.

Spartan Stores that are not dumps:
Busch's: http://www.buschs.com/
Glen's: http://glens.spartanstores.com/

Metro Foodland [[Okay not a Spartan, Krogers version of Spartan) http://www.yelp.com/biz/metro-foodland-detroit-2

[Zacha341]

There are a few good stores in the city off the specialty [[YOBs or WF) grid, and I try to reward them by my patronage. Aldies for example is pretty consistent where ever they set up a store. Some stores are just grim with a smell greeting you at the door. But they have a 'captive' audience of shopper so they persist.

It WOULD be nice if the city actually regulated the quality of food and service these Chaldean-owned Spartan Stores offer.

[Honky Tonk]

There are a few good stores in the city off the specialty [[YOBs or WF) grid, and I try to reward them by my patronage. Aldies for example is pretty consistent where ever they set up a store. Some stores are just grim with a smell greeting you at the door. But they have a 'captive' audience of shopper so they persist.

There are a LOT of good food stores in Detroit, they're just not big chain stores like in the 'burbs. Aldies is very nice. They're somehow related to the Trader Joe people. I do the one on Mack & Chalmers from time to time. I have never found myself @ a loss for where to find groceries in the City. It does help to own a car, though. As far as the City regulating the "quality" of food sold? Oh, hell no.

[rb336]

Who else owns and operates most of the stores in the city? I suppose just stating that fact is offensive now too...

When you bring up an ethnicity in a statement that marks them out as unscrupulous, then yes, it is. It shows your prejudice and stupidity.

[313WX]

When you bring up an ethnicity in a statement that marks them out as unscrupulous, then yes, it is. It shows your prejudice and stupidity.

There's nothing unscrupulous about the facts.

The vast majority of the stores in Detroit that just so happen to be owned by Chaldeans suck.

That could be for a number of reasons. Maybe it's because they have no incentive to operate better because they hold a monopoly over the market in Detroit [[no pun intended), or because the folks who patronize their store are too poor and inmobile to access better options, or because the city is too broke and dysfunctional to make them operate better [[it is typically the job of health inspectors to make sure everything they do is up to par)..

There was an article a few years before about how so many markets throughout are getting away, in plain sight, with shelving and selling outdated foods. It was around the time Farmer Jack was liquidated. I'll see if I can find it and post it.

[Hermod]

Apropos of our discussion, the "non-oppressed" latte sippers have granted Trader Joe's corporate sainthood, but the community organizers resent the intrusion into their beloved food desert.

PORTLAND, Ore. [[AP) — The Trader Joe's grocery-store chain has dropped a plan to open a new store in the heart of the city's historically African-American neighborhood after activists said the development would price black residents out of the area.

The grocer, whose stores are found in urban neighborhoods across the nation, said Monday it wouldn't press its plan, given community resistance, The Oregonian reported.

"We open a limited number of stores each year, in communities across the country," it said in a statement. "We run neighborhood stores, and our approach is simple: If a neighborhood does not want a Trader Joe's, we understand, and we won't open the store in question."

The Portland Development Commission had offered a steep discount to the grocer on a parcel of nearly two acres that was appraised at up to $2.9 million: a purchase price of slightly more than $500,000. The lot is at Northeast Alberta Street and Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and has been vacant for years.

Critics said the development would displace residents and perpetuate income inequality in one of the most rapidly gentrifying ZIP codes in the nation.

The Portland African American Leadership Forum said the development commission had in the past made promises about preventing projects from displacing community members but hadn't fulfilled them.

It sent the city a letter saying it would "remain opposed to any development in N/NE Portland that does not primarily benefit the Black community." It said the grocery-store development would "increase the desirability of the neighborhood," for "non-oppressed populations."

Mayor Charlie Hales and the urban renewal agency's executive director, Patrick Quinton, signed a letter in January that described what they said was the commission's contributions "to the destructive impact of gentrification and displacement on the African American community."

Trader Joe's is based in Monrovia, Calif. Its store would have been the anchor of a two-building development that included space for four to 10 shops and 100 parking spaces. A company owned by African-Americans in Portland had been slated to build it.

Hales said Monday it was too soon to determine what might happen to the vacant lot.

http://abcnews.go.co...-store-22350878

[Zacha341]

Yep, you do need a car to get around and about for quality foods. There are somethings I purchase at Aldies, somethings at Save-a-lot, a few things at Trader Joes and WFs, Greenland Spartan in Dearborn for my produce, etc... You have to shop around. I find now one store has everything I like as something I want without tons of additives.

There are a LOT of good food stores in Detroit, they're just not big chain stores like in the 'burbs. Aldies is very nice. They're somehow related to the Trader Joe people. I do the one on Mack & Chalmers from time to time. I have never found myself @ a loss for where to find groceries in the City. It does help to own a car, though. As far as the City regulating the "quality" of food sold? Oh, hell no.

[Honky Tonk]

Yep, you do need a car to get around and about for quality foods. There are somethings I purchase at Aldies, somethings at Save-a-lot, a few things at Trader Joes and WFs, Greenland Spartan in Dearborn for my produce, etc... You have to shop around. I find now one store has everything I like as something I want without tons of additives.

Wow, You're really into diversity. My momma told me, you gotta shop around.

[Gistok]

Yes Trader Joe's and Aldi's are separate subsidiaries of the same multinational German store chain... with over 400 Trader Joe's and over 1200 Aldi stores in the USA. Aldi's seems to do quite well in Detroit. It provides low cost/high quaility off name brand products.

As Zacha341 said, the stores are pretty standard, and you won't find crap or expired merchandise there. A first time visitor may mistake it for selling very low budget merchandise, but that's just the European no-frills store design... most of their off brand products are equal in quality to the brand names, including fresh foods, meats and dairy products. No funky smells when you enter any Aldi's.

With their very successful business model, I foresee that Aldi's and its' sister stores one day dominating the USA food retail market [[along with equally successful Costco).

[GPCharles]

With their very successful business model, I foresee that Aldi's and its' sister stores one day dominating the USA food retail market [[along with equally successful Costco).

What about Walmart?