Weekend Plans Post: The New Grocery Store

Remember Wild Oats? Way back when, back in the oughts, Colorado Springs didn’t have a Whole Foods store. We had a Wild Oats, though.

That wasn’t our “every weekend” grocery store. Not by a long shot. In a lean month, it wasn’t our every-other weekend grocery store. But we did find ourselves there once a month. They had crackers that they didn’t have at Safeway or King Soopers. They had surprisingly good produce. They did a good job of making you feel like you were a hippie pinko, like when you were 24, the second you walked through the door.

You know how going to Trader Joe’s feels like now? In the current year?

Well, Wild Oats felt like 80% of that back in the oughts. Well, back in 2007, Wild Oats and Whole Foods merged and back in 2009, all of the Wild Oats stores up’n went away.

The one that we went to became a Big Lots for a decade and a half and now, apparently, it’s closing down and will likely be a Spirit Halloween next month.

Whole Foods is nice, I guess… but it’s way on the other side of town and it’s not in a convenient-to-reach other side of town and if we only need one thing that doesn’t require refrigeration then it’s something that we can just order from Amazon and so the whole Wild Oats Experience of shopping has mostly been swept away.

Trader Joe’s is down by the evil Spock mirror image Costco and so we go there, from time to time, to get some vanilla ice cream and anything else we might need but the vibe is like if Wild Oats turned it up a notch or two and instead of feeling like I’m 26, I’m feeling like a guy who wants to feel like he’s 26.

At least the vanilla ice cream is good.

Well, in recent months, we discovered the grocery store “Sprouts”.

There’s one that is… well, not *CLOSE* to our house the way that the boring grocery stores are, but out of our way in a way that feels appropriate for the amount of pinky extension expected.

So, Sprouts has become part of our grocery rotation in recent weeks. Now, here’s the crazy part… IT’S NOT BAD.

Now, it’s not *PERFECT*. They don’t have jalapeño cream cheese and they don’t have some of the other things that *I* consider staples but, and here’s the important part, they have stuff that the rest of our household considers staples and so it’s perfect enough. They have the berries that are preferred and, in a pleasant rhyme, they have the dairy that is preferred and so it’s the place we go.

Now, on a recent visit, I found myself in line behind a single guy who was talking to the checkout lady like he was kinda hitting on her. Not in an inappropriate way, mind. She seemed to really be appreciative of the attention and I found myself rooting for them as I was standing there with a half-full cart. “Shoot your shot, guy”, I found myself thinking. Maribou asked for the car keys so she could sit and listen to the radio and I shrugged and gave her the keys and, after a minute or two, I found myself putting my stuff on the conveyor belt and was talking to the same checkout lady.

Now I walked up thinking that I was fiftyish years old and somewhat obviously married and I just watched these two kiddos flirt and I was finished rooting for them and now I just wanted to buy my food and rejoin Maribou at the car and drive home.

And then I realized that the two people ahead in me were not flirting with each other, the checkout lady was just kinda like that. We discussed different kinds of yogurt. We discussed the rhubarb that I was buying and talking about the different things that you could make with rhubarb that you make in the crock pot… you can put it on ice cream, you can put it on yoghurt, you can put it in some phyllo and serve it with some haloumi cheese…

And I realized that the person behind me in line was thinking “shoot your shot, guy” and I checked out and apologized to Maribou and we went home and I put the groceries away.

Anyway… if you miss Wild Oats (without missing Whole Foods), then you should check out Sprouts. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get the flirty checkout lady.

So… What’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “The *GOOD* Yoghurt”, photo taken by Maribou.)