I don't know why I listen to Hammerhead....
Frequent readers of this blog (a subset of the population whose existence I openly doubt) may recall how I was in despair last week, since the Larry's Market on Aurora had closed, and Gillen across the hall told me that they had gone under completely: "The chain was liquidated and the properties auctioned off", he wrote to me in an email.
I suppose I could have checked the 'Net for a Larry's homepage, or searched the Seattle Times news archive, what with my years of experience with Gillen's fanatical devotion to accurate reporting of substantiated facts--but I didn't. And tonight, having nothing better to do in the early evening and wanting to go somewhere, I decided to just drive to the one in Queen Anne to see for myself. Sure enough, they're open and doing fine. I went straight for the bakery, and grabbed up a loaf of French bread. Excellent! At checkout I asked the cashier about the Aurora store closing, and he said that one was gone, but the Queen Anne location has been bought by someone who was going to keep them open. What's more, he said they acquired all the recipes in the deal, so there wouldn't be any changes to their prepared food. Meaning, the best bread in town isn't going anywhere.
Once again, things aren't nearly as bad as Gillen makes them out.
Since the only confirmed readers of this page are in Pennsylvania, a little more detail about Larry's may be in order. They're a local chain of supermarkets, six in all, that really kicked off the specialty and organic food bit in the early 80's around here. To date, they have the best selection of just about everything in this town. And nice little touches, like a grinder where you can select various nuts for your own nutbutter; the Queen Anne one (I just noticed tonight) has a grinder where you can mix grains for your own flour. And they find some real out-of-the-way stuff: I rely on them also for my olive oil, maple syrup, and turkey bacon. These days, the QFCs and Safeways have taken that specialty theme and run with it, which I guess made it harder for Larry's to compete, but they were the first--and the store on Aurora was their flagship location, so there's a little bit of history lost. The Redmond and Tukwila locations will also fold--but the remaining three stores seem to have a future. That's some good news.
I suppose I could have checked the 'Net for a Larry's homepage, or searched the Seattle Times news archive, what with my years of experience with Gillen's fanatical devotion to accurate reporting of substantiated facts--but I didn't. And tonight, having nothing better to do in the early evening and wanting to go somewhere, I decided to just drive to the one in Queen Anne to see for myself. Sure enough, they're open and doing fine. I went straight for the bakery, and grabbed up a loaf of French bread. Excellent! At checkout I asked the cashier about the Aurora store closing, and he said that one was gone, but the Queen Anne location has been bought by someone who was going to keep them open. What's more, he said they acquired all the recipes in the deal, so there wouldn't be any changes to their prepared food. Meaning, the best bread in town isn't going anywhere.
Once again, things aren't nearly as bad as Gillen makes them out.
Since the only confirmed readers of this page are in Pennsylvania, a little more detail about Larry's may be in order. They're a local chain of supermarkets, six in all, that really kicked off the specialty and organic food bit in the early 80's around here. To date, they have the best selection of just about everything in this town. And nice little touches, like a grinder where you can select various nuts for your own nutbutter; the Queen Anne one (I just noticed tonight) has a grinder where you can mix grains for your own flour. And they find some real out-of-the-way stuff: I rely on them also for my olive oil, maple syrup, and turkey bacon. These days, the QFCs and Safeways have taken that specialty theme and run with it, which I guess made it harder for Larry's to compete, but they were the first--and the store on Aurora was their flagship location, so there's a little bit of history lost. The Redmond and Tukwila locations will also fold--but the remaining three stores seem to have a future. That's some good news.
posted by Russ the Librarian at 10:24 PM
1 Comments:
I fail to see how things are other than I said. The fact that one of the buyers is keeping several of the stores open doesn't change the fact that the chain went under and the properties were auctioned off.
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