Valentine's Day at the supermarket

Sunday, February 14

Valentine's Day is special to a lot of people.  And I saw this at the supermarket.

Today, the only money I spent was at the supermarket.  And not in Lansdale.  Because we don't have a supermarket..  I was up in Green Lane, so I stopped by Henning's Market in Harleysville on the way home.

What the heck is this?

I love shopping on a day when the market is full of men who might otherwise not see the inside of a supermarket.  The cluelessness is truly outstanding.  Men who have promised to make their sweetie a special meal.  And then wander around the market wondering why they can't find breadcrumbs in the bakery.  Or asking the stock boy if he knows how to bake a potato.

I do have to admit, I felt a bit clueless in the produce section.  Because Henning's had a fruit?  vegetable? on a display that I had never seen before.  Pictured here.  Please help me, because I have never seen anything like this before in my life.

Now mind you, it was the only one there.  Sitting all by itself near other produce items I could easily identify.  There was no sign and no price tag,.  There was no label on it.

It looked eerily like Audrey II at the beginning of Little Shop of Horrors.  You know, before it started wanting human blood and eating people.

I almost bought it just for fun, but was a little freaked out that I would wake up and find it gnawing my foot off.

Truly not wanting to become like Seymour Krelborn in the movie, I passed up on owning what might turn out to be the seed pod of some intergalactic monster.

So if anyone out there knows what this really, is, please let me know.  So I can sleep easy knowing that an alien invasion has not startled at a local supermarket.

Lansdale Shopping Score:  Zero (I would have if I could have, but it’s something not available in the borough)

But we're here to talk about shopping in Lansdale!  It's just hard to do that when the only shopping I did was in a supermarket.

We used to have quite a few supermarkets.  Before they turned into the super-sized food emporiums of today.

Here's one reason we don't have a supermarket.  We don't have enough room.  Enough room on a busy street.  Enough room on a busy street with extra room for tons of parking. Enough room on a busy street with extra room for tons of parking and all of the space needed for the stores that now need to go along with a supermarket.

Because supermarkets have turned into the biggest box of the big box stores.

Think about the supermarkets that we Lansdale residents shop at.  Here's a map:


View Lansdale Area Supermarkets in a full screen map

So what do we learn from this?  Supermarkets have to have more than groceries.  They need cafes nowadays.  Flower shops.  Banks.  Prepared food sections.  They need acres and acres of parking spaces.

They need to be on a busy road.

Now we have a busy road.  State Route 63, which is known as Main Street in our borough.  We just don't have a parcel of land big enough.  Clemens market did have something close when it was in the Hillcrest shopping center.  But the store space and parking lot turned out to be just too small for the design of a modern supermarket.

Let's also look at what supermarkets need today.  They need to be attached to or adjacent to a strip of other stores.  It's a symbiotic relationship like remora fish and great white sharks.  One feeds off the other and they both benefit from the relationship.

Again, Clemens and the Hillcrest center had that.  But just not big enough by today's standards.

Let's also look at the Acme just outside of the northwest end of the borough.  Enough room for a large (but not as large as newer supermarkets) market.   Decent amount of parking.  But no room for the ancillary stores that people now seem to want with their supermarkets.  And I think that's why the Acme seems to be suffering a bit.

So what's your thought?  Do we just suck it up and live with the fact that we are a town without a supermarket?  Do we just keep on spending our grocery money in other municipalities?

Or do we go completely outside of the box and find a developer that wants to turn the Madison Lot into a mixed use mecca - a parking garage topped with a supermarket and other stores.  Perhaps apartments or condos over that.

Armies travel on their stomachs.  So do towns.  I'd love to see a supermarket in the heart of our town.  One we could both drive and walk to.  Out of all the Madison Lot proposals I've seen, I haven't seen one like this.

And I would like to.

So, today’s score:

ONE needs not fulfilled by a Lansdale establishment.

Let’s see what today brings!