Editor’s Note: Inquiries to Mrs. Green’s Natural Market were referred to Natural Markets Food Group, the store’s corporate parent. Multiple calls to the switchboard failed to reach a person.
Dear Mrs. Green,
While I find myself writing an open letter to you, I cannot be sure if you exist beyond the suspicion that a market priding itself on wholesome natural foods devoid of artificial ingredients would not name itself after an artificial personage. Irrespective of your reality, I fear you might be embarrassingly out of touch — at least as far as operating your store in West Windsor might be concerned.
Melisande, my wife and health-conscious cook, valued her shopping experiences with your friendly staff, discovering so many tasty and nutritious items in your fresh and prepared food aisles. But the bulk of our local acquaintances continue to hang onto their beliefs that your prices and selections fall far short of their preferences. It doesn’t help that while you advertise that “more good food is coming” during some promised renovation, your empty shelves and shuttered display cases suggest that the “good food is going” and that your legal department is likely busy at work trying to find an escape clause in your lease with Irving Cyzner’s Windsor Plaza.
Perhaps the fault lies with your misunderstanding of our priorities here in West Windsor. Indeed our demographic suggests we are an informed and affluent community, and at first blush we should be a likely candidate to augment your 19 other store locations. In reality both here and in our surrounding communities, we are coldly hostile to local supermarkets — having driven out the Acme you replaced, the Superfresh in Plainsboro, Genardi’s in East Windsor, and the Thriftway in Robbinsville.
That having been accomplished, we have now set our gun sights on blasting away any newcomer who threatens to thwart our efforts to rid central New Jersey of any supermarket that dares to occupy less area than a football field. So beware, because the size of your own store wouldn’t even reach the 50 yard line, and it looks to be shrinking even further.
In your case it’s not just a matter of size, but our own predilection for status, which is based more on the stainless steel facades and granite countertops in our kitchens, than the quality of the foods we prepare in them. And with our budgets further strained by keeping freshly minted SUVs and crossovers parked conspicuously in our driveways and at the train station, there’s little cash left over for premium foods that the kids won’t eat while texting and gaming.
Besides, who needs a local market anyway? With all those fancy vehicles, we need a place to drive them and show them off, or to spend a dollar’s worth of gas to save a nickel on a can of soup. It’s what makes the hassle of cutting through the congestion at Nassau Park and Mercer Mall worth it, even if we have to settle for schlepping our grocery bags a quarter mile in the pouring rain from Wegmans or ShopRite to the nearest parking space we could find. And that’s roughly equal to the world class distance between the hot dogs and the hot dog rolls in our favored megamarkets.
Unfortunately, we have so far been unable to liquidate all of our modest local markets just yet. What sustains them might be of interest to you. Most prominent among the survivors is McCaffery’s. Here’s a chain that has only a quarter as many stores as yours, so you’d think it would be easy to annihilate. Sadly, our efforts to remove it from our soil have been thwarted by a good selection of popular foods augmented by organic specialties, fair prices, and exceptional customer service. Your chances of meeting Mr. McCaffery himself in one of the aisles are limited only by his inability to frequent more than one of his five stores at a time.
There’s also Plainsboro’s Asian Food Market. The bomb craters in its parking lot, its fishy low tide aroma that greets you at the door, and its hunchback ceiling may tempt you to think that we eradicated this market years ago. Nevertheless, it remains an area favorite, catering to the preferences of our diverse ethnic population, as well as any folk who just happen to like egg rolls with their moo goo gai pan.
Satire aside, there must be some way to make your mission to sell wholesome and natural foods a success here in town, without stocking Pop Tarts and Captain Crunch on your shelves. But not even Whole Foods has that completely figured any more. Their latest plan is to lower their prices in an attempt to compete with all the stadium-sized megastores selling the same goods at discount. That takes an economy of scale that small chains simply don’t have, and one that Whole Foods will apply in their plans to open smaller markets that we hope won’t drive another nail into your coffin. Consumers have shuttered quite enough local stores, and throughout the state it has become such an epidemic that New Jersey now provides a healthy portion of financial incentives to open new food markets in our neighborhoods.
Melisande and I surely miss so many of our favorite Mrs. Green’s produce, meats, fish, deli, and pastries that were far and away superior to most that one could find elsewhere. We wish there were a way to bring them all back, followed by a phalanx of our friends and neighbors to support your efforts to feed us well. We are, after all, what we eat.
Alfred W. D’Alessio
Princeton Junction
