This has made me a little sensitive about my beloved Mini Kroger on Guilford Ave in Broad Ripple proper. I split most of my actual food-buying...meat and produce and suchlike...between the Fresh Market around the corner and the new Fresh Thyme that went up on the canal in Broad Ripple, but I'd resolved to shift more of my sundries purchases to the little Kroger instead of the giant Meijer. You know, support the neighborhood institution and all.
Yesterday I had a pretty simple little list:
- Coffee Mate
- Worcestershire sauce
- Paper towels
- Cat litter
Now, I understand that what the store carries is limited by its size. There's no deli with olive, salad, and sushi bars. There's no pharmacy or cosmetics section. And that's cool, I really don't need all that; I just needed some staples.
So I grab a tiny cart and start wending my way through the narrow aisles. I'd already put a couple Monster Zeros and some bottled water in the cart by the time I got to the coffee aisle only to discover that they didn't have Coffee Mate. They had the house brand and some generic non-dairy creamer I'd never heard of, and they had a couple facings of the fat-free variety, but this wasn't for me and I wasn't about to gamble on buying the wrong thing.
Reluctantly I put my beverages back and parked the cart and headed to another store.
I'm a little worried about the future viability of the Mini Kroger. Shelf stocking was kinda haphazard and full of gaps and they were missing staples like Coffee Mate? I fear that the new Meijer and the Fresh Thyme will be the death of them.
