Fresh Market, Anyone?

This is a Fresh Market near the Kenwood area of Cincinnati, Ohio

By Kevin Williams

So, I had some time to kill the other day when we were waiting for our food at a restaurant.  Instead of holding a squirming, screaming Bea until the food arrived I decided to walk next door to a Fresh Market with Bea and let her explore.  I told my wife to text me when the food arrived.

I'm someone who has studied the grocery store business quite a bit and, geez, I just can't quite figure out where this one "fits."

Fresh flowers....but you can get fresh flowers at almost any grocery, just not seeing the niche of this store...

Organic melons for $3.99 a piece

Produce looked good but the store was pretty empty...

Fresh olive bar

Bea checks out the chicken

It would seem that Whole Foods has the upscale market pretty much cornered, is that what Fresh Market is trying to compete with?   I once saw cantaloupe melon on sale at an Amish farm for .25 cents a melon.  Here they were $3.99 a melon.  Granted, it is out of season....but still....

The store was pretty empty and it was about 6 p.m., you'd think a busy after work time for people to stop in and grab some milk (organic, of course) or bread (artesian).

You can read more about Fresh Market here in their Wikipedia entry.  They have over 100 locations scattered across the USA which, to me, seems to be super inefficient. Getting organic cucumbers to one store in Oklahoma?  Just doesn't seem like could possibly offer a competitive price with all your stores scattered as opposed to being bunched together and all the efficiencies that would bring.

So, have any of you actually shopped at Fresh Market?  What do you think of it?

Grind your own....