Retail Watchers

I was recently in Vancouver over the long US Thanksgiving holiday and checked out Urban Fare. It is a part of the Overwaitea Foods Group of stores. Most of Overwaitea stores are conventional or discount stores. But Urban Fare is reminiscent to Metropolitan Market here in Seattle. I know someone who used to be in management with Metropolitan and he told me that when Overwaitea was developing the concept, they came to observe Metropolitan Market. They did their homework well. While they do have mainstream grocery items, there is a great emphasis on fresh, local, organic and unique. They have a very nice service departments. There is also a extensive salad bar and hot food bar. While I believe that they all have some kind of espresso bar, this particular store had a licensed concept Starbucks. But all in all, it was a cool store to shop in!

This concept is fairly similar to Mariano's (just higher priced). I wasn't too impressed with that group's "Save On Foods" Stores if I am getting the ownerships right so I am glad to hear they have another concept. "Save On Foods" definitely had issues (looks like Wal Mart has caused major damage) and was not the innovative cutting edge store I remember it was when I went to Canada in 1992.