The Observer motored to the wilds of Wellesley last week to eyeball the new, intergalactic Roche Bros. supermarket there, the one with the refrigerated natural dog food and organic baby foods.
Most impressive are its open vistas. Forget what's on the shelves, space is everything. Now I've always judged a supermarket by the width of its aisles. If I can make snow angels on the floor between the porcini olive oil and the tofu burgers, I'm feeling good about a place.
The aisle spread in Wellesley is a healthy 8 feet, and there are long stretches flanking the aisles that could handle a spirited game of in-line hockey. This largesse should reduce the traditional grocery cart traffic jams that make me ache for Dinty Moore out of a can from the nearest Lil Peach. (Don't start with me on the kids in plastic cars.)
There's beaucoup natural light at Roche-Wellesley. The town insisted and Roche Bros. made it happen. You find none of the dim holes that exist at the Shaw's in the Prudential Center, billed as the urban state of the art supermarket when it opened in 2003. (Its brutal concrete floor remains shocking.)
Roche-Wellesley also provides maps. You laugh. I say smart. You need one to find "New Age Beverages," "Bird Needs" or the 30-foot wall of Stonewall Kitchen condiments. (Did Stonewall score or what?) I also like the brief histories of items like Grana Padano, recognized by the Observer as the greatest cheese in the history of the world.
David Murphy, V.P. of store operations for the whole company, showed me 14 doors of natural frozen foods. I love the guy because when pressed, he conceded he doesn't know what "natural" means anymore than I do. I don't think anyone does.
I'm not here to push Roche Bros. They run good supermarkets. So do other outfits. I am here to note that this behemoth, which opened Jan. 11, is the latest entry around here in the fevered competition to out-Whole Foods Whole Foods.
This race is nothing new, but it has gone white hot in recent years. Every town wants a Whole Foods pretender, if not the real thing. It's a major status symbol and a boon for the local housing market.
This all began in 1975, when a funky little store with a creaking wood floor named Bread & Circus opened up on Harvard Street in Brookline. People were quickly seduced by its offerings.
B&C became a club for people who cared about unadulterated food, a melting pot of folks reeking of patchouli in black Vietnamese pajamas, women in cashmere and men in Andover Shop suits. America was beginning its transformation into a foodie culture that transcended socioeconomic whatever. (With this change, alas, came the plague of absurdist wine snobs.)
Everyone watched B&C, which was bought by Texas-based Whole Foods Markets in 1992, devour market share of the supermarket biz with healthy fare you couldn't get anywhere else. If you were talking organic, you were talking Bread & Circus. (I still miss the name.)
Surprise, everyone else copied B&C. But Whole Foods has always been one step ahead of the field. Last year, it opened a 70,000-square-foot, two-story monster in lower Manhattan that boasts a walk-in, climate-controlled cheese room and goodies like a french fries station. Roche-Wellesley, in contrast, is a 38,000-square-foot peewee sans fromagerie.
Still, Roche-Wellesley is nearing Whole Foods in presentation and range of upscale food. "It's as close to Whole Foods you can get without being Whole Foods," confirms Mary Doherty, a Newtonville resident who likes Roche-Wellesley. She cites details like the gray plastic coating on the grocery carts that compared favorably with the unforgiving metal elsewhere.
Roche Bros. opened a relative biggie in West Roxbury six years ago that was considered suburban cutting edge at the time in the non-Whole Foods sweepstakes. Thirty-six thousand square feet. Lots of prepared food. Good meat and fish. But nothing fancy, reflecting the down-to-earth culture of the community. Today, it looks quaint.
I'm convinced there are more old-fashioned sweets in West Roxbury than in Wellesley. I see none of the $30 bottles of olive oil you find in Wellesley, thank God. None of Wellesley's dry aged beef either. (Ditto for Shaw's at the Pru.) And so forth.
Murphy says the customer traffic is larger at Roche-West Roxbury than at Wellesley, and while the Wellesley foot traffic will surely grow, he believes the new store will attract fewer people who spend more money. Wellesley is Wellesley is Wellesley.
Like
What we've got here is a retail food arms race that will only heat up. There will be more Whole Foods pretenders, more self-contained, city-state food cultures that provide everything. I'm personally waiting for organic pedicures near the Belgian endives.
Then at some point, we'll retrieve our sanity and return to planet earth.
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.
