Is Fairway getting greedy?

that's 16% increase on Fairway tomato sauce, 12% on olive oil & Coffee. Either the CPI is wrong, or Fairway is marking up.

fairway is no bargain. it only offers the convenience of getting everything you need in one crowded unpleasant venue

Yep, noticed it last week. Also, UWS location is about 20-30% more expensive than uptown Fway & Red Hook Fway.

" . . . or have they just decided the market will bear a higher price."

Isn't this the point of capitalism?

Are people cooking more these days instead of eating out? Maybe they're testing to see what the market will bear, as more people start cooking.

they need more money to expand into the burbs

That's just the UWS location. Uptown & RH are very pleasant.

I've noticed natural peanut butter has dropped from $3.19 to $2.99 at my local market.

The Broadway & Harlem store appear to charge the same.

Maybe they are looking to sell the franchise and looking to improve their profit margins.

There is nothing like Fresh Direct!! Never have to drag heavy bags home, incredible convenience!

so they appear to raise the price of a few items (which given the source of this information may or may not be true) and now they are looking to sell the franchise? this is a typical example of riversider exaggeration and innuendo. and, of course, lead by a baseless headline.

Fairway is cheaper than Fresh Direct on the items I buy, probably why they are raising prices.

wait---i heard a rumor that they're trying to sell their business, those greedy bastards.

Could be your dollar is just buying less these days, my friend.

I lov the sour dough rolls. they always run out though. good steak selection too. Inflation is here..not surprised they raised prices.

thought this interesting..

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
Seasonally adjusted changes from
preceding month
Un-
adjusted
12-mos.
Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sep. ended
2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 Sep.
2009

Food at home............. -.4 -.6 -.5 .0 -.5 .0 -.3 -2.5

"they need more money to expand into the burbs"

Why would anyone in the burbs shop at Fairway when they can go to a supermarket that is 10 times the size, like Pathmark, A& P, etc?

All imported foodstuff (coffee, tomato sauce, olive oil are mostly imported) will be more expensive when the dollar slides.
Switch to canola oil, American cheese and peanut butter to save your wallet, if not your health.

Makes sense. Also points to the inflationary aspect of a weak dollar.

There already is a very large sized Fairway in the Woodbury-Syosset area in Nassau County. They carry different merchandise, a little more organic and more high end, than the local supermarkets. It's a very popular store.

RS, you often sound so green it's hard to know if you are joking, or truly just fell from the proverbial turnip truck. Honestly, you should read a serious primer on economics rather than waste your time ranting about the rain.

I would pay double current prices at Fairway and Zabars if I didn't have to deal with those nasty ass women that shop there. If any of you ever want to meet me, just hang around the cheese area. I am the guy who shouts about 6 times, Excuse me! Sorry is a word, ever heard of it! Say excuse me when you bump into me! Usually the old cheese guy just shakes his head and says come on, give me a break, and I wonder off.

How come nobody told me you have to be nasty and rude to shop at these stores? Why do most people there know this and I don't?

LOL My beef is the person with the wayward shopping cart who has no idea there are other shoppers around

I heard the family that owns Fairway recently sold a big stake in the company to a hedge fund. They are using the proceeds to finance their expansion into the suburbs, which includes a store in Pelham, I think.

Maybe the hedge-fund partner is pushing them to raise prices.

While there are some wonderfully creative theories here on why Fairway prices are going up, my experience has been that most grocery stores usually raise prices during the holiday season. If you haven't noticed, next week is Thanksgiving, and after that, the deluge...

I think grocerty store managers expect that "price elasticity" increases as the crazed hosts of family functions and seasonal parties scramble like mad to satiate holiday appetites.

Pretty much the same principle is at work in the usual run-up in prices for Matzoh in the month before Passover.

Wal Mart stores are having price deflation. Maybe the pricing guy was drunk?

are they selling too?

OP: weak dollar?

Alpie: because so many people from northern New Jersey were shopping the Harlem store, they opened one in Paramus. I haven't been, but you live right near there, so go check it out and report back.

Others, yes the Fairway family sold off a controlling interest to investors a couple of years ago, and they plan to open stores similar to the Long Island and Paramus ones ... slowly and carefully. The only announced one right now is Pelham Manor in Westchester -- with wine!

Correction: they've also announced Stamford and Douglaston.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/realestate/commercial/04fairway.html

Looking Beyond the City for Growth

By SANA SIWOLOP
Published: November 3, 2009

PELHAM MANOR, N.Y. — Among supermarkets, Fairway Market, the popular Manhattan-based food emporium, is a destination retailer.
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Alan Zale for The New York Times

Howard Glickberg, chief executive of Fairway, outside the company’s new store in Pelham Manor, N.Y.

What started in 1933 as a modest 3,500-square-foot fruit and vegetable market on the Upper West Side now includes five stores in operation and three more in the works. It already claims 10 million shoppers a year, who are said to drive an average of 17 miles to reach its stores.

It probably does not help that new Fairway stores have turned up in obscure sites. In 1995, the retailer opened a sprawling Harlem store in a former meatpacking plant that sits on 12th Avenue, partly under the West Side Highway. And in 2006, it opened a store in a large Civil War-era coffee warehouse located on what was then a desolate stretch of waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Last week, Fairway’s chief executive, Howard Glickberg, a grandson of the company’s founder, Nathan Glickberg, happily led a visitor through the still-vacant interior of a new 75,000-square-foot store scheduled to open next spring in this village of 5,500 in Westchester County.

The store is part of Post Road Plaza, a freshly overhauled 280,000-square-foot shopping center. Along with the recently redeveloped Pelham Manor Shopping Plaza across the street, the plaza is expected to help to transform a still largely industrial corner of the county.

At Post Road Plaza, Fairway will take some of the space that once belonged to Kmart and before that to the discount retailers Caldor and Korvette. At 75,000 square feet, the new store will be twice as large as Fairway’s longstanding flagship store on Broadway, between 74th and 75th Streets. It will have access to some 1,300 parking spaces and will offer a 25-foot-wide main aisle and the company’s first in-house wine store.

Fairway was a retail pioneer in West Harlem and Red Hook, and its entry injected new vigor into both neighborhoods.

The company’s choice of store sites has long been shaped by a particular set of real estate needs. Unlike larger chains, Fairway does not rely on a large central distribution facility. Instead, in the interest of freshness, most products are shipped directly to its stores, which means the stores need access to major highways and sizable storage space.

With the exception of customers of the Upper West Side store, most customers come by car, so Fairway also looks for sites with parking for at least 400 vehicles.

Leasing costs are important too. Although the company continues to introduce amenities like in-house cafes (the Upper West Side store turns into an informal steakhouse at night), deal-conscious shoppers are its bedrock.

“We create our own neighborhoods — it’s hard to go into the toniest towns and find 75,000-square-foot spaces with big parking lots,” said Aaron J. Fleishaker, the vice president of real estate operations.

Lately, Fairway’s expansion’s plans have quickened because of a major new investor and because of a desire to take advantage of the softer rents that prevail in the New York area.

In 2007, Sterling Investment Partners, a private equity company based in Westport, Conn., took a controlling interest in Fairway from the founding family, first investing $150 million, and then at least $30 million more to help finance expansion, said Charles W. Santoro, a managing partner and co-founder of Sterling.

Before this infusion, Fairway used to open a new store roughly every three years, but now its goal is to open three stores every two years. Mr. Santoro said the company’s sales, now more than $500 million annually, were growing “very rapidly.”

Mr. Glickberg added, “Eventually, we want to have about 15 stores within a 75- to 100-mile radius of Manhattan.” Rather than owning its own stores, he said, the company now prefers signing long-term leases.

In the suburbs around New York, new Fairway stores have turned into important focal points for retail developments that are remaking themselves completely or that sit in areas where the shopping waters are still uncharted.

Last March, the company opened a 52,000-square-foot store in Paramus, N.J., at the Fashion Center, a once-struggling enclosed mall that was recently redeveloped to house a number of big-box tenants, all with their own outside entrances.

To build a large square-shaped store at the Fashion Center, Fairway had to convert the mall’s little-used common areas and help two smaller tenants move. But Fairway also needed at least 500 parking spaces, so it took a spot that did not face Route 17, a major shopping artery. “We’re actually on the wrong side of the shopping center,” Mr. Glickberg said. “The landlord there owes me a big favor.”

East of Manhattan, the company has a 52,000-square-foot store in Plainview on Long Island, and it is working to open its first Queens store in what is still, for now, a Waldbaum’s supermarket in Douglaston.

Fairway’s largest store to date is to appear in Stamford, Conn., in the once heavily industrial South End, a peninsula that sits south of both Interstate 95 and the city’s downtown. There, Fairway is building an 80,000-square-foot store from the ground up at the 80-acre Harbor Point mixed-use development, which changed hands last year, passing from Antares Investment Partners, based in Greenwich, to Building and Land Technology, which is based in Norwalk.

At Harbor Point, Fairway is both the anchor store and the only retailer that has so far committed to space. Penny P. Wickey, a principal at Saugatuck Commercial Real Estate of Westport, Conn., the retail leasing agent for Harbor Point, said the development would eventually have some 350,000 square feet of retail space.

In addition to looking for store sites, Fairway is seeking space for a large central bakery, because the bakery at its Harlem store, which supplies other stores, will most likely be too small to serve its needs when it has eight markets or more.

Mr. Glickberg, meanwhile, would like the company to begin lining up new sites to follow the Douglaston store. “If the right space comes along, we’d grab it,” he said. “I don’t have a problem taking space, paying rent on it for a year and keeping it dark.”

I've already been to Fway once today, and I'm going again in a few minutes. Argh. I agree with the very unpleasant shoppers at Fway UWS. All the curmudgeons hang around there.

well credit is tight so probably a combination of weaker dollar & self financing. On a number of items the deals are far better at Zabars.

so...your point? or are you just blathering as usual?

Hey columbiacountyboy, are you angry that you are alive or just angry that a world exists?

You have no point, no counterpoint, no facts, nothing interesting. The sum total of your contribution to this thread was:

1) so they appear to raise the price of a few items (which given the source of this information may or may not be true) and now they are looking to sell the franchise? this is a typical example of riversider exaggeration and innuendo. and, of course, lead by a baseless headline.
2) wait---i heard a rumor that they're trying to sell their business, those greedy bastards.
3) are they selling too?
4) so...your point? or are you just blathering as usual?

too funny p09. At UWS location, i don't think full sized shopping carts should be allowed between 10am-8pm. they need to get the mini whole foods carts. but, my BIGGEST peeve about that store is the guys stocking. Get the Fuc$%$%$% out of my way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why are you backing into me? I have a watermelon in my stomach and a child in a stroller...how do you NOT see me!!??!! I swear its the workers that make getting around that place impossible.

What are you going to do when you have to take 2 to Fway?

:)
i haven't figured that out yet. I really like going 2-3 times a week. I'm afraid i'll have to be more efficient on weekends :(. will probably go to WF @97 more often too since it's much more accomodating w/ a double wide stroller. this is depressing for me.

This is an interesting discussion, but if you want to see very high prices, try shopping on the Upper East Side at either Grace's Market or Eli's. I bring 4 peaches to the register and it costa almost $10 (I only did that once and learned my lesson). I stop in to Fairway every time that I am on the West Side because despite the crowds, the neverending stocking of the shelves, etc., the prices are so much better that it's worth carrying the groceries home on the crosstown bus. I always see people bringing back groceries from Fairway to the East Side, but in these years, I don't remember ever seeing anyone on the bus bringing groceries to the West Side from Graces or Eli's (of course, Zabar's is on the West Side).

It's true, Fairway does have good prices on produce. I've had that ten-dollar-for-four-peaches experience myself, only mine was at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods is pretty, and I go there once a week for their whole wheat bread (amazingly good stuff) but I try to avoid getting their produce -- it is rarely ripe, and always overpriced.

Fairway on the other hand is good for fresh fruits and veggies, and olives and olive oil, and some of their deli items. Like momma said, you have to shop around.

If anyone gets the chance to shop at the Red Hook Fairway, I highly recommend it. It is a joy.

GG: I have to disagree with you on the Whole Foods bread. That is pretty much the weakest department in Whole Foods. The bread lacks a real crust and is gooey on the inside. I think they are doing frozen bake off bread, which is why the product is mushy (I think this texture problem is caused by allowing the bread to thaw a bit before getting it into the oven). You have to go to a real bakery to get bread.

And for the Red Hook Fairway, I recommend early Saturday morning, around 9am. You have the store almost to yourself (at least compared to normal), and everything is nice and fresh. No line for the cheese guy either, and he's really helpful.

Another comp - French gourmet mayo, same brand, same size - bought for $5.69 at Zabar's 4 months ago, I just bought the same thing at Citarella today for $4.99.

UWSmom: sorry to go all baby on you but have you thought about getting the Phil & Ted's stroller. Double wide can be a real pain. I also transitioned my eldest to a buggy board as soon as the little one could ride in the single. And I retired the buggy board when she was 3.5.

Zabar's is particularly good for cheese (pricewise).

Is the Phil & Ted stroller similar in design to the Zabar's double-decker shopping cart?

AH: yes, I'm sure you've seen them around the city.

Meat & Fish - Citarella has WAY better product that keeps for longer than stuff from Fway. I have stopped buying all meat & fish from Fway unless it's late at night and Citarella is closed.

Produce - I find Fway hit and miss - sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not - I've tried to keep eating local when it comes to produce, so I have really cut down on exotic/out of season fruits & veg.

Bread - Get bagels from Fway (they have mini-bagels), I buy a lot of Eli's bakery bread.

I go to Fway mainly for the non-perishable stuff, dairy, dry goods.

Citarella is definitely better for Fish(quality and selection) and sometimes for vegetables(price), but Fairway has some great produce. They seem to have cut back on some very convenient items last few years, like prepared salads and such.

I am resolutely anti-Fresh Direct because I believe in keeping local shopping options in business by patronizing them (despite the cranky shoppers at Fway). Not to mention the huge amount of packaging FD uses, the huge trucks parked on the street for hours, and the (unsavory) reputation some FD workers have developed for theft.

The produce in Citarella on the West Side must be much better than the produce in Citarella on the East Side which is very inconsistent in quality. Agreed that Citarella fish and meat is very good, although their prepared food at the appetizing counter is terrible on the East Side.

Lobster: I'm not a fan of prepared foods - how fresh can it be, you know? A lot of the stuff is not hard to make at home. Produce at Citarella is okay - grapes are consistently better than at Fway (but more $, so you pick your poison).

nyc10023, I agree with you about the freshness of prepared foods, but sometimes I bring something home for my husband to eat for dinner if he's coming home late. I generally buy prepared foods from Grace's Marketplace which has far superior prepared foods, but I know it isn't on the West Side.

One thing to note is that we are spoiled in much of NYC for quality compared to other metro areas without a large farming hinterland. I am often disappointed in other cities with the quality of produce.

nyc10023, you seem very knowledgeable about food. Can you recommend a not terribly expensive vegetarian restaurant on the Upper West Side? I'm on the UWS often and would love to find somewhere to have a good meal.

small, can be noisy: http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/ozu/

I'm not vegetarian, don't know of any good veg. eats below 86th - AH, can you help? Maybe up by Columbia.

10023 - i know :). deliberated long and hard about doubles. do not like the infant (0-6 mos) options with a P&T. Big sis is only 18 mos now so i really wanted one where i could maximize comfort for both (reclines, etc). Of all the places i go, Fairway would be the biggest problem and it's something i can work around.

AH, thanks for your recomendation and I will definitely try the restaurant. I'm always amazed at how many kosher mixed with other cuisine restaurants there are in Manhattan. When I was younger, the only kosher or kosher style restaurants were Jewish delis. I'm not vegetarian either. I just like that type of food.

I don't know of any near Columbia.

These sound interesting:
http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/mana/
http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/peacefood-cafe/

And then there's the bizarro http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/ayurveda-cafe/ which I've eaten in a few times. It's kinda culty, and the meal is a fixed menu -- i.e. no decisions, no choices, they bring you like seven or so little bowls of stuff, some good and some bland. You can get free seconds of any particular thing that you liked.

Wow, 2 under 19mos. That's brave.

not brave. stupid!

You could easily have 3 under 3.

The somewhat dive-y Jerusalem on Broadway and 105th makes an excellent falafel, which I assume is vegetarian, although the restaurant is not.

ali r.

Maoz is a fast-food falafel joint which has great green-chili hot sauce to which I'm addicted. Their falafel isn't bad.

maybe, just maybe.........
They woke up one day and realized what a difficult business it is to deliver quality produce and the such on the UWS and deal with the thousands of A-hole customers who, in fact need therpy but, choose to walk into Fairway and break the balls of just about every employee. Bitch, bitch, bitch your way to higher prices. Where you going to go? Whole foods? want to discuss over pricing? As for prepared foods...going to need a lot of confidence in the health of the cooks and food handlers. We all know that they have excellent health coverage and would never come to work if they felt ill. Those plastic gloves should keep us all safe.

trader joe's!! just as crowded, but without the cart in the heels and calves effect. what is it with these people?

isn't there one opening on the UWS? i know one is coming to the sixth avenue B&N site, which i hope will have a calming effect on the union square one.

Trader Joe's was supposedly going to take space in the building going up at 72nd and Broadway. Don't know whether they still are or ever were.

All my commercial RE sources say no.

http://curbed.com/archives/2008/10/13/tjs_does_uws.php

fairly recent update. but i don't know if it's accurate.

If you want high quality fruits and vegetables you cannot buy from Fresh Direct. Everything is pre-packaged or some guy in the warehouse picks them out, so there is a % of each fruit or vegetable that you have to throw away. My wife is a vegetarian, so this makes a big difference. Every single time I have bought from Fresh Direct I end up throwing away 25% of the fruits/vegetables because they are nasty. The price is lower, but not after you throw away the crap.

well SkinnyNSweet, it's a matter of taste. I do kinda get what you are talking about, Whole Foods' bread is not crusty.

But -- what I like about the organic whole wheat is it has no chemicals, and is truely whole wheat bread. The only ingredients are whole wheat flour, water salt and yeast.

Contrast that with most so-called "whole wheat" bread -- in most cases the first ingredient is "wheat flour," which means white flour. Refined white flour. You have to read down the list of ingredients a bit before you find the "whole wheat flour" that they use to justify calling it whole wheat.

I realize most people don't care about this but I do. Refined white flour (aka "wheat flour") is inflammatory and causes your blood sugar to spike, which makes you fat.

It's very hard in general to get truely unrefined wheat products. I am happy that WFs actually makes and sells one.

sorry, 10023, i just noticed that link was 2008, not 2009. typical curbed, they linked it to an article a couple of days ago. still, my reading skills are wanting.

Curbed was right about the 6th avenue TJ's way before anyone else. I would guess they are right about the UWS one as well.

Re: Vegetarian food north of 86th.

Try Hummus Place on B'way btwn 98th & 99th. They have a limited menu but the food is delicious. It is cheap. I personally prefer the shakshuka (w/ halumi cheese please!) but the Hummus is excellent.

10023 - not funny or at all enticing, but certainly possible. my body needs a break. then i'd like to go mia farrow style.

sadly, i don't think Trader Joes is coming. went to their website about a month ago and UWS is not listed as a new location. i'm disappointed.

Isn't there also a Hummus Place on Columbus between 74/75?

There's one on Amsterdam between 74th/75th, a few steps down from the street. Pretty good, but you get about three times as much hummus as I can handle at one sitting.

AR, it's been all over the web that TJ is not coming to UWS in the last 3 months.

Well, Friday I read something that indicated otherwise. I'm fairly certain they'd like to, si it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

Yes, Amst & 74/75. I love me some good hummus. Yorgo's organic is pretty good - Fairway $3.19 ;). would recommend the garlic and chive.

that would be an incredible location for a TJ. i hope it happens. sidenote: the neighborhood also needs a Container Store.

ali..hope you're enjoying your new home...

Veggie restaurants we like on UWS:
Ayurveda
Tandoori has great veg choices
Hummus Place
Buceo 95 has a fair number of vegetarian tapas choices
Blossom (though it's a bit pricey for dinner)
Peacefood is ok. Manu is too bland and haven't been to Ozu in years.
it's also totally worth a trip up to 125th between Lenox and 5th to eat at Uptown Juice Bar. Take the 2/3 to 125th get out on the SE corner and walk a half block. So good.

thanks julia! we got rid of EIGHT boxes this weekend (sadly still have a bunch to go..)

ali

I second Blossom. I've only ever had take-out a couple of times, but what I had was very tasty.

according to this article, TJs recently confirmed it is opening at 72nd and B'way.

http://www.observer.com/2009/real-estate/trader-joes-stakes-claim-sixth-avenue
Trader Joe's, as is its notoriously press-unfriendly wont, declined to comment for this story, except to remind The Observer that Trader Joe's has another "confirmed" store opening on 72nd Street.
...
This will bring the New York population of Trader Joe's to five: There's the original store on 14th Street; another Trader Joe's on Court Street in Brooklyn; a third Trader Joe's in Rego Park, Queens; a fourth Trader Joe's to open next year at Broadway and 72nd Street; and now this one on Sixth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd streets. (We suppose it's six if you count the wine shop on 14th Street.)

cool. hope it sticks.

http://westsideindependent.com/2009/09/03/trader-joes-arrival-is-uncertain/#more-1337

Barzini's (91 & Broadway, SW corner): produce, oils, cheeses, exellnt fruit, breads.

TJ person said "Not that I'm aware of". Yesterday.

Barzini's................every expiration date in the place is circa 2007

costco & trader joes, look mom...just like in the burbs!!!
Little by little we deconstruct the city and reform it as a high rise suburban neighborhood.
Remember when people came to the city for something special?
Oh how I hate the 'mallification' of this island.

and fairway's will be in Douglaston & is in Plainview.

Is the Pioneer market still around on Columbus or is it a starbucks now? I found myself shopping there a bit when I lived in the UWS for some alternative choices. Some years back for sure..

Patient - thanks for the Fairway flashback! I do not think I could shop there during prime shopping hours, because of that characteristic which you captured remarkably well.

Lobster: my $10 for 4 peach story: Amish Market in Hells' Kitchen - 5 vine tomatoes for $9. I was totally stunned and I can totally relate to that experience.

falco, i'm from the pacific nw. we've had tj's forever. no mallification there. you've got the wrong store if you're including tj's. of course, nyc also has dag's and gristedes and associated, which are far more chainified and far less value oriented.

take your pick. trader joe's or associated. trader joe's in manhattan thus far one. associateds, gristedes, etc. what would you pick? and i wouldn't blame the suburbs for rejecting the vast majority of our supermarkets. puke they are.

The Fairway in Plainview is far larger than the Broadway store, but also strangely insanely labyrinthian.

Pioneer still there. Fairway is awful. I have a feeling if anyone opened a decent alternative nearby, they'd do quite well.

Best grocery store in the city, hand's down, Agatha & Valentina at 79th and 1st. The layout and flow are amazing! Everything Fairway isn't, with much better quality. It was painful to move from the UES to the UWS for that reason alone.

I think I spent $50 on a loaf of bread and gallon of milk in Gristede's.

Pioneer IS still there and it's as delightful as I imgaine its always been ;)