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We were in that store about 2 weeks ago. Customer service left a lot to be desired so I'm not too surprised. The people at the Greenville store were much more helpful.
Tough times for kitchen stores on that side of town with Mary and Martha's closing a few months back.
True, but the markup in kitchen stores is pretty outrageous. No surprise that they're struggling against the tide of online retail. My mother went to Charleston Cooks! to shop for new high-end cookware and her eyes bulged out of her head when she saw the price. She went online and found the same set on Amazon for several hundred dollars less. She likes to support local businesses, but she couldn't justify the additional $500-600.
Unless you need something today, it makes much more sense to order kitchen stuff online.
I agree. I bet they had a lot of "showrooming" going on there. I would go to Mary & Martha's for things I needed that day like you said. At least there, you really felt like the money was staying local.
I'm hoping that spot becomes a restaurant what with the kitchen already built in so conversion wouldn't be too onerous. I have a feeling though it'll be national retail instead
Charleston Cooks did do a good job of carrying some local SC products such as the Bulls Bay Saltworks stuff (Bulls Bay Saltworks), which is abosolutely amazing. I guess I will be stopping by to see how much of a discount they have on the food products.
The problem with having and supporting gourmet food stores and stores which specialize in carrying organic produce is in states like South Carolina, people's taste buds are geared towards sweet and generally bland tasting fattening food. There is little demand for organic food here. All people care about are "good tasting food" at a good price which is why Publix is so successful here. South Carolinians either don't care or are not aware of the crucial importance of eating whole organic non genetically engineered; non irradiated and non pesticide sprayed foods.
The only reason Charleston can keep upscale gourmet restaurants in business is because it is a tourist destination and tourists have much more discriminating palates when it comes to food than the majority of South Carolinians do. The Whole Foods Market in Mount Pleasant I would say (having lived in the area before moving to Greenville) was slightly better when it came to carrying a variety of foods and produce -- but still couldn't hold a candle to other states that had had their stores for a longer period of time. Generally those states, such as I believe in GA, there used to be a chain of markets called Harry's that Whole Foods bought out. In NC it was Wellspring Markets if I remember correctly and in MA and RI it was Bread and Circus.
When I first moved to SC (to Charleston), I couldn't help but notice the number of items Whole Foods didn't even bother to carry. Whereas their stores in VA and TX where I have relatives and the stores in MA and RI where I shopped all the time before moving here were always stocked full of them.
A few years ago after moving to Greenville I had an interesting conversation with a regional manager of Whole Foods who happened to be there when I was shopping. I explained how long I'd been shopping at all their stores even before they were bought out by Whole Foods and also visited the original Whole Foods in Austin Texas in the early 1980s before they were a national chain and he told me that after opening the Greenville store, they learned that they had done so something like 8 years too early! He said Greenville even with all its growth didn't possess a demand for a store like Whole Foods. I told him I actually agreed with him as I had met many people in my neighborhood who still had not yet even been into the store who had lived in Greenville for DECADES and it was ME the newbie to Greenville trying to turn them on to it.
It is too bad that ORGANIC NON-GMO foods aren't more of a priority for people in SC, then you'd see more Whole Foods stores and the like.
Funny. Whole Foods said they had looked eight years for the right spot in Columbia.
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