Sunday, March 2, 2008

Whole Foods N. Scottsdale Rd/101 now open

For those of us who don't live near the fairly awesome new Whole Foods Market on Ray Road in Chandler, this is great news. The new store in the Scottsdale 101 shopping center is open. I stopped by today and it's nearly a carbon copy of the Ray Road store. Some things are in slightly different places, but for the most part, all the goodness is there. One big exception for us, though, is they don't currently seem to carry Queen Creek Olive Oil like the other store does. While very disappointing, Tara and I happened to stumble across a place in N. Scottsdale that DOES have it, the Sweet Basil cooking store at Scottsdale and Shea, next to the Safeway or whatever supermarket is there in the NE corner.

One thing I did notice and tried to take a picture of but was yelled at by a store employee ("Sir, no pictures are allowed!") was a nice display of Vosges Chocolate bars and other Vosges products near the bread and gelato displays. They had the Bacon bar, Barcelona, Oaxaca, Red Fire(?), Sugarfree Red Fire, Naga, and I think some others. They also have the mini-bars of some of them too. The large bars are $6.99 each. We didn't notice a Vosges display in the Ray store.

Something that annoyed me was that a lot of the bars that had hot ready-made foods (the soup bar, salad bar, latino and global food bars) had nearly nothing labeled, so you didn't know exactly what you were looking at. Some had a few labels, but for the most part, they were absent. This could just be a start-up glitch. It does lead to a somewhat funny conversation I heard. I guy asked a blond girl who was refilling the rice at the latin bar if both the tamales were the same, since one was labeled, the other wasn't. She said they were both "ma-CHA-ca". I thought it was pronounced "ma-ha-ca" from my visits to Chino Bandito.

Still, given that they have 99% of what Ray Road has, it'll certainly save us a long drive.

Tara wasn't with me today. I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth to find her sitting on the couch, her laptop in her lap, completely asleep. Since she just paid good money for it, I had her put it aside and just go to bed. I'm pretty sure she's still sleeping.

4 comments:

Andy said...

Interesting about the pictures. No pictures allowed in a grocery store??? I wonder if that's just for the Vosges products? I took about five pics during my visit to the Chandler store last month and didn't have any problems. These were all general pics of the various store areas though.

Yankee1969 said...

It sounds like store policy. I don't think she really knew what I taking a picture of. She just saw me with my phone sideways and figured I was taking a picture. It's possible she was just a less-than-friendly store worker with delusions of power.

Geggie said...

Aha...the pics are funny, huh? I WFM is a store that I work with just about everyday and you are correct, they don't allow pictures. Althought, i don't really know what they can do to you. I suggest using your phone and looking over your shoulder.

Anonymous said...

After seeing your comments, I just had to mention the other Whole Foods Market in Scottsdale (not Phoenix, where the Mayo store is) they are at Raintree and the Loop 101. Much more friendly place to shop without the traffic problems at the Mayo store. And it doesn't take a half hour to walk to the wine department from the front door.