Serious Issues with Silly Sunflower Market

I’ve posted a num­ber of times within my Daily $$ posts about my grow­ing dis­like of the Whole Foods gro­cery chain and my desire to find a suit­able alter­na­tive.  A rel­a­tively new entry into the nat­ural foods gro­cery chain, at least in my area, is Sun­flower Farm­ers­Mar­ket.

Until recently I was aware of this chain only through quick men­tions by friends around town who live near one of the two stores they have in the metro area.  Then a few months ago the com­pany opened a new Sun­flower Mar­ket on my side of town.  It’s not close and it sure wouldn’t be con­ve­nient for quick gro­cery runs but if Sun­flower were to offer a strong enough incen­tive, I could prob­a­bly work it my weekly errand routine.

So this past Tues­day, after drop­ping off The Son and embark­ing on a day full of errands, I made a point of stop­ping to check out Sun­flower Market’s offerings.

The store’s tagline, it appears, is “Seri­ous Food… Silly Prices.”  I was excited to check out the fare and pre­pared to do some “seri­ous” shop­ping if the prices were “silly” enough.  So seri­ous, in fact, that I grabbed a big gro­cery cart on my way in.

Since my first inten­tion, nat­u­rally, was to com­pare prices I headed for items for which I keep cur­rent prices in my head.  My first stop was the cereal aisle where I checked out their Kashi inven­tory.  Yes, they carry Kashi Cin­na­mon Har­vest cereal.  Good.  But the price?  Wait, did I read that right?  The sale price was $3.99!  That’s the sale price?!  The full price was $4.89.  Whoa, Alice.  I think I just dropped down a rab­bit hole.  This is a silly price alright but not in a good way.  [Kroger’s every­day price cur­rently sits a $3.79 which, last I looked, is exactly the same as Whole Food’s and Super Target’s every­day price.]

A lit­tle shocked but still curi­ous, I pushed my cart toward the dairy case.  The first famil­iar prod­uct my eye set­tled on was the Hori­zon choco­late milk.  If I’d been a car­toon char­ac­ter, my eyes would have lit­er­ally sprung out of their sock­ets.  In real­ity, my vision blurred a lit­tle and I felt slightly dizzy — or maybe just nau­seous.  I’ve blocked out the actual silly price but suf­fice it to say, it too was silly as in who would be silly enough to pay that price instead of the this price is so low you’d be silly to shop any­where else way that I’d been hop­ing for.

I admit that my sam­pling of two prod­ucts falls short of a hon­estly sci­en­tific sam­pling but I’d seen enough.  As a busy sub­ur­ban house­wife, I had bet­ter things to do with my time, not to men­tion my money.  I made a bee­line for the exit.  I was done.  I won’t be going back.  Silly prices indeed.…

Related posts:

1. Day 188: Tide, Tam­pax, & Cargo Shorts
2. Day 192: Groceries
3. $$: Another Sat­ur­day in Sub­ur­bia edition
4. Day 153: Food & Drink
5. Day 166: Colonics, Under­wear, Gro­ceries, Bed­ding, and Speech Therapy