Central Market
They were the largest pumpkins I ever saw.
Actually, that’s my favorite joke. A guy drives all day through Texas and he’s starving. So he goes into this giant restaurant, where they sit him at a long table and sell him a huge steak and a beer in a glass so tall it’s hard to tip. And having finished, he asks the waiter where the restroom is. “Up the stairs on the right.” But the patron makes a mistake and takes the door on the left. Thirty seconds later, a guy comes out and says “There’s a maniac thrashing around in the swimming pool yelling DON’T FLUSH IT, DON’T FLUSH IT!”
Yes, everything’s big in Texas.
Especially the supermarket.
Now I thought I knew upscale markets. I shop regularly at Whole Foods, where the prepared fodder looks phenomenal but lacks taste, and Gelson’s is superb, although not located near where I live. And the rap on Gelson’s is the produce, that’s the selling point, that’s what everybody talks about.
But Gelson’s is positively minor league compared to Central Market.
It’s an upscale Costco. If Costco had a zillion SKUs.
Oh, it’s got that warehouse feel. With the high roofs of corrugated steel. And at the entrance we were confronted with pumpkins so large, I had to peer at the sign. They said they were from Long Island, but I’ve never seen anything close to this size on the east coast.
And inside, there were more peppers than I’d seen at any market.
I suddenly started to realize this was something different.
Oh, we think everything’s best on the coast. That in between it’s flyover country, where the people are backward and underprivileged. Well, let me tell you, the Internet works everywhere, and so does cable TV. But I really didn’t expect Fort Worth, Texas to have a better supermarket!
First, there’s the innovation!
You know how you buy trail mix at Whole Foods and they’ve got that PLU code and you’ve got to find a pen so you can write it down so they can weigh it and charge you at the checkout stand? Well, here you just punch in the code yourself, you weigh your trail mix right where you bag it, vegetables too, and the machine prints out a receipt, you know, the sticky kind, that affixes to the plastic. Hell, you even know how much you’ve purchased, in case it’s too much or too little!
But the sheer variety! They had taps for olive oil and vinegar. There were more types of trail mix than Gelson’s and Whole Foods combined.
And they had the sushi, pizza and other ready-made products you could sample and take home.
And there were giant trays of hummus, you just scooped out as much as you needed, there were multiple flavors. And they had seemingly miles of meat and seafood. It was a veritable cornucopia of foodstuffs.
I’m making a rule. Whenever I go to a new place, I’m giving up on the tourist sites, I’m going directly to the supermarket, that’s where all the innovation takes place.
Central Market pic.twitter.com/s5CUizXPYY
— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) September 22, 2013
Pumpkins-1 pic.twitter.com/hU5rcpsI1E
— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) September 22, 2013
Pumpkins-2 pic.twitter.com/qp9D0KW99T
— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) September 22, 2013
Pumpkins-3 pic.twitter.com/gt6CgmIDMI
— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) September 22, 2013
