I don't always find time to be healthy...

Talking to my friend Jennifer who lives in Cincinnati Ohio, about food and shopping on the phone on Sunday morning, I visualize a blog entry.
And even though it's outside my bioregion, it illuminates the work to build local food awareness...

As is our normal pattern, we veer from subject to subject and talk over each other whenever we want to get a point across, as only 2 friends for over 15 years can do.
As she squeezes her organic Valencia oranges with her hand cranking squeezer, we talked about her wonderful nearby small food store, Madison's and how she is back to (happily) using it for her shopping.
Madison's is a well known, well-respected Findlay Market outlet, and opened this second location in Northside (Norside to locals) within the last 3 years. The Findlay Market is an old shed market that has been rehabbed in the last few years. To see what it looked like before, find the Johnny Cash movie called "The Pride of Jesse Hellam", where Cash plays an illiterate miner moving to the city, and gets a job working for Eli Wallach's produce distribution company at the market. Fascinating.

The Over-The-Rhine neighborhood where the Findlay Market located is a neigborhood near downtown, about 3-5 miles from Northside, and is full of beautiful Italianate style brick buildings (actually the largest concentration of this style in the country Jennifer told me), but is also known as a very high crime area with appalling pockets of poverty, which has had its effect on the Market. The market does good business on the weekends, but has not been able to add as many weekday shoppers, which comes as no surprise to market managers around the country.

The Northside Madison's is only about 800 square feet, but attractively designed with a large window and great signs. The sandwich board sign marketing is ubiquitous in Northside, so you can drive down and see right away those who are open by the wooden signs near the street. Madison's adheres to the tradition with a nice version. They have won reader's choice for Best Buy Local store among others, and are known for amazing homemade gelato. (Don't get Jennifer started about the pink grapefruit sorbet...)

Jennifer works at a downtown law firm til 6:00, so doesn't get home til 6:30, which is tricky because Madison's is only open til 7 p.m. She can just make it to Madison's if she is not too tired, or if remembers to take a different exit off the highway on her way home. She tells me she got out of the habit of going to Madison's until recently because she was not buying fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, and instead eating takeout (albeit relatively healthy takeout) foods instead.

When I pressed her on a more specific reason as to why she stopped going, she first puts the blame on herself, labeling herself "lazy". She also mentions that she feels guilty not going to the farmers market on Saturday mornings, although Madison's carries much of the same local produce at this location.

Then she points out some simple customer service issues:

"I used to go to Madison's for the gourmet to go, but when they stopped carrying the soups I liked, I stopped going." she says. "Now, the guy they had working there has left, and now when I ask for stuff they get it in right away. I asked for the soups, and they brought them back."
Later she mentions:
"They also changed their hours; they used to be open til 8 p.m."

Jennifer is a good cook when she has time, and keeps routines for her week and her weekend that allows good shopping to be a part of it, if all the stars align. The more I talk to her about food, the more I see a regular person who wants to eat healthy, but thinks she must buy it in its raw form, or do it all the time to benefit. In other words, all or nothing.
When she gets out of the habit of cooking or has a quasi-junk food bender, it stops the trips to Madison's or Findlay completely for a while, instead of her continuing to supplement with some good food items among some not so great food items.

What I got from that was that outlets like Madison's must be very responsive to their smaller overworked client base, and find ways to be creative to keep these folks coming.
Maybe things like marketing a full healthy take home dinner for the first really cold night in Cincinnati and staying open a bit later for folks to pick it up that night.
Or, having a small nearby delivery service once a week (Madison's night), or even a call in number or email address to pre-order dinner or to have some groceries bagged and ready to go.
A weekly, informational html email newsletter has been a great marketing tool for markets to remind shoppers weekly about what is in season and available. Our small market has thousands of shoppers who subscribe and they tell us how much they appreciate it. Adding simple recipes is a must, by the way.

Overall, the move to these type of locally owned small footprint shops are the wave of the future, just as they were the only way to shop 50 years ago. What has changed is the pace of life for their customers, as well as their ability to know how to use a large number of fruits and vegetables in cooking. If Madison's is (I hope) to be the vanguard, then they will need to continue to adapt and assist their customers in reasons to show up for the next 50 years.