Time, money, convenience and quality
are all things to consider when buying
food. Considering them may mean big is
not necessarily better when you go . . .
Shoppin’
Story by MELODY WARD
Photos by Greg Gawlowski
As the cost of eating gets higher and higher, a
person might as well have a good time grocery
shopping. If your idea of a good time doesn t quite
match up with the reality of spending large amounts
of time waiting in line at chain stores, read on.
Just because a chain grocery store covers most
of a city block (all of one if you count the parking lot)
doesn't mean it’s the place to get the most out of
your food budget.
Eugene abounds with warm, personable,
competitively-priced shops that emphasize high
quality merchandise. In fact, the person who is
willing to expend minimum extra energy may be
able to save a considerable sum of money by seek
ing these places out.
And any additional transport time spent getting to
them will probably be more enjoyabie than waiting
in line at a convenience store.
A sample shopping list for area specialty stores
might include fresh local vegetables, fresh-caught
seafood, fresh bagels, organic pastas, fine wines,
and classic desserts such as Viennese tortes.
You may have caught the emphasis on “fresh.”
This emphasis on quality is also in all the following
stores, which are representative of several more in
Eugene.
Six stores in the campus area fall into the "neigh
borhood natural food store” category. The
Willamette Valley People’s Co-Op Grocery
(343-6694) is located at 22nd Avenue and Emerald
across from Edison Elementary School.
Formed in 1969, it was the first store of its kind to
provide wholesome food at the lowest possible cost
in this area. Though it is a co-op, there is no mem
bership requirement for shopping at the store. Peo
ple who do work receive $1 credit for each hour
worked toward grocery purchases.
Bulk grains, flours, herbs, pasta; fresh eggs and
vegetables, await the co-op shopper. New this
summer: watermelon juice from Genesis.
Over at 24th and Hilyard, a cluster of stores will
delight and reward anyone who chooses to forage
among them.
Sundance (343-9142) has a very good selec
tion of dried foods, ranging from carob chips to
dried Hawaiian pineapple and spinach (real
spinach) lasagne.
Every conceivable size and shape of pasta is
available, along with grains and legumes too
numerous to list. Sundance also stocks imported
beers, raw milk (including goat milk) rennetless
cheeses and honey yoghurt, as well as a good
supply of imported beers and local wines.
Just Produce (343-5393) occupies the same
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baskets often replace carts in alternative grocery stores. At right August Baynach prepares Danish pastries in Metropol Bakery at the Fifth Street Public Market.
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building as Sundance, and ives up to more than its
name implies. Compact, It e store is rather like a
minature indoor version ol a French open-air mar
ket. The produce is almost; Iways in superior condi
tion, with prices running 1) cents or more below
neighboring retail chains. The managers make
every attempt to insure tof quality vegetables and
fruits.
Fountain of Juice (343> 1713) is the source of an
entire wall of creative, ins) ired liquid concoctions.
You haven’t really lived ui il you've tasted freshly
squeezed juices like thosd available here.
Humble Bagel Co. (484 1142) is just around the
corner from Sundance. Se eral varieties of bagels,
and salt stix, are available esh at least three times
daily. Challah is baked on Fridays.
Lox, cream cheese and other bagel fixings are
sold at the bakery, and the amiable owners provide
customers with free spoon;. A sidelight — the best
New York cheesecake thin side of the Big Apple,
sliced up and ready for arj impromptu picnic.
Bagels cost 15 cents eadh, with frozen six-packs
available for 60 cents. Ypu'll find these bagels
elsewhere, but not at the bakery price.
Harbor Seafoods (686-91 92) moved into an
abandoned gas station on the comer of 24th and
Hilyard recently, making the vegetarian’s shopping
needs completely attainable at this location.
Who can describe the odor of a fish store? Awful,
but wait ’til you get your catch home. Salad shrimp
and crab (ready to eat), prawns, scallops, smoked
salmon, fresh whole salmon, cod, sole, lobster tails
and more await the seafood lover.
Prices may seem high, but compared to other
forms of animal protein, there is very little waste —
in fact, per serving, fish is quite competitively
priced.
Most seafoods are fresh from the Oregon coast;
some special things like lobster tails are flown in
from elsewhere.
It's worth crossing town just to see the Metropol
Bakery (687-9370) in the Fifth Street Public Mar
ket. Even if almost every pastry they make is not on
your diet, watching the bakers at work is good en
tertainment.
Opened just before Christmas, the bakery is
owned by Donna McGuiness and David Counter,
who also run a cafe upstairs in the market.
The bakery dominates the entire center of the
lower level of the market, and like a glass music
box, you can watch every stage of creation of the
goodies.
“A lot of the things that we do are real special,”
understates a baker named Jean. “We don’t skimp
— we don't use any substitutes.” The European
Viennese style bakery specializes in torts, “a super
fancy cake” that usually has buttercream icing and
fillings."
Jean says tortes are more delicate than ordinary
cakes and have “a lot more parts to them.”
All natural ingredients: fresh butter, cream and
chocolates, are used in the baked goods.
“We’re high priced because of the quality and
because these people believe in paying their help,”
Jean says. "We do a lot of time-consuming
handwork .... we are not cheap.”
But if you like good food, they aren’t that expen
sive either. French bread is 95 cents per loaf, other
exotic breads cost $1.25. The bakery also pro
duces flaky brioche, Cornish pastries, croissants
and danish.
"It’s unique because everything is on view,” Jean
says of Metropol. "We’re here to educate the com
munity. A lot of people do not realize what it takes to
make good pastry. I love it when people ask ques
tions.”
The Fifth Street Public Market (5th Avenue and
High) also houses three other excellent food stores
and a wide variety of special crafts shops that make
the grocery shopping journey even more interest
ing.
Coffee Corner, (343-7230), a small family cor
poration owned by Paul and Kathy Leighton, sells
30 coffees either by the bean, or freshly ground.
Coffees from every coffee-growing continent in the
world arrive at the shop twice weekly. African, Ara
bian, and other exotic coffees, and Ghiradelli and
Mexican chocolates, are sold in any amount de
sired.
Though the price is subject to world coffee prices,
it ranges from $4.30 to $5.85 per pound.
Public Market Produce (342-3011) harks back
to an era long past — the friendly neighborhood
grocer who bags up your fruits and vegetables
while you wait. Produce is delivered to the market
fresh daily, and the shop boasts the lowest prices
on mushrooms in town: $1.19 per pound.
The store is also just starting to stock local or
ganic Brownsville mushrooms, and so far they are
exclusively available at the Public Market.
Northwest Wine and Cheese (343-0536) fea
tures offerings from Oregon vineyards and bre
weries, and from others around the world. From
Henry Weinhard’s private reserves to Hofbrau
Bavaria, you’ll find a complete selection of the finer
drinks in life. The selection of cheeses would
please any gourmet.
Storm’s Seafoods (344-1927) boasts the most
complete selection of seafood to be found in one
store in this state. Fresh fish from the Oregon coast,
shrimp, squid and prawns are ready to go. The
freezer yields lobster tails from Australia and Brazil,
frozen frog legs and Alaskan king crab. Whole sal
mon are usually always available, as is smoked
salmon, herring and other kinds of fish.
No guide to alternative grocery shopping in
Eugene would be complete without mentioning The
Kiva (342-8666), located at 136 East 11th Ave.
Prices are good; the management tries to keep
them as low as possible.
The Kiva offers extensive Mexican and oriental
sections, carries four or five dairy lines, three lines
of juices, all kinds of bulk goods, imported coffees,
and has a huge cheese case and an herb shop.
We
Resole Hiking Boots
with genuine Vibram
and
Rebuild Sport Shoes
(Adidas, Nikes, Tiger)
Decker Sandals
We are also the campus
outlet for hiking boots and'
other fine quality footwear.
Ev—r One Stop Shoe Repair
rapus Shoe Shop
843 E. 13th 343-6613
Pace 8 Section A
Tired of buying food? — Try buying records.
By KEVIN HARDEN
Of the Emerald
They seem to be springing up faster than
the golden arches in the suburbs.
No one in recent memory knows exactly
how many retail record stores there were in
Eugene before this year. Some think as
many as eight were swapping vinyl at one
time several years ago.
But those were the days when Eugene
was a college town free from the pains of
rezoning and downtown economic woes.
Today all that has changed. Rearrange the
names, change a few of the locations and
add four new stores, and Eugene’s record
market has apparently reached its peak.
The opening of Odyssey on the down
town mall may be helping or hindering the
record market; it depends on who you talk
to.
Of the record stores polled, only a couple
thought the new stores had cut into their
business. Some even refused to talk about
the new stores.
Although the manager of Chrystalship
records would say how many album titles
the store carried, that was about all.
Chrystalship enjoyed the distinction of
being the only record store on the down
town mall almost since the mall’s opening
nine years ago. The store’s 10-year reign
as the only “world class record and tape”
store may be challenged by the new mall
venture by Odyssey Records.
Odyssey records is just one link of a
nine-state chain of stores that stretches a
cross Arizona, Alaska, Utah, Nevada,
California, Washington, Idaho, New Mexico
and now Oregon.
According to Michelle Errecart, Odyssey
manager, all the orders and directions for
the Eugene store come from the main office
in Santa Cruz, Calif. It’s this office that tells
the store how long to continue the present
grand opening sale, what advertising vehi
cles to use and what prices to set for the
records they sell, she says.
Why move to a city with already its fair
share of record stores? “It’s a growing
town,’’ Errecart says. “It’s also a pretty
sophisticated town. People here have
pretty sophisticated and varied tastes in
music. So we just looked around and
thought it was a good place to open a
store.”
The University also played an important
part of the company's decision to move
here, she says. Odyssey Record stores
seem to fit into college towns with ease.
The mall store may have been a blessing
to the city’s fading downtown district, Ray
Mclver, mall manager for the Eugene
Downtown Association, says.
In terms of some hypothetical dollar
value, the move to locate the Odyssey Re
cord store in the south section of the mall at
10th Avenue and Willamette Street may
have been a $50 million venture, Mclver
says.
“That area was considered by some of
the merchants down there to be dead or
dying fast,” he says. Merchants who had
occupied stores in that section of the mall
for several years were moving to more cen
tral locations.
But the ventures by Odyssey and the new
mini-mall complex in the old J.C. Penney
building, Centre Court, have given the mall
a needed shot in the economic arm, Mclver
says. The stores on the mail's south section
are now hot property, leaving realtors and
store owners wishing to get into the area to
wonder what happened to all the space that
was available just a few months before, he
says.
As for the record market in the downtown
area, it may be a consumer’s market for
some time to come, Mclver says. “The first
reaction to the big sale by the new store was
to lower prices.”
According to Tim Mortenson, man
ager of Everybody’s Records at Fifth Av
enue and Willamette Street, the new stores
may do more good than harm to the already
glutted record market.
“I don’t think having Odyssey or Budget
records here is going to hurt sales any for
our store,” Mortenson says. “They have
actually generated sales.”
Next month when the Odyssey sale is
over, he says, the record buyer in Eugene
will have a better selection than before to
choose from. “When all the dust settles, so
to speak, I think all the people will go back to
buying their records at their regular stores.
And it will make a difference how you turn a
person on to a record. I think we can do a
better job than anyone else,” he says.
Budget Records and Tapes, in the Shel
don Plaza on Coburg Road, may have
saved itself a lot of trouble by not locating on
the mall downtown. There may even be
room for more record stores in Eugene,
says Randy Harrison, Budget Records
manager.
Harrison considers his store, a link in a
franchise chain out of Denver, to be more of
a neighborhood store, which naturally
draws neighborhood customers.
But the Odyssey grand opening sale has
hurt others’ profits, if only unintentionally. “I
don’t think in terms of us and them,” Er
recart says. “I’m more interested in getting
my own store together right now.”