Plum Market: Gold Plated not Sugar Coated

Upscale grocery shopping has finally come to the west side of Ann Arbor. We do have Arbor Farms Market and Fresh Season's Market which carry some of the same products but Plum Market is more on the scale of the Whole Foods chain witnessed locally on the east side of Ann Arbor off Washtenaw Ave. and home to one of the worst parking lots in North America.

My wife and I visited the new Plum Market for the first time this week and I can state quite certainly that this market will not hurt the local Krogers, Busch's, or Meijers stores. The Plum Market might as well be called the "Gold-Plated Plum Market" (just as some locally refer to Whole Foods as "Whole Wallet"). They openly refer to themselves as a "High-End Supermarket" and that translates for the rest us into "High-Priced Supermarket." They are seeking the Crème brûlée of the Ann Arbor incomes who frequent places like Zingerman's Roadhouse and the downtown Chop House Restaurant. Unfortunately, with the local closing of Pfizer, they've lost a lot of their target clientèle. And believe me, the usual frequenters of the Maple Village shopping center (which includes Kmart and one of the largest dollar stores in town) are not going to be shopping there very often if at all.

We did our "Food Tourist" walk-through with a hand basket and picked up a few things. Most of what we bought were semi-prepared or prepared foods. And they all tasted quite good but on the whole they were overpriced. One bargain was a Asiago-crusted French baguette. The blending of the Italian cheese and French style bread was very good and only $1.99 a loaf. They also had some very nice, rich oatmeal raisin cookies (with walnuts) for $4.99 for a package of 8. But the salad buffet was $7.99 a pound and that was for simple green salads that one prepares for themselves as well as for prepared salads. They should have different prices for those two types of salads. How about $12.99 a pound for Turkey Lasagna? It tasted very good but again, overpriced. I suspect that the same people who pay a ridiculous $2.50 for a cup of Zingerman's brewed coffee won't bat a groomed eyelash at such prices. I won't even get into the regular grocery item prices like toilet paper and milk because I guess you can't compare all natural, anti-biotic free, pesticide free, socialist made products to your typical grocery store item. But even this card-carrying Sierra Club member has his limits.

I wish them well as I do all Ann Arbor businesses and they'll need good luck here in Michigan's near recession economy. Maybe they'll learn to moderate their prices over time and attract the other 80% of Ann Arbor and the surrounding townships. I'll check back in a few months and see if the prices have come back to reality. In the meantime, it's back to Krogering with an occasional visit to Trader Joes and Fresh Season's Market.

*** 6-24-08 UPDATE ***

We have returned to Plum Market recently. The Ann Arbor News had a Sunday coupon offering $5 off of a $25 or more purchase and so we thought we'd check back in. I was pleasantly surprised to see some decent savings on products sprinkled throughout the store. Milk was being offered at a special price of $2.99 a gallon which is very reasonable these days. I noticed that the Turkey Lasagna in the prepared section has been reduced to $9.99 a pound. East Wind Peanut Butter was only $2 a jar. There are some very attractive Ice Cream choices from select dairies if you are into that food group. But unfortunately, most of the fresh produce was still overpriced in comparison to any market on the west side of Ann Arbor. The majority of food offerings are of the gourmet or specialty sort which has its customer base, though let's face it, they aren't the type of customers that worry about the rise in gasoline prices. It will be interesting to see how Whole Foods (aka "Whole Wallet" to a friend of mine) will compete when it opens its' new store on Eisenhower Blvd. sometime later this year.