[Musings] Oh thats just wrong...
Recently we hosted some friends whom we have not seen in a while. My wife is in my opinion, one of the best culinary geniuses I've ever met. Our menu was was mutli-course starting with appetizers, the main course (fish curry), and desert. I was tasked with procuring some fish at the last minute as our food co-op was out. I decided to pick some up on my way home from work. I work out in the middle of the suburban sprawl and the closest thing to a grocery shop was Super Target. Super Target is a relatively new concept here in Minnesota, having only been around for a few years. For those who don't know, Super Target is a Target (retail store) + eye clinic + pharmacy + coffee shop + deli + bakery + full grocercy store. We needed a fish of the white and firm variety and a friend suggested using Tilapia, as it is cheap and would be perfect for a stew or curry. I doubted that Super Target would have fish, but as they were the most convient on the drive home, I stopped in to check. I was shocked to find that they did indeed have Tilapia (as well as Flounder, Hailibut, and various others). I was mildy shocked and somewhat disturbed. Something just seems wrong about buying relatively fresh (flash-frozen then thawed)fish when across the aisle were feminine hygenie products, diapers, shaving cream and shampoo. I understand the concept behind a Super Target, a one-stop mecca of shopping convience, for those short on time (and indeed it did save me a lot of time). But still, it feels like a boundary was crossed.
1 comment:
They're just trying to compete with Wal-Mart (shudder), which also has a lot of grocery store/general household goods thing going on in a lot of locations. I'm not sure how well the Super Targets are doing as a business experiment, but I wouldn't doubt seeing more in the future.
Multiple stores/concepts are nothing new, as I point out the Caribou Coffee in the Byerly's I buy groceries at, the Starbucks inside Barnes and Nobles (maybe its just a coffeeshop thing). What it the joke on one of Conan O'Brien's Year 2000 skits?: a startbucks will open up inside another starbucks.
Now if it was groceries, deli, furniture, bakery, eyeglass shop, gun range, brothel, licensing department, car dealership, and wedding chapel all rolled into one, I'd be worried.
"Corporate synergy" does occasionally trail off into the rediculous, but then you realize that many of these things are just holding companies for wide conglomerates of business. Only marketing and creative accounting keep these drom disolving into a single omnibus corporation. Its like the line from Max Headroom, the corporate motto of the Zik-Zak corporation "We make everything you need and you need everything we make."
And yes, your wife is a great cook.
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