Meinhardt's @ Arbutus No More

[Sam Salmon]

The latest in a long running saga-the huge space in the Ridge shopping strip on Arbutus now occupied by Meinhardt's is being vacated yet again-Meinhardt is pulling the plug as of Friday Dec 24.

http://www.vancouverhoods.com/south-g...

I count three maybe four different grocery stores and a music store in that space who knows what the future will bring.

Budget groceries never worked and people stayed away in droves from high priced comestibles.

[twinkienic]

Sadness... I quite enjoyed their roast chickens and prepared salads when in a pinch with no time to cook.

[LotusRapper]

+1 ! Roast chickens for $12 are better and juicier than Whole Foods at the same price.

[grayelf]

A whole roast chicken for 12 bucks? I've been missing out...

[twinkienic]

I haven't tried the roast chickens at Whole Foods, but Meinhardts was just down the street from us so it was super convenient. Also, you could get a roast chicken + 2 small salads (and their salads were really great) for $15. We'd eat the chicken in various ways for about half a week.

[LotusRapper]

Same here. First use for dinner. Then the leftover is deboned and the meat chopped and made into chicken salad for next-day sandwiches. The carcass is used to make soup stock for the following night. One chicken = 3 meals :-)

And they had good curries there too.

I don't recall Granville Meinhardt having the same chicken+ 2 sides for $15. If not, maybe they will now that the Arbutus store is closed.

Whole Foods chicken used to be better than it is now. We live across their previous "flagship" store on Cambie @ 16th when they first took over the new Capers. Over time, the chicken got smaller while the price stayed the same.

[greenbee]

You can get a local, free range roast chicken for $10.99 at Greens Market over by Maple and W.Broadway. The roast chicken is soooo good!

[twinkienic]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check it out! Their salad selection has looked pretty good when I've passed by before.

[Sam Salmon]

Looks like there's *a lot* more to this than just one store closing-rumours on the net abound of burned creditors and pending legal action.

http://www.csvan.com/corporate/mff.html

I was in the Granville/14th store today action was slow and some popular products from cordon bleu suppliers were no longer to be found.

[kinnickinnik]

There's also the very busy Choices store just a few blocks down the hill on 16th.

I wonder what that means for the Kins Farm Market that opened up there - didn't they open inside the Meinhardt store? It could be kind of a nice fit if a few quality small vendors moved in there. Kins could be an anchor perhaps. I hope it's that and not another No Frills which seems to be moving into a number of old Buy Low spaces.

LotusR - I think that old IGA has already closed (it's on my commute but I rarely glance, though I do notice the liquor store is staying open during construction).

[grayelf]

IGA is deffo closed. I think the L&M was only ever there as a stop gap while they gussied up their downtown store. That Buy Low was awful and the Meinhardts had to deal with the same cavernous window-deprived space and crazy car access/bad parking. I only went in once.

[LotusRapper]

I'm willing to bet [wink] it'll be another grocery store. But which ? What's not in the immediate 2-3 km radius of 16/Arbutus ?

1) Urban Fare
2) Nesters
3) Save-On-Foods / Price Smart
4) Superstore
5) T&T (muahahaha)

I'm excluding Whole Foods as Choices down at Trafalgar is owned by WF. Given #3-5 are large-scale outlets that range 40,000 - 75,000 sq. ft, maybe Nesters or Urban Fare might bid for this space. We'll see.

[Sam Salmon]

Choices is not owned by Whole Foods-not yet anyway.

[LotusRapper]

Oooops sorry, I meant Capers, but was thinking of Choices on 16th.

So WF could potentially want to take over this location.

[bdachow]

Yeah, especially as the Arbutus Mall is slated to be demolished and redeveloped. Not in the immediate future but certainly in the next couple years.

[LotusRapper]

Wow eh ! I used to live in the area, when it was Buy Low(?). Then we moved away and next thing I knew they were Long & McQuade (strange location for L&M to be in). I thought Meinhardt's might have had a better chance there, but I know there are many seniors in the area and it'd be better for those folks to have Buy Low. But there's the old IGA up at Broadway (although they are slated to close, right ?) and Safeway way down at Arbutus Mall.

Maybe a Price Smart or something similar in-between.