The sale circular for Fairway Market in Paramus arrived with the paper today. Deep cuts on prices for Tropicana orange juice and Campari tomatoes take effect Friday and run through Oct. 29.
For the first time, the circular carries a coupon good for $10 off a purchase of $75 before tax, compared with Fairway's previous $10-off-$100-coupon in ValPak mailings. This new coupon may indicate the New York-based chain is having trouble attracting shoppers to its store in the dowdy Fashion Center mall on Route 17. The rent must have been low there for Fairway to ignore Bergen Town Center, where Whole Foods Market and Target (with a full grocery) opened new stores.
Fairway's sale price on Tropicana is $1.79, compared with $1.88 recently at ShopRite. Three 1-pound packages of Campari greenhouse tomatoes are $5, an especially good deal if these are the ones grown without herbicide. Check the label before you buy. Previously, Fairway sold a package for $2.99 or two for $5 on sale.
The great Spanish Manchego sheep's milk cheese is $8.99 a pound -- $4 off -- but that's about what you would pay at Costco. Murray's free-roaming, drug-free chicken isn't on sale.
Fairway makes a big deal over its USDA Prime shell steaks for $8.99 a pound, but doesn't tell you prime only means it is fattier than Choice and Select, the other two grades the federal government uses to classify beef. It also doesn't tell you the animal probably got fat by being confined to a feeding pen, where it received antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products to speed it to the slaughterhouse.
We can only hope the steaks didn't come from a "downer," a sick animal that collapses at the door, but is nevertheless dragged to its death and dismemberment. Bon apetit.
This store has been opened for several months now, but I just don't get a great feeling shopping there, maybe its the snobby customers, maybe its the one-step below mediocore employees, or maybe its the odd layout. Any way you look at it, the whole atmosphere at Fairway just isn't for me. If it wasnt less than a mile from my home I probably would have never returned after my first trip.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Fairway culture doesn't go over too well in northern New Jersey. I looked forward to the opening of the store, but really wasn't that put out by stopping at the Harlem store on my way home from the city maybe six times a year. I guess the Paramus store doesn't realize that consumers can get whatever it sells -- or the equivalent -- elsewhere in North Jersey at competitive prices, and in some cases, can find a better selection at other stores.
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