By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – Author Henry Fielding, sometime in the 1700's, wrote his definition of "love," a word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food. And today we can add our delight in shopping for those particular kinds of food. I'm Maxine Shapiro with KERA Marketplace Middays.
Grocery stores...they're the place we frequent most, next to our place of employment. We hate going there, but once in we get mesmerized and sometimes overwhelmed by displays and packaging, by variety and size. Most of us have a favorite place we like to shop at. The only problem a North Texan might have is selecting which one of the, what now seems like a gazillion, food stores to choose from.
The Grocery Store is the anchor of most strip malls and when they go under, so follows the mall. Nothing sadder for a community than having to drive by one of those empty, massive ghost towns on a daily basis. And it looks like by the end of June, Texas will have 71 more eyesores gracing our landscape.
Winn-Dixie, who operates more than a thousand stores in the Sunbelt States, is pulling out of Texas and Oklahoma, as well as closing their distribution center and dairy plant in Fort Worth. That's over 5,000 employees. In a study released last month, Merrill Lynch found that Winn-Dixie Stores was the only Top 10 food retailer that could attribute a large portion of its market share losses to Wal-Mart Stores. Wal-Mart is now the top U.S. food merchant in terms of sales.
And everything else is coming up honeydews for the rest of the food retailers. Albertson's shares, thanks to its restructuring, have jumped 20% over the last year. Central Market is taking North Texas by storm. And Whole Foods announced another record quarter earning while relocating its Skillman store to Highland Park.
Which reminds me, I'm running low on milk. I'm Maxine Shapiro with Marketplace Middays.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 P.M.