Back in January 2008, Fred Meyer issued an announcement that its 120,000 square foot Hawthorne market would be the first of the company’s 127 stores to apply for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification under the LEED for Retail pilot program, set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USBC). The store began the $15 million renovation project in September 2008 and expects to be completed by July 2009.
For those who have continued to shop at the store during the renovation, you can likely attest to the challenges presented by keeping a store open during construction. The challenges are shared by both construction workers and shoppers alike –who knew I could find a brick of Tillamook cheddar so close to my mouthwash? It’s like they knew what I was thinking.
Construction challenges aside, Fred Meyer has taken advantage of the redesign to launch a number of unique features at their Hawthorne store that push the previously gritty and lively store into a more interesting space among its retail peers.
First and foremost, the entryway has been greatly reconfigured to drive more emphasis on the store’s fresh, healthier offerings. As Michael Pollan suggests, it’s always better to shop on the periphery of a supermarket; the closer you move to the center of the store, the more you move into preservatives, chemicals and generally lower-health-value foods. Now when you approach the Hawthorne store from the surface-level auto and bicycle parking lot, you must first walk through an open, well-lit area stocked with fruits and vegetables and fresh cut flowers, transitioning into a more thoughtfully laid-out organic and conventional produce section, which then flows into the new bistro.
On a recent trip to the Hawthorne store I decided to see if the bistro was simply new skin on an old pony. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised. While you can still expect the store’s bakery to feature a large cake fashioned to look like a hamburger and fries (does anyone actually buy that, or is it the ’same’ cake I’ve seen for years?), what surrounds the bakery counter is certainly worth a closer look.
Fresh is the New Black
The bistro is an expansive area featuring a variety of gourmet take-home foods, traditional deli-style foods, and custom, made-to-order foods –as well as several on-site dining options. The entire area is accompanied by a large, open dining area situated at the corner of the building facing NE 39th Ave. and SE Hawthorne Blvd. The dining area is surrounded by massive windows, letting in plenty of natural light. The space also features free Wi-Fi. This is a marked improvement on most any in-store dining area I’ve experienced.
If you enter the store from the surface-level parking lot, the first thing you’ll notice is that the new bistro makes and sells its own tortillas, fresh daily. There are several varieties, available in packs of 12 or 24 ($1.99 for a 12-pack). I love tortillas and find that I’m often disappointed by the bland taste of most offerings, save the inconsistent and often too-large variety available at Trader Joe’s. Fortunately, the Fred Meyer tortillas taste as fresh and delicious as their on-site creation implies. The flavor is excellent and the pliability for wrapping is superior. Unfortunately, they are only available in the soft-flour taco size –perhaps this is Fred Meyer’s way of directing me to show a little restraint.
Sitting in the middle of the bistro area is an towering island of donuts, doing its very best to produce a facsimile of the delicious morsels offered by our friends at Voodoo. I have yet to sample these excitingly dressed doppelgangers, but their bright colors and eerily shiny finishes elicited ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from my daughters. It’s certainly worth a closer ‘look’ –and by look, I mean stuffing one or two into my piehole.
Just down the line from the tortilla station is the Chippery –an on-site, kettle-based potato chip cooking and packaging operation. My wife and I are major fans of potato chips, so I looked at these offerings with a bit of skepticism as I have been disappointed by so-called ‘fresh cut’ chips in the past. Fred Meyer claims that their kitchen only uses non-GMO potatoes in their chip operations, and they stock the shelves with bags of fresh-cooked chips each day, in several flavors. Conclusion? Excellent. These chips are light and delicious and taste very fresh and natural, unlike the super-crispy and oddly homogenous flavor of your typical Lays potato chip. The plain sea salt and vinegar variety is especially addicting. The bag we brought home this past Saturday afternoon didn’t make it through the night. Fortunately, the bags are small, so you can keep yourself in check.
While there are several other components of the bistro that you can certainly sample on your own (e.g. pizzas, made-to-order paninis, a massive salsa bar, gourmet cheese bar, etc.), I made it a point to focus on what appears to be the bistro’s most impressive component: the Kaiten sushi bar. For those who have purchased small packs of pre-fab supermarket sushi nested in tidy black plastic flats, you know the taste of disappointment. You don’t have to be a sushi snob to dislike the experience of supermarket sushi –such has been my experience. Fred Meyer has decided to up the ante and deploy their own full-service sushi bar –complete with well-stocked, full-motion sushi conveyer belt– directly in the center of the bistro.
helmets optional at the sushi bar...
This new sushi bar exceeds expectations and delivers excellent results. If you want truly great sushi, by all means visit Yoko’s on SE Gladstone St. However, if you simply desire a wide selection of tasty, affordably priced sushi conveniently located within your grocery store, then by all means give the Kaiten bar a try. While I was very pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of rolls, what was most surprising was the great taste. Every roll I sampled tasted fresh and was very well-presented. What’s more, the bar attendants were polite and professional, even crafting rolls on-demand to our preference. Additionally, veggie lovers will rejoice at the wide variety of all-veggie rolls –more than I’ve seen on most any sushi menu. I must recommend the ’summer roll’, which is essentially a fat roll of fresh greens, carrots, avocado, etc., wrapped loosely in a tasty, opaque tapioca paper, dressed with Caravelle sweet chile sauce –simply fantastic.
Finally, I was most impressed by the relatively affordable prices for what turned out to be a very tasty lunch. Rolls are priced just as they are at most conveyer-belt sushi restaurants, whereby you pay based on the color of the plate. Prices range from $1.10 for green plates, to $3.10 for blue plates. Yellow plates are $1.60 and red plates are $2.10. On our recent lunch venture, our family of four managed to eat quite well for about $18.
In conclusion, when comparing Fred Meyer’s Kaiten sushi bar to other commodity sushi, the flavor and variety of the Kaiten rolls are far superior to Marinepolis Sushi Land. Again, if you want sushi to knock your socks off and are willing to pay for it, visit Yoko’s or Saburo’s. For those other times, give Fred Meyer’s Hawthorne market a whirl.
The Design
The firm that designed and planned the renovations (Mulvanny G2 Architecture), took great lengths to manage the overall experience for customers, working to make the typical trip to the store less intensive. The walls are painted in more welcoming earth-toned colors, with the entire store featuring an industrial, green-toned concrete floor, baring all the scars of its past life. Interestingly, the concrete floors are finished in such a way that they don’t require chemicals or solvents to install and no chemicals or waxes to clean, further reducing their environmental impact.
The outdoor footprint of the store has also been expanded to fill the usable non-parking area. Once completed, it will feature expanded bicycle parking spaces and alternative-fuel vehicle parking. Employees will also benefit by more than the mere fact that their environment will be less toxic. Employee areas will feature lockers, changing room and showers to help promote alternative transportation, further minimizing the store’s overall carbon footprint.
Additional design features of the renovated store include significant use of recycled materials, as well as the addition of energy-efficient HVAC systems, lighting and refrigeration –the latter being the single largest consumer of electricity in the store. The building has also been upgraded with heavy-duty insulation in the exterior walls to limit energy loss, and the bathrooms and kitchens have been outfitted with water-saving fixtures. The store aims to recycle at least 70 percent of its total waste, focusing on paper, glass, plastic, cardboard and metal. Fred Meyer currently recycles 45,000 tons of cardboard per year, 605,000 tons of plastic and also recycles the fluorescent light tubes used in store lighting. Most stores have their cooking oil recycled into biodiesel, and the company utilizes fresh-food donation programs, reducing the amount of waste going to local landfills.
LEEDing the Way
LEED was launched by the USBC in 2000 to promote sustainability. Companies seeking certification earn credit each time they meet or exceed specific construction benchmarks. Once the project is complete, the points are added up, leading to one of four levels of certification (silver through platinum) –or none at all, should the company fail to meet the minimum benchmarks.
Fred Meyer is working to achieve a LEED silver rating for the Hawthorne store, which would be a first for a supermarket in Oregon, and the first of Kroger’s more than 2,500 stores to reach LEED certification. LEED certification can be arduous and expensive. Whole Foods has two LEED-certified stores –Florida and Texas– but none among the chain’s seven stores in Oregon. The new Hollywood store opening this summer (at 43rd and NE Sandy Blvd.) will feature a long list of energy saving design features and environmentally friendly building products, but is not scheduled to seek LEED certification.
In an Oregonian article from November, 2008, a spokesperson from Whole Foods indicated that the company approaches certification cautiously, stating that, “…while the certification is nice, it is a very expensive and long and consuming process.” In this same article, Helen Neville, a spokesperson for New Seasons concurred, stating, “We work very hard making sure our stores are sustainable as possible and have received honors for our efforts,” she said. “But what we have found is that the LEED certification process can be cost prohibitive.”
There are more than 15 LEED supermarkets in the U.S. In the Northwest, Seattle-based PCC Natural Markets has two LEED-certified stores in Washington, including the nation’s first supermarket certified at the gold level.
Regardless of the store’s final LEED certification level, a trip to the Hawthorne Fred Meyer is certainly worth your time, and will become increasingly attractive as the construction comes to a close.
{ 6 comments }
Great post. I chuckled at the Michael Pollen suggestion. At New Seasons in Arbor Lodge, the Alcohol aisle is in the center of the store. Is New Seasons trying to tell me something?
Indeed. I imagine it’s up to each person’s perspective… hard to believe that Hefeweizen should be on the same page as Chips Ahoy! Thanks for the kudos.
Hawthorne is a good place for Freddie’s to try this experiment. I suspect that if they went through this exercise at one of their suburban stores about a mile from my house, folks would be pissed.
Awww. Does this the tunnel entrance is gone? Running through the tunnel entrance and pretending I’m a rock star entering the stage to the screams of throngs of crazy fans was the highlight of my shopping experience!
Looking forward to giving the new digs a once over the next time I stop across the street to purchase my super l33t dog food! Great writeup!
I like the new store and deli, but it does end up being a strange hybrid of the Whole Foods experience and down-market Kroger goods. I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world that a $30 block of pink Hawaiian sea salt is sitting three feet above a microwavable container of Hormel beef stew.
I think it’s great that they are thinking of healthier trends. It will be a good experiment to see if the rest of the world is ready or interested in the changes.
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