apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Like them or not, they are expanding pretty rapidly:
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=15595

Out here in SF we have Planet Organics which rocks -- 100% locally grown California produce delivered to your door. Whatever is in season -- you let them choose for you (you can specify % fruit and % veggies). I use them and feel like it forces me to eat well. Not sure if there's anything like that in NYC.

Well, I'm happy to say I completely missed that whole event... Just breezed through it... The AT audience definitely has loads of time on its hands...

Have never used FD... Don't like the thought of not seeing the product I'm buying.

Anyway, as we all know, the pivoting perfection has just a half-size fridge, so it's not like I can ever fit a lot of groceries in it anyway... some wine and some beer, coffee (Fairway blend) and milk (horizon), some pickles, a lonely pat of plugra, 4 organic eggs, three rolls of film, an old container of grated pecorino, and some lentil soup from the deli... there's not much room for anything else... I think the teensy freezer has a small bag of some frozen blueberries in it... but there's no more room in that tiny thing... certainly not room for a load of FD groceries or for that matter the freezing component of an ice cream maker.

It was amusing to see all the complaints of idling trucks, noise and pollution, after I gave the origianl lowdown on that sitch back in the spring when someone asked about window treatments... I'd venture to say that anyone who didn't think idling trucks are a problem on small residential streets probably never had to live in a unit facing the street. Just a guess.

The AT crew was tickled I'm sure, to see the grocery firestorm this week... Probably qualifies as an event to be marked in a calendar. Is this the first time they ever told the audience to play nice?

Can we move on to the design faux-pas and advice I crave to read about now?

BTW... the Pengu lamp of the other day? Yours for $600 at Lighting by Gregory... Thanks but no thanks!

What kind of fancy-pants elitist blog is this becoming anyway?

I think New Yorkers as a whole have a complex and conflicted relationship with service industries and food. It is, to some extent, all about (perceived) class, cliques, status, and identity....To deliver or not to deliver.... to go out.... walkup or doorman... to have the luxury of enough space to hold a proper dinner party in your apt (at a table that seats 10! gasp!)... organic or supermarket.... H&H or Zabar's....

I grew up in the suburbs of NYC and live in the city now (having spent substantial time in 4 other large cities). And yet, New Yorkers still amuse and amaze me with their strong feelings about real estate and food. Don't get me started on their bizarre love of Fairway.....

Real estate and groceries. I think you're on to something. When I first moved to NYC (umm, a few errr.. years ago) from a Midwestern suburb I was amazed at how small and poorly stocked most NY grocery stores were even in some of the better neighborhoods. I think a lot of it has to do with real estate. Small stores, narrow, cluttered aisles and limited choices, not to mention often higher prices. While there has been some improvement, grocery shopping in NYC is still a pain. Anything that increases the grocery shopping choices in this town is not entirely a bad thing.

"Bizarre Love of Fairway" -- huh? Some of the best food at the best prices -- yes, the mobs can be maddening, but not if you shop late. What is bizarre to me is that in a city with Balducci's, Zabar's, Fairway, Citarella, Vinegar Factory, Agata & Valenti, Jefferson Market, Dean & DeLuca, Union Square and other farmer's markets, and countless local markets, ethnic stores, Chinatown, Stew Leonards in the burb's -- ok, stop me now -- how can anyone give preference to Whole Foods and Fresh Direct??? Are you the same people who get your pizza from Domino's instead of a good, local NYC pizzeria???

re: "Well, I'm happy to say I completely missed that whole event... The AT audience definitely has loads of time on its hands..."

Hey, Paul, I didn't realize the pivoting perfection was a glass house! ;)

Frank--
I think this is how/why the phrase "one stop shopping" was coined. I just want to put dinner on my table every night without it being an almost-daily scavenger hunt involving planes, trains, granny carts and automobiles.

But it's very much a personal choice. And I truly admire the people who take unbridled full advantage of the city and its diversity in any way. I'd just rather use my spare time sitting in a Broadway theater than waiting for a cab for the schlep back from Fairway.

!%@$@%*
I promised myself I would NOT comment on any threads about Fresh Direct ever again. DO! I did it again!!

You can't help yourself, Patrick. Go order a pizza from Domino's and you will feel better.

;-)

If this is the worst flare-up to occur on AP, I'm impressed. On the mailing lists and msg boards I used to read, yeserday's heat-up would be a weekly/daily event. At least Godwin's Law wasn't invoked.

This place is very civil, and was pretty civil yesterday.

I stopped looking for the one almighty grocery stop a long time ago. Since moving to NY, I have become a food nomad. I think this is not for everyone - but it suits me well:

When I am in Chinatown, for example, I remember to pick up lotus root. LES - I go visit Jeffrey the Butcher. When I am near Fairway, I get their spaghetti sauce (or make a huge trip for tons of staples). If I am going to Union Square on a Saturday, I bring a backpack to hold the veggies. When I go back to CT in the summer, it's blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. And in the fall I get the best apples from home, too.

Having worked on the UES for a few years now, I took this way of shopping to the streets here where prices are notoriously high. No shop is perfect and they all charge too much for something. Now I have about four different small shops I go to, all for different things, and wind up with a full amount of great groceries at a decent price. One has AMAZING produce (Likitsakos on Lex and 80th and 87th) but I would not waste my time with the meats - except the Boar's Head. Another place down the street has all the grains, nuts, etc; at a very good price. The fish market has good prices and they always are knowledgeable. As for fruit, I rotate through a few markets depending on freshness. And all of this is on the way to or from work, only taking a few extra minutes. Once it is worked into the week, I almost don't even think of it.

NY provides so many ways to have a life of convenience, but every convenience comes with a price. Most likely readers here all indulge in something, but choose responsibility in some area. For me, chemicals in cheap foods and energy used for personal deliveries is hign on my list of worries. For that alone I would gladly spend a few minutes per day shopping. But I love having my shirts pressed so that I can enjoy morning coffee with my wife.

The irony of course, and it's something that Dan nailed with his "Groceries? Cooking? What's that? Some new fad in NY?" comment, is that NYC has so many great restaraunts and take out places from such a wide variety of cultures (and the encumbant stores were always crappy in terms of selection and price as jimkk discovered) that a lot of ppl do not cook and do not buy groceries. They survive on take out and restaraunts. I think the AT crowd is not representative of the average nycer in this respect.

When I first came to NYC in 94 all I did was go out, eat out or eat take out and I was not alone in this. It was cheaper to buy take out every night than to buy ingredients at the local Dags and cook yourself something. The NYTimes even did a piece on the phenomenon of the unused stove. A friend of mine used to store his shoes in his oven. It's only been recently that my wife and I have begun to cook regularly and a lot of that has to do with our kids. Which, BTW, is another reason to go with FD - when you need close to 8 gallons of milk per week then you appreciate the regularity and ease of ordering plus the delivery aspect.

When I first came to NYC as an adult in '75 I ate out all the time, too; but back then the upper west side (and other neighborhoods) were loaded with extremely cheap ethnic restaurants. Alas, rising rents means that most have been replaced with Starbucks, Duane Reades and cell phone stores.

I think the passion of the anti-FD and WF crowd is routed in this frightening standardization and homogenization of Manhattan. Some of us old geezers just don't get why you'd move here, pay the crazy real estate prices and expect the same things you can get "out there".

BTW, Frank, I think FD is as intrinsically NY now as Fairway, Dean and Delucca et al and it is nothing like Domino's. Afterall, where did it originate and where does it deliver to? Also, NYC was the first city I ever lived in where you could get anything and everything delivered so FD fits with this perfectly.

Now if you had likened eating out at Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Chevy's, Chilli's (which I first encountered in Singapore after having lived in NYC for 5 years already) to getting take out from Domino's then you would have had a more appropriate simile.

Jamie Pup -- hate to admit, but you are right about FD being "intrinsically" part of NY -- for now at least. Not sure that they are really making any money yet. . .

But now that you brought it up -- who does eat at Olive Garden in Chelsea??? Yikes!

Yea, where does it deliver to? Again, too many comments to read them all if this has already been said but, Fresh Direct doesn't even deliver to the places that really need them! I live in the newly hipster crowded East Williamsburg/Bushwick where we don't have a grocery store, and even though their base in Queens is closer to us than Manhattan, they don't deliver here. Just inane.

All I know is that my mother and my father-in-law, both of whom grew up on family farms, would say thank the lord that you are separated from your food. People romanticize growing food. Growing tomatoes in your backyard (which I'd love to be able to do) or being an owner of an organic vanity farm (with enough saved from a previous career to not have to really worry)is a whole different bag of potatoes than being a "real" farmer. I told my mother about this topic and she said basically, that buying your food from a farmer's market does not constitute a connection with your food. I think she may also have muttered something about yuppie New Yorkers, but I can't be sure. :)

ATTN MAXWELL GILLINGHAM-RYAN - PLEASE MAKE IT STTTOOOOOPPPP!!!!!!!! My AT buzz is now officially whatever the opposite of a buzz is.

cheers Fiona! You nailed it.
My dad grew up on a farm (Iowa). Despite being a NYer, I relate. Quite happy that chicken comes in styrofoam, thanks.

Just one last comment, I promise:

This whole equating of FD with the "luxury industry" just makes me laugh. The reason I use them is that a) if you shop carefully, their prices are quite good, especially considering the quality; b) if you buy the "bulk" packs of meat/fish/chicken, the prices are VERY good (and you can order lots, freeze them, and thus not have to get deliveries every week); and c) it's SO much cheaper than eating out.

For me, it's an economizing thing, and one that allows me to do something I realllllly love - cook. Me? A luxury service whore? It is to laugh. Hard.

Yep pphillipp, I was going to post the same thing. What we had for affordable staple food in most neighbourhoods before FD were D'Agastinos, Gristedes, etc. which were horrendously overpriced with and had little in the way of variety (try buying anything organic from them a few years ago) and were typically dirty and cramped. All a lot of us wanted was a good value supermarket so that we could save some money and cook at home. The NYC supermarkets were not fulfilling that need (unless you live on the UWS) and FD simply did.

Nothing sinister about it. I don't equate it with the negative mallification of nyc because, as I said, supermarkets (crappy ones) have existed in nyc for many years.

BTW, I read an interview with the owner of Gristedes who said he was revamping the stores in response to losing customers to FD and some of my friends from BPC who I mentioned before do say that the one down there has noticeably improved. So I guess FD is not all bad for competition. It was actually the catalyst for improved service and choice all round.

With respect to the mallification of nyc, while I lament the changes that have happened since I first came on vacation in 1991, what a lot of ppl (and I am not including Frank in this but rather the new urbanists) don't seem to get is that there are millions of ppl in nyc that are struggling on a pittance and need the 99c stores, Targets and Walmarts (if this was permitted to be built) of the world to eke out an existence. Furthermore, go to Queens center mall in Elmhurst (which is apparently the most profitable mall in the country on an average $ per sq ft basis) or any Target in any of the outer boroughs and try asking anyone there if they care about Jane Jacobs or contextual development.

Stew Leonards! Now that is a subject worth polling about. Who cares about FD or the relative merits of Fairway when you have talking cows, animatronics and an Ikea like maze to make your shopping trip memorable. Oh, and the quality of the food is pretty amazing too.

as a young new yorker paying too much for my apartment, I love FD b/c it makes me cook. As a gen y-er, I get to feed my online-shopping addiction. on top of it all, as others have stated, the product quality is great and the prices are fine. I think FD also prevents the inevitable impulse purchases that drive up the grocery bill.

One thing I can tell you is this: FD is the only such grocery delivery service in the US that is truly successful. Webvan? done. Peapod? still spending investment capital and trying to attach itself to ShopRite. Talk about quality problems - ShopRite is worse than most most of these places you noble New Yorkers call 'grocery stores'.

It's easy to point out that FD succeeds here b/c of the geographic concentration of city as well as the average New Yorker's indulgence in delivery. However, what should not be ignored is that maybe, just maybe, FD fills a need here b/c grocery shopping in this town is difficult, expensive and inconvenient. It requires a lot of walking, many stops for a thorough search of price and variety, ans a sh*tload of time.

I understand that there is nobility in that - that it brings you closer to your city to some degree, that you can then say that you know where to get "the best _____ in the city." That's all well and good, but that just might be a long-ingrained New Yorker trait that comes from generations of inconvenience.

We're not looking for mattresses or antique furniture here, people, we just want some groceries. and I like FD.

hey Frank--Fresh Direct is just a way to procure food, it is not anything more than that. While I love to go to my fishmonger at Essex market (he peels my shrimp, has given me fish for my cat when he was dying and comforted me after his death), I work, I don't have time to go all over town to tiny jammed markets and schlep heavy bags home. Fresh Direct comes to my door so that I do not have to endure eating take out from my local, family owned restaurants every night. Get over it.
BTW: Fresh Direct and Fairway are owned by the same people.

Fairway and FD ARE NOT owned by the same people -- Fairway makes that Urban Legend very clear in all its stores.

Eating out as less expensive than cooking in? I love to order food--whether cheap take-out or eating in restaurants in a variety of price ranges, but I just can't afford do do it as much as I'd like. I've crunched the numbers, and, for my needs, even buying a decent amount of organic stuff from the grocery store is less expensive than cheap take-out. Some of the most expensive stuff at grocery stores (and FD) is the pre-made food (frozen meals, marinated meats,etc), so I usually avoid it.

I cook all the time and I would never never think of ordering anything from fresh direct. Especially not when I am living in a big city with all kinds of stores. Once or twice a week I go on a shopping tour and I just love my cheese shop, my meat shop, my fish shop, my coffee shop and my vegetable shop. I even rarely go to a regular super market as my favorite small shops provide me with a better variety. Fresh Direct = Pollution!

My 2 cents. I live in Washington Heights, and there is absolutely no doubt that the grocery chains in this town send the worst produce to poor, Black and/or Hispanic neighborhoods. You should see the sorry excuse we have for fruit around here. Not to mention the selection at my local Gristedes sucks. Any availability for better, healthier produce in my neighborhood is an improvement. (I have neither time nor money to go all over town trying to get a better selection every week).

I just moved to the City from Los Angeles and I went to my local grocer. I spent $40 on 1/8 lb of cheese, crackers, 6-pack of miller, and a small bag of potato chips. Now I know LA can't compare to New York's grocery prices, but Fresh Direct is looking pretty damn good to me.

While we are at it let's not forget on of the lowpoints and utter rip-off merchants of NYC shopping: Gourmet Garage. Alas, there isn't much choice in Soho. I wish Whole Foods would open a store down here.

Forget Whole Foods. A Fairway anywhere in the vicinity would be the best thing that could happen to the neighborhood.

I just tried FD for the first time. (As in, I just hit the "submit order" button.) My husband and I are from Michigan, and have lived here in Manhattan for a year now. Back home, we grew up in Grosse Pointe, an extremely "yuppy" area that puts the UES to shame. We then moved on to the University of Michigan which is in Ann Arbor, an extremely "hippy" area that has no less than fourteen organic/natural/farmer's-market/co-op food stores. We truly enjoy cooking, fine foods, and perfect produce, which were readily available in both areas: one because of its affluent nature, and the other because of the nature of its residents. What I would like to mention is the fact that I am a strict vegetarian, making it almost completely neccessary for me to shop at Whole Foods which carries products that are virtually impossible to find anywhere else in the city, as well as products that you CAN find elsewhere, but which WF offers at incomparably cheaper prices. My husband, who enjoys a full variety of meats, likes the fact that the poultry case isn't sporting a two-inch-deep pool of pink liquid in the bottom of it, and that the people employed there seem relatively enthusiastic about what they're doing. I hope that FD turns out to be a real break from the hours we spend toting heavy sacks of canned goods on a triple-transfer subway ride back home. (By the way- what's with the requisite double-bagging here? This is so foreign to us.) I will always adore hand-selecting my produce, but when it comes to canned goods and bags of flour, it's fine with me if someone else brings it right to my doorstep. In a city that labels five inches of snow a "blizzard", this argument over the right to be inconvenienced makes us laugh even harder than the six aisle atrocities they call "grocery stores".

I live in NYC (Manhattan) & today Feb 12th 2007 as usual a NOISY!! freshdirect [noisedirect] truck idled IN FRONT OF A FIRE HYDRANT for 86 MINUES! rattling its air conditioning & truck engine. I go downstairs and ask why run the airconditioner full force when its 31degrees even last week when it was 16 degrees if the open the back door the food will actually get colder than w/the air conditioning. My Question is why do they seem to run the air conditioning at high noise in some areas like in the 20s and 30s on the east side but if I follow the truck to other areas all of a sudden EVEN ON HOT DAYS the air conditioning is purring quietly. It is very suspicious when of 23 times in the last 6 months the noisy truck on my street around 8 to 930pm when followed till 11PM NOT ONCE WAS THE TRUCK so noisy NOT ONCE WHY? and why run the AC on full / loudly when its under 35 degrees