Metro Pulse

After roughly 10 months on the job I am giving up pursuit of the truth about Knoxville in its supermarket aisles. Though I believe the truth is still to be found in these stores—in produce perhaps, or inadvertently buried in a bin on the bargain aisle—the press of more urgent and lucrative business pulls me away. I admit that at times it has seemed to me that this column, like Seinfeld, was about nothing at all. Few places feel more empty of meaning than a grocery store at mid-afternoon with nothing going on. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: The Citgo Bi-Lo at the corner of Governor John Sevier Highway and Martin Mill Pike looks like it’s either a gas station becoming a grocery store or a grocery store becoming a gas station. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: Super Dollar Discount Foods, one of the latest approaches to discount retailing by a major grocery chain in Knoxville, sacrifices atmosphere and selection to lower prices. Owned by K-VA-T Food Stores, the parent company of Food City, Super Dollar opened in June in an Asheville Highway strip mall just east of Chilhowee Park Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: It must take at least three geese to make up a gaggle, but what constitutes an embarrassment of riches? Everybody in America is created equal, but that still doesn’t keep us from gushing over the lifestyles of the rich and famous. We’re fascinated by the rich and fantasize about being one of them. No one seems too embarrassed about making big bucks or aspiring to do so. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: Hispanics have been coming to the mountains since the days of DeSoto, and East Tennesseans like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett were among the 19th-century Anglo-Americans who reached out to Hispanics on their own turf (and eventually annexed large chunks of that turf into the U.S.). Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: Driving north on Broadway on a June afternoon, through the green heart of our city, I turn on Washington Pike and head east. With thunder rumbling in the distance and intermittent spatters of rain on the windshield, I drive the length of one of the prettiest ridges in Knoxville, following the pike as it jogs left at the end of the ridge toward East Towne Mall. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out by John Yates: I have seen the future, and not only does it work, it’s the past. Three Rivers Market has been around for 27 years, and the basic formula hasn’t changed since I last visited the store around 1987. It’s always been a food co-op, owned by a large base of shopper-members. Full story »

Grocery Check-out by John Yates It’s the Wile E. Coyote Kroger. Approaching from the south you see it suspended above the intersection of Pellissippi Parkway and Northshore Drive, hanging in the air supported by—well, by not much of anything these days, beyond the convictions of West Knox suburbanites that gas prices are bound to fall soon. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out:This is for those people in Ohio. You know who you are. You’re sitting up there right now, making your vacation plans, calculating price of gas versus fuel efficiency versus distance from Cuyahoga Falls or Chillicothe or Ashtabula, and drawing a bead on the Smokies. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out: Food City is the hermit crab of Knoxville supermarkets, and its adaptability to neighborhoods across the city may have something to do with its success. The regional chain now has nearly 40 stores listed in the Knoxville phone book and a market share of around 30 percent. Full story »

Grocery Check-Out: The store is at 307 18th Street—307½ is a stairway leading to the building’s upper story, possibly a rental. In the yard next door is a pit bull that’s the spitting image of Petey the Pup from Spanky and Our Gang. The store and surrounding buildings very well could have been lifted out of an Our Gang short; now the neighborhood is all about rentals to college students and whoever else is passing through. Full story »

Other towns have tracks to be on the wrong or right side of; Knoxville has ridges. To be sure, it makes driving north to south more complicated than crossing a railroad track. However, it also creates and incubates pools of lifestyles so surprisingly various that whether you’re on the right or wrong side of anything ceases to matter. Full story »

From the outside, the SuperTarget at Turkey Creek looks enormous. Inside, it looks even bigger. The grand mall on Parkside Drive at Turkey Creek lines up the superstores like the pyramids at Giza—Wal-Mart, Office Max, Old Navy, Goody’s, and then, roughly the fifth major monument from the left, SuperTarget. Full story »

I told my daughter I was going to check out Sam’s Club for this column, and she showed me a YouTube video, Harry Potter and the Dark Lord Waldemart, in which the evil Lord Waldemart shuts down every shop in Diagon Alley by selling cheap wands and potions at his own store. Full story »

Writing reviews of grocery stores is like reviewing people’s living rooms. There is something intimate about buying food. People go to a movie or out to eat two or three times a month maybe, and they might develop loyalties to a particular restaurant or movie star or director, or even like the popcorn or kinds of movies available at one theater. Full story »