Grocery Stores of Santa Rosa and Sebastopol
In the various places I’ve lived there have always been like 2 or 3 competing major supermarket chains. I imagine for many people that the entrance of Whole Foods into the market—a grocery store that seems to care more about consumer and environmental health than supplier profit—has been a breath of fresh air.
Much to my delight, there are local grocery stores in California that aren’t chains at all.
The chains do still exist, but of the 19 stores I’ve counted in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, 6 are local, independent, relatively full-service grocery stores. That’s over 30%. And if I threw the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s in with the independents, more than 52% of the grocery stores I have access to are either independent or at least very interesting.
I was thinking about this last night as I went shopping at Pacific Market in Santa Rosa for the first time. They’re the smaller sister store to Fiesta Market in Sebastopol where I frequently get lunch. Given that I keep discovering new grocery stores, and tend to shop at a different one each time, I thought it’d be fun to plot out all the ones I know and see what others I’ve yet to try.
And what better tool to use than Google Maps!
| Santa Rosa, California | |
|---|---|
| Albertsons | 150 Bicentennial Way |
| Albertsons | 915 Village Court |
| Community Market | 1899 Mendocino Avenue |
| G&G Supermarket | 1211 West College Avenue |
| Oliver’s Market | 560 Montecito Center |
| Pacific Market | 1465 Town And Country Drive |
| Safeway | 2300 Mendocino Avenue |
| Safeway | 1799 Marlow Road |
| Safeway | 2751 4th Street |
| Safeway | 2785 Yulupa Avenue |
| Safeway | 100 Calistoga Road |
| Trader Joe’s | 3225 Cleveland Avenue |
| Trader Joe’s | 2100 Santa Rosa Ave |
| Whole Foods Market | 1181 Yulupa Avenue |
| Sebastopol, California | |
| Albertsons | 776 Gravenstein Highway North |
| Andy’s Market | 691 Gravenstein Highway North |
| Fiesta Market | 550 Gravenstein Highway North |
| Fircrest Market | 998 Gravenstein Highway South |
| Safeway | 406 North Main Street |
| Whole Foods Market | 6910 McKinley Avenue |
Update: The JavaScript I originally wrote to plot the grocery stores on Google Maps stopped working, and I didn’t have any interest in maintaining it, so I chose to replace it with a screenshot of the original map and a table listing all the stores and their street addresses.
I’m running Mozilla 1.7.8 and the map doesn’t display, nor do the individual stores display. So it’s not just IE.
Whoa, wait a minute, now it’s working. Hmmm, might be something about the first time you load it. Tried starting and stopping the browser, but again it’s now working. I wonder what just happened. OK, well, nevermind…
Is that the same Fiesta store that we have here in Austin?
Justin, you are adorable! Also, there’s an Oliver’s in Santa Rosa. It kicks ass, but the one in Cotati is better.
Re: browsers, yeah I was thinking of developing some kind of wordpress google maps plugin, but instead I may write a post on how freaking hard this was to accomplish for IE. For now this neatlink of supreme frustration will have to suffice.
Re: Fiesta, nope, it’s a local store.
Marcia, thanks. Check it out, another indie grocery store. I’ve added it, though it may require a shift+reload to show up on your browsers.
Montecito huh. I’ve never been over there. Time to get out and explore Santa Rosa again. Place has kind of got that little big town feel.
I think it’s sad that the places you have lived have had so few choices that you take (although admittedly adorable) pleasure in our few independent markets, which for the most part (except for G&G) have had to go “gourmet” to survive. BTW, there are two G&Gs. Also, where have you been?!
Well, I was not entirely forthcoming about the groceries available in my previous lives. Before moving to Santa Rosa, I lived in Carrboro, North Carolina (right next to Chapel Hill) which was about 2 blocks up from a local cooperative organic grocery store called Weaver Street Market. It’s kind of like Santa Rosa’s Community Market except they sold meat, fish, had a cafe, and an expansive lawn out front in the center of town that functioned as the soul of the place.
In fact I wrote a whole post about what it was like to shop there for my biweekly groceries rather than the regional mega chain: grocery shopping project. Weaver Street was one of the hardest things to leave behind when I moved.
And in Austin, as Jackie will attest, I had access to H.E.B.’s phenomenal Central Market as well as the flagship Whole Foods (which is even bigger and better now). So I’ve had access in the past, I’m just really appreciating the quantity and diversity out here.
This is one of my favorite things about living in an urban area. We have five different grocery stores within walking distance, six if you count the farmer’s market, and 8 if you allow duplicates. I know it reflects our proximity to the university, but the density of “urban groceteries” in our neighborhood, while pleasant, makes us a little sheepish sometimes. But you can always get imported cheese.
It’s funny though, the thing people most seem to fret about the idea of living in the city (aka San Francisco) is the perceived lack of easy access to groceries.
Now maybe it’s just the fact that they’d envision not having a car in the city (and thus would need to walk) or maybe there’s actually a dearth of groceries in the city.
I’d be curious to see a similar map plotting out the grocery density in SF.
For future reference, someone else has come up with a Google Maps plugin for WordPress. Strangely enough works better in IE than FF. Requires an exec PHP plugin which I’d prefer to avoid.
just curious what you all know about G & G Grocery? Is it a good store? when I look it up online it gives me Clover… I’m confused- and since I live in Florida, I can’t stop in till I get out there! Thank you for you help
Shari, G&G Supermarket is ok, a lot of people love their fish and meat selection, but the location on West College seemed a little run down to me.
I found your grocery store page while surfing for independent grocery store owners in Sonoma County. I’m figuring one of them may want to be FIRST or SECOND to provide their grocery information VIA WEB TV … SoCô¿ôL?
http://www.socool.com/tv/current