M.O.E.’s
A while ago, we had a small grocery in Mid-City called Whole Foods – that was its name when Whole Foods out of Texas bought them. While the big Whole Foods was building out the bus barn Uptown, management continued to tell Mid-City that they wouldn’t close down the smaller store. So all was happy in LaLa Land.
Then the big evil corporate Whole Foods suddenly said it was closing the smaller store because its shiny new store Uptown and in Metairie were enough for it to make loads of profit.
So the neighborhood barked loudly.
And there were meetings and bids and three grocery names threw their name in the hat.
Although it had the least to offer, Lakeview Fine Foods, won the bid. In Lakeview, the small grocery catered to an older demographic who wouldn’t know organic if it levitated and bit them on the lips, but Mid-City nabes insisted on whole foods-esque and so Lakeview Fine Foods promised to oblige.
Then there was Katrina. Then there was Rita.
Lakeview Fine Foods was wiped off the map. So we all thought the owners would put a lot into the Market on Esplanade – the name it took instead of Esplanade Fine Foods.
So when the Market on Esplanade finally opened with limp lettuce and hard as fist tiny mangos and a prepared food department that displayed the food in the least appetizing way imaginable, we all said, huh. And though loads of people came to patronize the store within the first months, more and more, people found themselves going to the small neighborhood Terranova across the street or the larger Sav-A-Center that had been beautifully refurbished after Katrina.
So on Friday when the emails began circulating that MOE’s – as we came to call it – was closing on Sunday, we are all in shock, disgusted, and felt pretty much duped by management because they didn’t listen to what the community was saying and instead they folded without a good old college try.