New Leaf aims to open new market in 2009 - Santa Cruz Sentinel

I believe New Leaf is now owned by a Canadian company and so not technically "locally-owned". But that doesn't matter. We can't live in such a parochial worldview. "Locally-owned" is not necessarily any better than not locally-owned. Locally-owned businesses can be pirañas. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is local or global.

Locally owned and a leader in organic products for 20 years?????
Didn't a Canadian company buy new leaf?

The canadian deal fell through.... don't you people read the paper?

No, Planet Organic did not buy New Leaf because they're apparently too expensive.

organic? i didn't know that commercially grown stawberries qualified as organic? sounds like a joke to me! shop at new leaf organic market and get your methyl bromide propagated stawberries now! sold!

huh wrote:

The canadian deal fell through.... don't you people read the paper?

Well heck - I guess I can't attribute the glut of magazines (really New Leaf - you choose to bring in a pseudo eco/green mag with Kim Kardashian on the cover?) now in New Leaf to the Canadian takeover.

the strawberries I buy at New Leaf are organic and come from a variety of places.

I guess as long as some posters can only do negative things they feel good about themselves.

dear dumbo poster,
it's pretty clear how ignorant you are because if you were to ask the produce manager at new leaf, you'd find out that the strawberries you bought at new leaf began life in soil that was pumped full of a chemical compound that is on the list of banned ozone-depleting substances of the Montreal Protocol!

Dumb posters wrote:

the strawberries I buy at New Leaf are organic and come from a variety of places.
I guess as long as some posters can only do negative things they feel good about themselves.

new leaf is way too expensive, and sometimes their produce is bad. they also put a few really good LOCAL health stores out of business.

boycott new leaf!

Organic? From California? Care for a little MTBE, fire preservatives, run-off chemicals, mercury, etc., etc., etc. on raspberries- grapes- avacados - or strawberries? Gave up that organic nonsense in the granola era.

The "real" New Leaf markets are very poorly managed, and have recently become nothing but Whole Foods wannabees. The NL store that is independently owned in Felton is much better and is more like a true natural foods market -- not just an overpriced gourmet store. The Felton store's produce puts the others' to shame. But it, too, has problems (sanitation in the deli department comes to mind).

When Whole Foods gets here, they will get my business. Years and years of bad service and bad produce at NL (mostly Westside) can't be undone by a glossy new store.(Unfortunately, Felton is not on my regular rounds, or I would shop there more often, problems or not.)

I used to be a meat eater, and I purchased spoiled meat -- beef, chicken, bacon -- at NL on the Westside, downtown and, yes, at Felton....too many times to count. The reaction of the meat counter managers was always argumentative, defensive. There are few safe places in this town to buy meat and fish, and NL Markets is not one of them.

Sanitation is just one of the advantages Whole foods has on these so-called local businesses. Staff of Life has it's produce sorting operation in an open shed in the parking lot, where I've seen employees cutting up fruit on dirty boards surrounded by flies. Their meat/fish counter is run by the same owner (different from the SoL market) that runs Live Oak Super. Have you ever been in LOS and seen how dirty it is? I was at SoL once and saw the meat counter manager get out of his car carrying a huge cryo-sealed chunk of meat. He had no cooler in the car -- so he had apparently driven it over from the other market -- without refrigeration. And let's not get into whether it was going to be sold as organic...

I am just crossing my fingers that the SC City chuckleheads don't frustrate Whole Foods out of town. We need a professionally run, clean and safe source for organic food in this area.

I forgot to add that a few times I purchased what was supposed to be premium chicken (Rosie brand) from NL Markets, only to find when I got home that it was their cheaper chicken (Happy Dan?). Rosie chickens have a metal badge clipped onto a wing so that markets can't do this switching business. The NL meat counter managers would tell me that the badge must have "fallen off". Not only is this impossible because of the way they are put on, but the quality of the chickens is completely different. I call this blatant cheating.

Please, Whole Foods, get moving and get yourself planted out on Soquel. We need you.

Notice how the politically-connected outfit sails through the permitting process using the "we're local" excuse.

But it was more than happy to sell to a foreign outfit and that would be the case today had the buyer not walked away.

I totally disagree, no need for another OVERPRICED New Leaf! I've boycotted that store for YEARS because they charge upwards of 50% more for the same products I can get at Staff of Life. Whole Foods is vastly overpriced as well.

The veggie and fruit section at Staff is second to none, I hardly find the need to go to Farmer's Market for that matter. If you do a bit of price comparison on your favorite items you'll see what I mean--'nuff said.

Scooter wrote:

No, Planet Organic did not buy New Leaf because they're apparently too expensive.

Same reason I don't shop there. Capitola Produce is the best deal for produce, Live Oak Super, Shopper's Corner have excellent meats, Trader Joe's has inexpensive cheese, and 41st Liquor and Shopper's Corner have excellent wines.

I cannot STAND the meat market at the Felton NL. The people who man the deli are spacy and slow. Once, I asked a skinny man behind the counter for a tri-tip piece, one pound, please and he took years to get it right. He moved slowly, looked confused, cut off the end of the meat and tossed it aside, came back and asked me "one pound, right?" as if he was too stoned to remember his intructions. But it wasn't just this one time....seems it is almost everytime I go there, the deli employees are out of it.
Ben Lomond Market is $$$ too, but at least the butchers are the real deal.

Daisy Mae wrote:

I cannot STAND the meat market at the Felton NL. The people who man the deli are spacy and slow. Once, I asked a skinny man behind the counter for a tri-tip piece, one pound, please and he took years to get it right. He moved slowly, looked confused, cut off the end of the meat and tossed it aside, came back and asked me "one pound, right?" as if he was too stoned to remember his intructions. But it wasn't just this one time....seems it is almost everytime I go there, the deli employees are out of it.
Ben Lomond Market is $$$ too, but at least the butchers are the real deal.

HUH? You can not stand it but you keep going back? If it's such a hassle, go somewhere else, duh. I don't understand dumb people. I really don't.

There goes the neighborhood!

I can't stand the smell of bad meat that always greets me at the Live Oak Super.
I'm afraid to buy their meat because of that bad smell.

Daisy Mae wrote:

I cannot STAND the meat market at the Felton NL. The people who man the deli are spacy and slow.

So don't shop there.

My experience is just the opposite of yours; I've always received excellent service there. The employees are pleasant, efficient, and well-informed.