the store I do most of our grocery shopping here in Portland is New Season's Market. Everything is just right; they carry all of the items we need, the employees are super nice always willing to go the extra step and the store is locally owned. They carry local food which is marked as such, the freshest fruits and vegetables, locally sourced meat and fish, plus all of the other galactosemia safe food items we like. With the prepared foods items, sausages, ham, etc. the employees are always willing and able to tell us whether the item contains milk derivatives or not. I have never encountered a person who was not willing to help.
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| The Soutions/Demo desk at New Season's Market on Hawthorne |
The girls also like to come along for the trip to the store. Both of them have known New Season's Market their entire lives as the Seven Corners store opened right after Alena was born. I think one of the reasons the girls like it so much is because there are always food samples at the demo/solutions desk. The Seven Corners store generally always had a sign up stating whether the food contained any allergens. We were used to the routine. Then the Hawthorne store opened about a year ago. It is much closer to our house and is the natural choice for us for grocery shopping. But you know what? Yes, the food samples at the service/demo desk only declared nut and tree nut allergens. Argh! - I was quite disappointed and talked with the lovely lady working the demo/solutions counter about this issue. In my conversation I told her about the issue and that the other location, always declared all allergens. I asked whether they would please implement the same system. A week later or so, they did not have a sign up but they told me that they are working on finding a solution. And yes, shortly the
sign was there. It list all of the major allergens, and the employees mark off which allergens are included in the samples. I was so happy and I never gave it a second thought until last week. I saw the lovely lady I initially spoke with through an ingredient list and mark all the allergens included on the sign. It deserved a compliment and that is when she told me this specific sign was created just because I brought the issue up. The demo manager came up with the solution to come up with the perfect sign. Yay!!!! Now that drives home the point, you just have to ask and you shall receive!
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| The perfect allergen alert sign |
One last note, the opinion expressed in this post are my own and I have not received any compensation in any form from the store. Thank you, New Season's Market on Hawthorne! You are THE best!
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| Troy, the demo manager and creator of the sign with Alena and Mia Rose |
