Recipe cards are provided beside the kits and cooking advice is just a question away from one of the produce employees who prep the items and also hand-squeeze nearly three dozen fresh juice blends.Īnother section of the produce department is labeled the Corner Market, an area designed to replicate a roadside stand where local farmers can sell seasonal items from four 6-foot ice tables. Zucchini, basil, tomatoes, and onion have been mixed for pasta sauce. Diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs and spices are combined for a fresh tortilla soup starter. The produce team, among the store's 365 associates, have gone a step further and bundled some of the prepless items into kits. Waste is reduced by quick turnover of unsold prepless produce to Central Market's cafe and catering department. The produce, prepped in view of the customers, is sold on trays wrapped in plastic, or from iced plastic bulk tubs. Four ice tables hold sliced, diced, julienned, ruffled, and minced vegetables ready for the shoppers' salad bowl, wok or grill.
That's prepless for the customer, not the store. Near the mushrooms is another of the market's new attractions: prepless produce. The 48-by-18-by-3 inch drawers are the brainchild of the store's perishables director, Howard Miller, who designed them for optimum temperature, air and dirt control. On opening week, they were filled with hedgehog, porcini, oyster, morel, chanterelle, black trumpet, shiitake, cremini, woodear and button mushrooms. Of particular note in the produce department, and new to H-E-B, are four custom-designed stainless-steel mushroom drawers with perforated bases that allow 34-38-degree air to circulate among the fungi. Shoppers follow the directed produce path, weighing and marking their selections on European-style scales. A sign explains that the temperature - 62 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit - helps maintain the freshness of 100 organics, 32 varieties of apples and pears, an end cap of fresh salsa ingredients and two dozen different greens. It's chilly in the 18,000-square-foot climate-controlled produce department. Feed it 25 cents and a youngster can have his choice of a banana, apple, orange, or kiwi to munch on as he shops with mom or dad. A kids' table by the door features fruit and a large piggy bank. However, at the new Central Market Westgate, located at 4477 South Lamar, shoppers enter a single door into a concrete-floored, warehouse-style store.
The store's layout - one-third perishables, one-third prepared foods, and one-third specialty foods - has been so successful for the original store that it has made Central Market a regular Austin tourist attraction.īy way of comparison, Broadway Central Market in San Antonio, which officially became store number two in the Central Market chain in February 1998, is a more traditional supermarket than its brethren because it was a renovated H-E-B store that retained traditional grocery items. Still, the basic format - a winding one-way path that leads them through 600 varieties of top-quality fruits and vegetables, 800 domestic and imported cheeses, 2000 wines, dozens of fresh-made salsas and hot stations offering fresh-roasted meats - remains the big draw, just as strong now as it was five years ago, when H-E-B wowed shoppers with the first Central Market. Butt Grocery Company, San Antonio, Texas, opened its third Central Market here at the Westgate Shopping Center, customers found some new elements that represent the latest evolution of this fresh-market leader.
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