A Stroll Down Aisle Free

Note: This column appeared in The Chapel Hill News and is reproduced here for blog readers because the newspaper does not maintain its links.

For starters, I’ll have the 7-layer Mexican bean dip with tortilla chips. Then, the deep fried turkey breast with tapenade on sourdough sounds nice. After that, bring me a sliver of the red velvet cake roll.

What Chapel Hill bistro begets this three-course-fiesta, you ask? It’s a cozy little place called Harris Teeter. The bill? Zilch.

Yes, folks, the above is an actual account of what one Harris Teeter supermarket offered in freebies on a recent Sunday. OK, the sandwich part required some assembling, but all the ingredients were there for the taking.

As the shopper of the house, and a slow one, I spend way too much time in supermarkets. While there, I’ve been known to enjoy the in-store samples. Two or three times.

In a grueling act of public service, I decided to scout the free food options at Chapel Hill and Carrboro grocers. There were only a few ground rules. I didn’t count guest vendors and I visited each store at least twice for fairness. I ranked each venue on a scale of 1 to 5 toothpicks, with five the highest.

The results, my fellow free-foodsters, are below:

Food Lion
They seem to focus on low prices, not freebies, at Food Lion. Suffice it to say, it’s not the store to visit with an empty stomach. Occasionally, the bakery serves some sweets, but otherwise—bupkis (only figuratively, unfortunately).

A recent visit revealed no snack stations. Ever the thorough reporter and a tad hungry, I asked at the bakery counter if they’d served treats that day. The friendly woman with the sanitary hat then asked what I wanted to try. She powered through my half-hearted refusals and opened a box of store-made, St. Patrick’s’ Day Shortbread cookies. Wow.

Score: 2 toothpicks for effort.


Weaver Street Market
The Carrboro cooperative always seems to have a cheese offering and usually a bakery item. On a recent visit, they had a smooth smoked gouda and a dark, artisanal-looking “La Miche” bread, whatever that is. Aside from that it’s spotty.

Ruffin Slater, Weaver Street’s amiable general manager, said the store offers samples to give customers the chance to try something new, not to attract shoppers. “We’ve always had samples. We try to do it most at the busiest times—weekends and evenings. Part of it is to make shopping more fun and interesting,” said Slater.

The store’s wine samples, which Slater touted but I failed to encounter, would certainly make shopping more “fun and interesting.”

Score: 3 toothpicks


Harris Teeter
The ubiquitous supermarket chain has reliable bakery department offerings with the aforementioned 3-course options. Big ups in particular to the fun-with-food-coloring red velvet cake roll. Unfortunately, the whole show usually ends by 8 p.m.

Yet, Teeter’s fruit samples are what really set it apart. There’s almost always something refreshing like blood oranges, pineapple, or even a rare mango sighting.

All five Chapel Hill and Carrboro Teeters are open 24 hours and you have to go pretty late to miss their trademark free sugar cookies, some of which taste like they’ve been out for that long. That brings to mind some saying about beggars not being…something. Hmm, I can’t seem to recall.

Score: 3.5 toothpicks


A Southern Season
Sure, it’s not really a supermarket, but “Chapel Hill’s Landmark Gourmet Market” snuck in under the ‘they sell milk’ provision. Besides, it’s my column.

Southern Season (Do we really need the article?) entered the event as the favorite because of its reputation,. “It’s widely known you can come into A Southern Season every day and sample new items,” said (A) Southern Season marketing assistant Allison Overington. “It has become a habit for the people in town and we love that.”

Every time in, you know you’ll get a mini cup of refined coffee, cubes of sharp cheese and some fancy pants salty snack items, which can cause dilemmas. When faced with a can of Hot Honeys honey roasted chipotle peanuts, one isn’t sure whether to eat a nut or commiserate with the poor thing for all it’s been through.

As if an indicator of the store’s gourmet status, even the toothpicks are fancy. Using anything less than the colorful, frilly-topped toothpicks to spear a bite of $12.99 per pound Old Amsterdam cheese would be uncivilized.

The bakery occasionally kicks in a yummy cut up cookie or rosemary loaf, but the portions tend to be a bit too ‘sample sized’ for my taste. Also, I’d like to see more time-appropriate coffee selection. I mean, breakfast blend at 7 p.m.?

The offerings at (The) Southern Season seem to taper by six on weeknights and weekends are generally better. But the store rewards the curious at all hours, provided they ask an associate. “We let people try pretty much anything they want,” said Overington. “Although our staff probably wouldn’t pull the $500, 100-year-old bottle of balsamic vinegar off the shelf.”

In other words, when you stock gold-flecked balsamic vinegar, giving away a few snacks, even chipotle-infused ones, costs peanuts. For the record, the store has yet to sell a bottle of the Acetaia Leonardi vinegar, and it contains no gold.

Maybe if (El) Southern Season doled out samples of the Italian balsamic, whose tiny bottle retails for $581.75, they’d have received a perfect score. Good call, guys.

Score: 4 toothpicks


Earth Fare
Shoppers here can count on cheese and lots of it. A single visit netted nibbles of parmesan, emmenthal, provolone and sheep cheese, all with trilly toothpicks. While the freebies were camouflaged within the cheese case, my well-honed sample sniffer overcame this subtle ruse.

The rest of the store, however, is a bit of a letdown. At 6 p.m., all that remained was a bowl of veggie snacks and a tray of Raspberry Crumblettes, which were like Drakes Coffee Cake plus fruit.

Three aisles had empty tables, their doilies a relic of sampling past. From their placement, I can only speculate that one offered Puffins cereal and another some flavor of Kettle Chips. The third table contained only this taunting sign: “Try a sample! Natural Cocoa Bumpers.” (Sigh.)

Score: 4 toothpicks because, like my friend Chris says, cheese is good.


Whole Foods
In terms of snacking volume, Whole Foods wins by an organic country mile. What Earth Fare does for cheese, the publicly-traded market matches with chip ‘n dip stations. There were three, with the peach salsa the best. The store even pleases the family set with Clifford Kids Cereal—made by health-conscious Cascadian Farms, rest assured.

If Whole Foods’ jalapeno pistachios fought Southern Season’s chipotle peanuts, the virulent pistachios would crush the peanuts. The shell-on nuts are so tasty that an employee grabbed a few on his way by, a move I applauded.

At 6:30 p.m., toothpicks sat next to wrapped chunks of gruyere. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they had samples. But, and it’s a big but, the toothpicks lacked decorations.

Like the cheese selection, an empty bowl of Mr. Krisper’s Rice Crisps was not refilled during my half-hour visit. Apparently Whole Foods has paying customers to worry about. What an odd concept.

Score: 4.5 toothpicks