STL A La Mode

I totally agree - the little carts are excellent. I tend to overload the hand held baskets but don't want a big cart because I'll buy too much and they are hart to manouver.

That's one way to reduce the bill at Whole Paycheck...um, I mean Whole Foods.

Yeah, I know I could save at least a cartload of money by frequenting the equally close Trader Joe's, or the pretty-close-by Wild Oats...but Whole Foods' produce is so bee-yoo-tee-ful! Still, you stop in for a spinach scone and somehow it sucks $42 from your stylish pocketbook.

I haven't ventured to Whole Foods, and try and do Trader's once a month for Irish cheese, the wonderfully moist dried apricots, "set" honey (okay, I know its called something else here), decent wine at a fraction of Erato's cost, great bread, their own brand Corn Flakes, fast polite check out and the mini-esque carts the BEST. As a kid in England in the '70s ALL supermarket shopping trolleys (yes, thats what the Beatles called them too) were the "small size".
TJs one drawback. Its location; if you are an adult shepherding 3 children through the parking lot its a high risk proposition just getting into the store through the cell-phone-toting-inner-burbanites in their collasal suvs, specially design to roll over even standard issue shopping cards without evidence of impact.

A word to the TJs management folks at TJ HQ in Seattle, and Rollin Stanley at PDA. How about an urban TJ (Sacramento style, full service grocery) on the former Schnucks site (owned by the Roberts Bros.) at Delmar and Kingshighway? I think it would work, and create some sorely needed competition in the north/central city area.