K is for Kroger #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

There's a new Kroger in the neighborhood. That's not a euphemism; a new Kroger just opened a month ago and it's about a mile closer to me than my previous Kroger.

What's great about it: there's a bar and seating upstairs (yes, it has an upstairs!), an enormous prepared foods section if I ever need curry in a hurry--and let's be honest, when do I not?--and an outdoor patio with some fancy-looking artwork they're still installing.

I've always thought of myself as a Kroger kind of person, even all those years when the nearest Kroger was hundreds of miles away, but the truth is that I'm a nearest-supermarket-to-me-with-decent-bike-parking kind of person. Speaking of:

All this time as a bike advocate, I had no idea that's what bike racks
were for! Thanks for clearing that up for me, Kroger. ::eyeroll::

This is the nearest one to me now, so that's where I go, and I make it a point of locking up my bike right alongside the carts, in full view of an employee if I can manage it. (Not that I blame the employees. I'm sure they're following management's dumb instructions.) 

Cincinnati is Kroger's home base, or at least I think that's what the giant building downtown with "Kroger" on all four sides means. Which is admittedly not as cool as living in the home base of Whole Foods, but it is considerably cheaper.

I think this is Kroger's way of connecting to the neighborhood.
I admit it's working when I stop to take pics.

One more thing that is frustrating about this Kroger--they closed the old one that was a mile up the road the day before this one opened. When Kroger initially announced plans to close that store, the neighborhood rallied round to keep it, many of them making a point to shop more at their local Kroger to justify it staying... and it came to nothing when Kroger pulled up stakes anyway. Even more irritating is the number of transit-dependent folks who used to be in walking distance of a Kroger and now aren't. That neighborhood has not only been abandoned by their local store, but I've heard that Kroger's leaving has turned that area into a food desert. A couple friends live in the neighborhood that's been left behind and they're justifiably annoyed with the decision. Unfortunately, their anger is not enough to keep me from shopping at my neighborhood Kroger, because I'm not that good of a friend.

By the way, I've set up my Kroger Rewards to benefit IKRON Corporation, because that's part of the fun of working at a nonprofit. If you have Kroger Rewards and were wondering what to do with them, IKRON is a good choice. (Yes, this is a shameless self-promotion, but that's also part of the fun of working at a nonprofit.)