D & W Fresh Market – Oakwood

• 2103 Parkview Avenue
• Kalamazoo, MI 49008
• (269) 344-9338
• Website

It never fails.  J and I will make a grocery run.  I’ll plan dinner.  We’ll get home.  I’ll start to cook and realize I didn’t get something I needed.   That happened AGAIN today. 

Since we’ve eaten out the last three meals, we decided to stay in tonight, watch some curling on TV and make pizza.  I pulled out the stand mixer to make the dough and realized I didn’t have any yeast.  Off to the store again.

Usually, I’d just run to Meijer, but no way I was doing that on a Saturday.  This is not Meijer bashing.  We do most of our grocery shopping there, but going on a weekend is suicide. 

Instead, I headed to D & W Fresh Market on the corner of Parkview Avenue and Oakland Drive.  It’s a store we’ve drove by many times, but never stopped at. 

From the road, it doesn’t look like a very big market.  The parking lot makes it feel even smaller.  There’s only enough room for two rows of cars and almost all of them were full. 

I had a very short shopping list, so I grabbed a basket and headed to the baking aisle.  Since I was there, I decided to pick up a few pantry items that I had run out of even though I didn’t need them for dinner.  I grabbed a jar of yeast, some baking soda, vanilla, and a couple bottles of black peppercorns.  At that point, I was done shopping, but I decided to look around. 

Again, I was surprised by the store.  It really has the feel of an upscale grocer.  What I really liked was the butcher counter.  I love places that actually have people cutting meat.  This wasn’t a three-foot case with a few cuts of meat.  It was a long case with everything from fresh fish to hamburger. 

Right near that meat case was a prepared lunch area.  Like so many upscale grocery stores nowadays, there were a number of items you could grab for a quick, interesting lunch including fresh made sushi. 

After a quick run through of the store, I headed to pay.  Most people checking out were using reusable bags.  Normally, I would too, but I ran out of the house without them again.  Plus, I always feel weird using a bag from a rival supermarket and since we’ve only shopped at D & W once before, we don’t have one of their bags. 

What I thought was really cool was the lady in front of me was offered help getting to her car.  I haven’t seen this in years.  They actually had the tall walking carts that an employee used to help this lady outside.  At many hyper-markets, you’re lucky to get a separate bagger.  D & W had baggers at every register plus guys helping people outside. 

Anyway, I paid and got out of there so I could get back to my dinner.  The store is actually much closer to my house than I thought and a little easier to get to than the Harding’s I usually go to when I want to avoid Meijer.