1992 or 1993 Central Fidelity Commercial

This is from when mom taped Troop Beverly Hills for me one night in January of 1992, I think.

Check out all the old Farm Freshes in the Central Fidelity Commercial! Now no Farm Freshes have banks…right? I know the bank in the Smithfield location closed down a few years back.

Also notice the other local ads. Is elephantsgalore still open? The only results I found were vague city search pages. However, it looks like The Paneling Factory is still open.

Farm Fresh Grand Opening in Franklin

So, the Farm Fresh FINALLY opened today. Two years in the making.

{photo I took in October of last year}

I was planning on being there right when they opened at 8 a.m., but I pulled up…NO parking spots. Line around the outside of the store. I honestly didn’t think people out here would take this opening that seriously. I was wrong!

So I came back at 9 a.m. — another bad time. People were just standing around waiting for the five $100 gift card drawings. I walked around, mainly around the beverage aisles, since I love the fact that Farm Fresh has a vast array of beverages. I took some iPhone photos:

Look at all that Honest tea!

The “Vitamin Water” cooler has … Life Water in it though. fail.

They had Nantucket Nectars half and half!!! I’ve never had that before! I’ve only heard about it in Babysitters Club books!

Look at all that Inkos tea too.

I’m surprised Enviga is still being made.

oooo Big Cranberry Nantucket Nectars and Jolt. Sorry that picture didn’t come out right. I took it in a hurry.

I was standing in LINE. HERE. I was in line for an hour. The line didn’t even more until the final 20 minutes I was in line. This was next to the makeup, and the lady in front of me started to play with this pump of glitter gel and she got it all over her hands. Farm Freshes aisle descriptions are always odd. Like the first three signs make sense, you know a general description of what is on the line, and then the last line is totally way too much detail — in this case, Vagasil.

You can see Starbucks in the distance. Ok, so after being in line for an hour, I went to Starbucks, where there was only one woman ahead of me. Boy, the baristas need more training. The “handlers” from other Farm Freshes had to help them with everything. You would’ve thought they would’ve handled this last week.

Which brings me to my second visit to Farm Fresh later on this day, at around 4 p.m. MUCH quieter than it was this morning. Like a normal day in a grocery store. I had more time to explore around the store. I found this!

This little guy used to be on the farm fresh logo back in the day when I was a little kid. I still remember vividly a jar of Peanut Butter we bought when I was like four, with a drawing of him on the label.

//edit, August 8, 2008//

Here is a blog entry about the making of one of these guys

So like I said, I went back to Starbucks after class and workstudy, because I wanted something to drink on my long drive home (50 minutes). They totally forgot about my order. One of the handlers had to make me my drink. I don’t think this Starbucks is going to be so great. We’ll see.

So like the article under the cut says, this store has NO plastic bags. I think this is a good idea because I used to be a bagger at The Fresh Market and I hated bagging in plastic, it was always so messy. I hate it when we go to Wal Mart and we have to put all our stuff in my Xterra, and its flopping around everywhere because its bagged in plastic. The store was giving away reusable grocery bags this morning, I got one. I don’t know how the general public is going to deal with no plastic bags. These paper bags are different than the usual ones Farm Fresh has, no handles, no logo.

Other than the iffy service at Starbucks, I can’t wait to shop in this store on a regular basis. It feels so nice to have a um, nice store in Franklin–and it was before I graduated. I always thought that Farm Fresh wasn’t going to open until after I graduated.

Tidewater News article:

Farm Fresh Grand Opening ad (Franklin)

Mercury Plaza –Hampton, VA (demolished-2004)

{picture taken March 27, 2003}
According to my mom, this was originally THE mall in Hampton, VA in the 1960’s/early 1970’s. The Mall part was in the middle of the shopping center, and my mom said that whenever you walked in there, you could smell hotdogs. There was a Montgomery Ward in the mall, and a Roses (a poor mans’ K-Mart) When Coliseum Mall opened in the 70’s, this area turned into a shopping center with Burlington Coat Factory in the middle. I used to go to the Roses with my parents up until I was 5 or 6 I think. Then I think the Roses had a fire, and then a year later the store closed down. There was a Farm Fresh in a strip mall next to the Roses, and I’m sure it did pretty well until it succumbed to a fire in the summer of 1997 or 1998. Then the HQ (a local version of a Lowes or a Home Depot) shut down (it was two doors down from the Burlington) and then in 2002 the Circut City (which was next door to Burlington) shut down due to poor sales. All that was left was the Burlington–until Wards closed down at the Coliseum Mall in which they moved in, and the shopping center was torn down.

I drove by again in June of 2005 with a friend, and this is what is there now:

We were in the car, we couldn’t stop.