Bloom

Locally, a number of bottom-of-the-supermarket-food-chain Food Lion stores were transformed into Blooms. Bloom is owned by Food Lion, LLC, so I assume it's pretty much just an attempt to build an "upper class" Food Lion. Bloom's motto is "A different kind of grocery store."

After shopping there a few times, I'm still trying to figure out how it's different from any average food store.

Yes, they're open 24 hours, but they're not the first ones to do that. They have "20 minute or less" parking close to the store, but that's kind of silly because it's people with more groceries that need to be closer. They have some weird label scanner thing that nobody uses and they don't promote the use of very well. And on their site's FAQ, the following question exists: "Why do Bloom associates gather in the store during operational hours for cheers and chants?" I've never seen that happen and the employees look dejected as any other aisle stockers I've seen elsewhere.

Speaking of their site, it looks more like it belongs to Target than a grocery store and has at least one glaring error of punctuation ("Calling all grocery guru's!").

So, there are some minor differences compared to, say, Safeway, but really, the selection is only mediocre (Giant has a better natural foods selection), the prices are slightly higher than most, and the "babbling brook" audio that's playing on loop in the produce section makes me want to pee.

Bleh to Bloom.