Sprouts Farmers Market. New in Fort Worth. Opening Wednesday.

Remind me never to go into the grocery business.

I'm serious.

The competition begins with the old-line Albertson/Kroger/TomThumb stores, and is followed by Walmart and Target super stores, Sam's and Costco bulk-discount stores, plus, Whole Foods and Central Market on the high end, and Aldi, Trader Joe's, and a cast of thousands on the low end. It's a tough world for selling a can of beans these days.

Entering this not-so-friendly fray: Sprouts Farmers Markets.

Spouts fresh produce department

Sprouts is a grocery store devoted to fresh foods, some local, some organic, but not solely so, and healthy-living products, like vitamins, supplements and skin care products.

I visited my first Sprouts store Saturday, at the Hulen and I-20 store's pre-open. I liked it and for what my opinion is worth, I think they will do well in Fort Worth. Healthy living and environmentally safe products are the new normal. And the lower prices at Sprouts makes shopping there very attractive.

Sprouts has a meat department with some grass-fed beef selections, a fish department, a bakery, fresh produce, and two hundred bins of fresh nuts, grains, beans, chocolates, etc. They also have their own private-label products, peanut butter and spaghetti sauce are two that I saw as I walked around. And they have special sale days every Wednesday. I noticed raw almonds for $3.99 a pound, on sale, and granola for $1 a pound, again on sale. Coffee beans normally at $8.99 a pound on sale days will be $5.99 a pound when they are on sale.

Final somewhat random observation: the store seems more set-up for the female shopper than your average grocery store. I don't know if that is the intentional vibe or just my reaction from shopping at Home Depot too much lately.

Anyway, Sprouts' stores are in four states and based in Phoenix, Arizona. They currently have fifty stores, this is the first in Fort Worth. There are four in Austin (weird). They are a privately held corporation.

To the folks at Sprouts Farmers Markets --- welcome to Fort Worth.
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Store Details
Opening day: Wednesday, January 26. (Special prizes for first 500 visitors)
Website: Sprouts
4650 SW Loop 820
(NW corner of I-20 and Hulen the old Albertson's)
Fort Worth, TX

Disclosure: at the end of the tour I was given a "thank-you" tote-bag with a few treats like berries, puffed rice chips and lotion samples. It was thoughtful and appropriate.

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Cost of gasoline adjusted for inflation.

I noticed gasoline over $3.00 per gallon today. And I hear talk of 50 or 75 cents more per gallon by the summer.

Painful? Yes, especially for long-commuters.

But when adjusted for inflation the price is not not much different than other "above average" times in the last 90 years. Gasoline was 25 cents per gallon back in the '60's, but when adjusted for inflation, that is, when adjusted to the buying power or value of the today's dollar, the price today is not wildly different from the price back then.

That being said, 2011 prices at $3.00+ a gallon are on the high side of the mean.

Want to feel better? In London, gasoline works out to be over $8.00 a gallon, US.

Inflation Adjusted Average Gasoline Prices, from InflationData.com

Chart: © Copyright 2010.  Timothy McMahon and InflationData.com
For more information on this chart please go to: InflationData.com

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The Wall Street Journal's New Books Section

Some readers will not find this post very interesting -- but, since I have yet to write anything very interesting anyway, I thought, why change now.

If you haven't picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal's Weekend edition, you should. If you haven't seen one in a while, and you like newspaper reading, you ought to give it a try.

The Weekend Edition is especially good, partly because it is new, and has started with a "clean slate" of ideas, and partly because it has taken parts of the old Friday edition, my old favorite, and expanded them.

Within this Saturday edition, the one section I would like to talk about is the Books Section. In the old Friday edition, the Books section was barely a page, last week the Books Section was a full eight pages. Here's a sample of what they covered.

1. The Greatest of Them All -- a review of three books on Alexander the Great. A summary of eight other books of the same subject.

2. Mysteries Chronicles -- Dorothy Sayer's, Lord Peter Whimsey lovers will be glad to know that the Sayer's estate has deputized someone to finish her last novel. There's a brief essay on that.

3. Joseph Brodsky. A Literary Life. A full review of a new book on the Russian poet and writer.

4. Growing Pangs. A half-page review on the Maud Hart Lovelace books.

5. Five Best: Fury and Terror at the High Seas. Each week WSJ does a brief review of the five best books in a field. This week, they reviewed the five best books on sailing and the high seas. Coincidentally, I had just downloaded one of them for my Kindle. Free.

So, if you like books and book reviews, including the classics, you can't do much better than the Wall Street Journal Saturday Books Section.

(While I am at it, and just in the off-chance somebody from the basement level of the WSJ reads this: if you are going to publish a magazine once a month, do you think you could broaden the appeal to more than the NYC crowd? Thanks.)
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