I'd go on a hunger strike but I love to eat

The grocery store which has been about the only place I've shopped for the past two years is closing.Sunflower food chain wiltsYes, I'm aware that this chain was owned by grocery giant Supervalu, and not the charming mom-and-pop operation it tried to emulate. But I liked shopping there instead of dreading a trip to the mega-markets. I could get in and out with everything I needed, with lower cost organics and delicious deli items like the fresh baba ganouj that had me addicted. Whole wheat pitas that weren't loaded with sugar. A wine selection where I could usually find something inexpensive and good. Apples that actually tasted like apples. Cheeses that otherwise I would have had to go to the fancy north side to find. I spent more money there than I would have at a traditional grocery store, but I felt it was worth it, and never did I feel that I was in one of these upscale grocery museums where everything is super-premium with a price tag to match and you can't just get a regular can of tomatoes. The location was great -- a walkable neighborhood just three miles from my house and an easy walk from the high school I teach at on Mondays if I wanted to pick up something for lunch.So, consumers spending more than usual and enjoying the shopping experience -- what's not to like for the parent company? Apparently their stores in some other areas weren't doing as well as our local store, so they pulled the plug on the chain. Gee, thanks, Supervalu. If you couldn't make this work, you weren't trying hard enough.I think that one of the things that I liked about Sunflower, a smaller store, was having fewer choices. Yes, you read that right. Do we really need 30 different brands of laundry detergent or cereals? I detest big-box stores because it takes forever to navigate the aisles and decide what brand to buy. I remarked to the cashier last night that I guessed I would have to stop eating, because I didn't know where I'd shop now. Yes, there are a couple of Trader Joe's in town and people I know rave about them but I like to shop in my neighborhood, not drive up to strip mall mcmansion land.They're opening a Fresh Market close to my house next summer, which I will have to check out, but my limited impression from visiting one in my home town in North Carolina a couple times (and this was years ago) was that this was one of those grocery museums where they play Vivaldi (nothing against Vivaldi but you get the idea) and hand you a complimentary espresso on your way in. You can get premium stuff but not the value-brand organics or regular cans of tomatoes. I hope I'm wrong and that the new store will fill the void left by Sunflower.