Use Of Grocery Salad Bars Wilting

An essential part of Dawn Bowles' lunchtime routine is missing from the Kroger store at Towers Shopping Center in Roanoke.

Bowles, a clinical research nurse at Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, used to stop at the store to load up a disposable container with leafy lettuce, vegetables and other items from the store's salad bar.

Her favorite was a taco salad. She'd pick up a taco shell and fill it with seasoned meat and other fixings.

But Bowles' lunch option has been replaced with packaged cheddar and bacon cobb salads, sub sandwiches and slices of lemon cake, stacked on a refrigerated cold island. Some of these prepackaged varieties are part of Kroger's new grab-and-go line, called Wholesome @ Home.

"I came in one day, and it [the salad bar] was gone," Bowles said. "I was like, 'What am I going to do?' It's a bummer."

The convenience-driven nature of most Americans is a factor forcing the slow obsolescence of salad bars at Kroger stores in the Roanoke Valley and at other supermarkets nationwide.

The growing presence of prepackaged meals in the grocery aisle is symbolic of an evolving mindset: American consumers want food convenient and at a value price.

Increasingly, grocers are eliminating salad bars, and in the case of Kroger, replacing them with prepackaged foods that they believe more people want. Some Kroger stores that once housed salad bars also expanded their produce departments with more vegetable and fruit offerings.

Also, Kroger has beefed up the presence of olive and gourmet cheese bars in many of its new or remodeled locations in the Roanoke Valley and nationwide, according to Meghan Glynn, a spokeswoman for the Cincinnati-based Kroger Co.

To read the rest of the story, please go to The Roanoke TImes