By George Capsis
For over a year the large store space that use to house Duane Read on Hudson and Bank has displayed cheery signs that it was about to open as Mrs. Green’s—a health conscious food market. On Monday, August 24th it did!
But wow, more than a year—what was holding them up? Was it the union? We received union protest flyers and there was an ad in The Villager that UFCW local 1500 was mad at Mrs. Green’s for how she treated workers trying to organize their Mount Kisco store way back in January 2014 (they fired them).
Mrs. Green’s is surprisingly big—its two levels add up to 12,800 square feet—and quite crammed. I have never been in a two-story food store before, downstairs they have meat and fish upstairs. They have take-out food and a window bench for in-store dining. I was invited to lunch in-store by John Collins—a young PR man from Mercury a “high-stakes public strategy firm capable of persuading the toughest audiences” hired a year ago to address the anti-Mrs. Green’s fervor triggered by the dismissal of eight long time workers and months of angry picket lines through a terrible winter. The dismissed workers gained popular and local political support finally resulting in an agreement acceptable to the National Labor Relations Board—the workers went back to work and received back pay.
The image of Mrs. Green’s as an insensitive employer has strayed from that of its founder, sandal clad Harold Hochberger who opened the first 3000 square-foot store in 1990 in Scarsdale to bring organic foods to the suburbs. By 2000, there were eight stores stretching up into New York State. The chain was finally sold to a Canadian holding company, which then experienced the labor unrest in Mount Kisco.
Indications are that to write a new page they have hired a new CEO, Pat Brown, and offered the West Village workers generous compensation with, as their press release offers “health care and benefits.”
The chain has come a long way from the concept of its founder, Hochberger, who built small stores for the few small town customers who were willing to pay a premium for organic foods. In the original chain of nine stores, Hochberger employed only three hundred employees and in the new West Village location alone we have two-hundred. (I asked the Human Resources director why they did not hire West Village seniors on social security—she had no response but the Union PR officer thought it a good idea).
My daughter Athena is into organic foods and has long ago accepted that she has to pay a premium for them, but I found the prices in Mrs. Green’s breath-taking. But the store does have some innovative amenities like a nutritional counter where a professional nutritionist will give you free advice—nice.
For more about the food at Mrs. Green’s see the review in the Food section written by WestView’s Food Editor, John Barrera.
I feel Westviews glowing review of Mrs. Greens store is premature. I live on Bank street and have seen nothing but positive for the neighborhood concerning this store. Hudson Street is usually blocked in some way by garbage, bicycles, handcarts and other junk. The workers have piled up the bricks on Greenstreets to sit on during their breaks while smoking and leaving garbage from their lunches. Bethune street is constantly littered with garbage and the street is often blocked. Also there are two rental trucks used for garbage permanently parked on Hudson street with scores of summons’. I have walked over to the sixth precinct twice and spoken with one of the officers who smiles and says we’ll look into it. Sure.
People need to stop shopping there until they at least become aware they do business in a neighborhood and quit treating it like a garbage dump.