Hi! I'm curious as to why you have fresh meats and fish at the beginning of the store when sometimes many of us are in there for hours and then have a long drive ahead of us and in hot weather (believe it or not some of us don't use air conditioning ) it's not really safe to keep fish and meat off ice for any period of time. We did purchase one of those freezer bags that you offered but frozen items were still melted when we reached home. We don't want to purchase flowers, etc. from the garden store and leave them in our autos while we shop because they wilt. Could you not come up with a better system, please, like maybe a temporary holding area? The store is very large and after I've spent an hour or two shopping I am simply out of the mood to backtrack over the store to purchase meat and fish products before going to the check out. This sounds like a lot of criticism but it's really not. We love your store and drive all the way from the far outskirts of New Carlisle at least once a month. Perhaps there is a logical reason for the positioning of these food items that I'm unaware of. Please give the gardening idea a thought.

Thank you. Yvonne

Yvonne,
Good question! It's not a simple answer, but here goes... Over the years the store has evolved and taken several shapes and traffic patterns. We realized a big issues six years ago. We have two different customer groups. An unusual situation for grocery stores. Basically, we created two stores in one. You may need to look at our store map, but from the front entrance by 5th 3rd to the deli would be the "Front" of the store. Draw an imaginary line from the deli back to the bakery and back of produce. Make a line 90 degrees to the left towards Frozen and Dairy. At the left side of Dairy, draw a line back to fifth third. You have a simple rectangle. Inside that rectangle you have a basic American Grocery store. Groceries, Deli, Bakery, Meat, Produce, Frozen, Dairy and the Pharmacy are inside the rectangle. Local and long distance shoppers all use the products inside the rectangle. The Wine shop is a wing off the rectangle. Not all locals use the wine shop but a person driving a over 30 minutes usually takes the time to shop the wine. Like the back of the building, it leans more towards the person driving over 30 minutes. The meat department is in the middle. A person like yourself may shop the store and as they approach the registers, we left the meat close enough to allow the last minute meat purchase. We used to have seafood across from the meat, but sales were awful. Moving the seafood to the back of the building was a nice solution for several problems. Also understand, we are not done. We are looking at the idea of adding another entrance near the back of the store. Again, adding another traffic pattern to the store. The layout isn't perfect, but the best solution we could come up with for the array of customers wishes and desires.
Basically a local grocery store surrounded by wings of foods from around the world.
I hope this helps.

Have Fun!
Phill Adams
Director of Development
Jungle Jim's International Market, Inc.