Natural Grocers

While in town for work, I stopped to stock up on a few things for the week; fruit, water, and crackers for the hotel room. I have never been to this store before and was excited to give it a try.
The fruit was extremely high in price. Wow. The same brand of organic blueberries can be found at Dillon’s (a Kroger store) for half the price and the other brands of organic fruit is significantly lower in price at Dillon’s, with the same level of quality.
Give NG’S other products a try, but also check out the large selection of organic and natural foods at other stores, too.

I am a grocery store fiend, so I try to visit a variety of places whenever I am in the region to bring things back home. I have been to Natural Grocers in other cities, and sometimes the prices are higher and sometimes they are lower. After stopping by Akin’s first, I went here to browse with no particular item in mind. I ended up buying a ton of stuff. First, there are beautiful loose chioggia and golden beets. That alone is exciting. Natural Grocers has its own product line which includes grains, flours, dried fruits, nuts, chocolate and carob candies, bulk spices and bulk teas. I was able to get blue cornmeal on the cheap, which is awesome. I bought a variety of interesting items including bamboo infused rice to add to my unusual pantry. The prices here were lower than Akin’s on almost everything, including Thai kitchen products. I remembered to bring my bag — if you do not bring one in they will charge you for one of theirs. Depending on what you need, you can get some really good deals here.

Neat find in this area.
Granted everything costs more since it’s all organic and all natural but they do a good job with taste.
They got a good selection of everything (food wise) that you’ll need.
If you get a chance, try their Grateful Harvest beef jerky, some of the best beef jerky I’ve had. Very juicy and flavorful. Chewy but not tough.

This store is wonderful. Finally went to it after it had been opened a year and totally loved it and have not shopped anywhere else since then for weekly groceries. They have everything. Definitely recommend if you want to eat right.

Okay store if you want organic groceries. Prices are mostly reasonable. Due to sensitive skin I first started shopping there for organic deodorant and I stock up whenever I need. That part of my experience is always good and the staff is always helpful. So why only two stars?
This comes due to my experience attempting to special order product. I greatly enjoy Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood teas. Natural Grocers is the only place in town I have been able to find it so I asked if I could place a standing order to pick up a case every two weeks. Like I said I really like this tea.
I was told that the order would be no problem and they would call me when it came in. I have picked up three cases so far and not once have I ever been called upon arrival and when I go to pick it up there is mass confusion looking for a case. The last time they had to pull it the bottles from the shelf for me.
In my opinion if you offer a special order and if you say you will notify someone when their order has arrived maybe it would be a good idea to actually follow through on your promise. Customer service hinges on under promising and over delivering. You look great when you do that, when you over promise and under deliver… well it makes the customer irritated and going somewhere else to ask them to start ordering it.

Ok, so far as grocery stores go Topeka isn’t really knocking the cover off the ball. No Costco? No Trader Joe’s?! So, one must make the best of it. I came here to look for a few things I wasn’t finding at our usual grocery store. Well, NG didn’t have it either but they had enough interesting things that I didn’t really mind. This place is part grocery and part health food store complete with the middle aged hippie/​stoner/​Lib Arts major clerk in colorful wool cap. The first thing you’ll notice is that the produce section is quite small. I would have expected a much larger fresh produce area but perhaps Topeka isn’t ready for it. After about an hour of checking this place out I had a few food items and a bunch of «free market» chocolate bars. They also had Dr Bronner’s soap which was a plus, good stuff.
Upon checking out I was informed that they didn’t supply bags but I could purchase a reusable one for a buck. No bags?! Whatever.