Comments (1) Best Adventures in Grocery Shopping - 2004

Sunflower Market

First there were health-food stores and co-ops -- little eclectic-eccentric, tie-dyed, bring-your-own-bag places where hippies shopped for goat yogurt, yams and fresh tofu. But somewhere along the line, the stores got bigger. They supplied bags (even plastic ones), widened the aisles and branched into the gourmet-foods market. Hippies? Even if any were still around, they couldn't afford to shop at these places now. Isn't it time something gave? Enter Sunflower Market. The brainchild of former Wild Oats mastermind Mike Gilliland and his brother, Pat, the new store is a delightful setback in whole-foods merchandising, with lower prices, a less outrageous scope and an element of surprise: The get-it-while-you-can aisle features a changing stock of odd-lot grocery buys. In the garden of overblown health-food shopping, little Sunflower towers above the rest.