D.C.-based Yes! Organic Market has opened its first store outside of the District, setting up shop in Hyattsville’s Arts District. The 8th store in the specialty grocery chain opened Monday, the Gazette reports.

Company owner Gary Cha told the Gazette that he choose Hyattsville because it’s a “wonderful place.” Explained Cha, “I select locations of places where I would like to live.” The store’s opening is the latest development in Hyattsville’s $200 million revitalization efforts, which began in 2010. The investment aimed to establish 25 acres of retail and residences in historic downtown Hyattsville. Yes! Organic Market joins Busboys and Poets, Elevation Burger, and Chipotle, plus 140 townhomes, said Stuart Eisenberg of the Hyattsville Community Development Corp.

Eisenberg also provided a hilariously formal rationale for choosing a supermarket, citing the convenience of the new store’s location on Route 1: “I think [Yes! Organic Market] will be a draw for folks who might decide, ‘Oh this is very convenient. Let me shop here rather than travel further.’” My thoughts exactly.

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Georgetown University frequently lands on those many meaningless college ranking lists, earning points for its friendliness to foreign students, computer geeks, and politicians. The school got bad marks for “Health & Safety” and “Computers” from College Prowler and somehow scored 24th in U.S. News and World Report’s “Great Schools, Great Prices” category. None of these designations drew the ire of student-run blog Vox Populi. Compliment their food, though, and the students get angry.

“But wait a second—we’re number 15 in ‘Best Food’?” Leigh Finnegan writes of the Daily Beast/Newsweek rankings. Why, she asks, “when compared with schools with multiple, bigger dining halls, wider options, and meals that don’t get students violently ill, do we get the prize for 15th best dining?”

Perhaps believing that her school’s food couldn’t possibly have gotten good marks based on a fair standard of measure, Finnegan dug into the rankings’ methodology. Sure enough, a quarter of Georgetown’s score was based on “restaurants per capita in the surrounding area.” This further vexed Finnegan, who notes: “And, as our measly student credit cards know all too well, the Georgetown neighborhood is chock full of restaurants, from the high brow to the iconically greasy, right at the tips of our fingers or the other end of our phone lines.”

To be fair, Georgetown’s food might leave something to be desired, but there hasn’t been a staph infection outbreak since 2008.

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(Yelp/Paul S.)

The sleek Safeway at 5th and L streets NW joins the region's small 24-hour grocery club, Prince of Petworth reports. Other all-night members include the Georgetown Safeway, the Giant at Bailey's Cross Roads in Fairfax County, the soon-to-be-closed Giant on O Street NW, and the Harris Teeter on N. Harrison St. in Arlington.

That means five more glorious hours a day of this and this and this.

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Empty shelves at a Safeway in Ellicott City on Friday.

Did you rush out on Friday afternoon and snap up every loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter you could get your hands on? Well, then you’re a fool. But you can redeem your hurricane-preparedness zealotry by donating some of the stock to local food pantries.

WTOP spoke to Lisa Whetzel, director of Our Daily Bread in Fairfax, who said the organization would gladly take those ten boxes of crackers off your hands. “Our pantries are really low right now,” she said. “We’ve had an extraordinary number of requests for pantry deliveries.” Our Daily Bread generally accepts non-perishables, but some local food banks will find a home for the bushel of grapes you picked up on Friday night.

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Two of the four Walmarts planned for the District have been cleared by the city’s Office of Planning, DCist reports. It’s a major step for Walmart—now only permits from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs stand in the way of construction.

Construction along Georgia Avenue in Ward 4 and at Bladensburg Road and New York Avenue in Ward 5 is anticipated to start before the year is up. As DCist’s Aaron Morrissey explains, these locations were the least likely of the four proposed Walmarts to be held up because they are located on “large tracts.” This allows developers to bypass groups like ANCs. (The two remaining Walmarts will require a lengthier approval process.) Morrissey points out that the two store designs look an awful lot like sprawling suburban Walmarts—lots of parking surrounding a flat, boxy building--and speculates that the review process for the other two stores could produce less big-boxy design.

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The last leg of resistance against the building of another Wegmans in Fairfax County has been broken. After nearly four years, the legal battle to delay construction is over, Washington Business Journal reports.

Glenn Ovrevik, whose owns property adjacent to the proposed site for the Wegmans at the intersection of Beulah Street and Telegraph Road, has decided to drop his case. Ovrevik had the option of appealing the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to toss the case, but his attorney says his client is opting not to. It’s an anticlimactic ending to a multi-year fight over stormwater management issues, one filled with court decisions and reversals.

The proposed 150,000-square-foot Wegmans will anchor Hilltop Village, a mixed-use development. The project already has site-plan approval and permits, according to WBJ, and awaits construction. Intense celebration from Wegmaniacs anticipated.

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Last week, we reported that the fate of this season’s Gala apple crop hung in the balance. Galas are particularly vulnerable to rain around picking time (too much moisture makes their stems crack, rendering them unfit for retail at grocery stores or farmers markets), and picking time coincided with Hurricane Irene. Sidney Kuhn of Kuhn Orchards, a frequent vendor at D.C.-area farmers markets, told the Market Report that the race was on in central Pennsylvania to save the Galas before the rains drowned them.

So how did the Galas make out? No official word yet. Kuhn says tireless picking Friday and Saturday and less rain than expected helped spare her orchard’s Galas. “So far we haven’t seen a lot of cracking,” she says. She hears less good news from her neighbors, some of whom saw more than half of their Gala stems cracked by Irene’s waters.

No more firm news from the U.S. Apple Association. Director of communications Mark Gedris says he’s solicited reports from major apple-producing states in the storm’s path, including Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York. “Haven’t heard anything back too negative and serious yet,” Gedris says, though he has yet to get much response out of upstate New York.

“We are monitoring it very carefully,” Gedris says. “According to our projections, we’re looking at a pretty decent crop this year. We don’t want to lose any of that momentum that we’ve grown.” He promises updates as the fate of this season's Galas becomes more clear.

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That wad of paper at the bottom of my purse isn’t just evidence that I need to clean that bag out. It’s also proof positive that CVS receipts are way too long.

Why the long face, CVS? It’s part of the company’s nonsensical rewards program. Use your CVS rewards card, and you earn “Extra Bucks”—2 percent back on things you buy, plus an Extra Buck for every two prescriptions you fill. Instead of loading those rewards onto your CVS card, though, your cashier prints you off a mile-long receipt with the Extra Buck credits on it. That winding yard of paper entangling itself with my keys at the bottom of my purse is supposed to be kept until the next time I pop into CVS for Altoids. And it’s only good for 60 days.

The policy has drawn the ire of the don’t-waste-paper crowd and one reporter, L.A. Times writer David Lazarus, who has written on the topic of CVS’s rewards program at least three times. Lazarus contends that the Extra Bucks program is a pain for customers and credits should simply be loaded onto the card. CVS counters that customers find it “exciting” to see the coupons printed on the receipt.

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First, you don't need to buy water. The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority is telling folks that water service outages are not anticipated this weekend, but that it's not a bad idea to fill up a couple of pitchers or jugs before the storm hits, just in case. Nevertheless, there's something about pending bad weather that makes people in this region absolutely bonkers. Bonkers-like behavior includes going to your local Harris Teeter and clearing out every bottle of water you can get your hands on.

More temperate behavior might include popping by Giant and picking up a jug, or following D.C. Water Authority's lead and filling up a few bottles at home. If it makes you feel better to buy some water, go ahead--just be prepared to hunt for it. Which grocery stores' shelves haven't been completely looted by your paranoid neighbors? The Market Report will be mapping local grocery stock all day. Send your tips and observations to jrogers@tbd.com or tweet them to @jennyrogersDC.

 Right now, every blue marker on the map represents a store that is reportedly out of water.

View Where's Water? in a larger map

Among the customer-reported water outages:

Harris Teeter

12745 Galveston Court, Woodbridge, Va.

Target
3101 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Alexandria

Safeway
2644 Chapel Lake Dr., Gambrills, Md.

Safeway (Soviet)
1701 Corcoran St. NW, D.C.

Giant
3860 International Dr., Silver Spring

Wegmans
14801 Dining Way, Woodbridge, Va.

Safeway (Sexy)
490 L St. NW, D.C.

Harris Teeter
2425 N. Harrison St., Arlington

Safeway
1017 York Road, Towson, Md.

Safeway(Social)
1855 Wisconsin Ave. NW, D.C.

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Photo: Deborah Fitchett/Flickr.

Irene’s predicted path up the East Coast over the next few days presents a vexing inconvenience: to vacationers, aquaphobes, and fans of D.C. United. But Irene poses tremendous danger to one unlikely contingent: Gala apples.

A few apple varieties begin to ripen in our region in late June, but early-season types like Transparant and Lodi tend to be too tart for eating. The snackable (and valuable) apple season starts now, as farmers round up their Honeycrisps, Macintoshes, Gingergolds, and Galas, and the timing couldn’t be worse. While most varieties weather moist conditions just fine, the Gala, a huge moneymaker for many orchards, is highly vulnerable to heavy rain.

It’s a blow to farmers who stake much of their crop on Galas, a popular grocery store apple. Though they’re mainstream, Sidney Kuhn of Kuhn Orchards in Pennsylvania says Gala “has some problems,” mostly that the stem cracks.

“If you there’s too much moisture before you pick them, they’ll crack right along the stem,” Kuhn explains. “Everyone is super concerned about this hurricane.”

Kuhn and her staff have already begun picking one strain of Gala, and tomorrow they’ll start picking the rest. The picking process doesn’t lend itself to weather emergencies—Kuhn says apples are spot-picked, meaning the staff sweeps the orchard and only picks apples at the proper stage of ripeness, repeating the process every three or four days. Apples not ripe enough for picking will almost certainly absorb too much water for the stems to handle and will crack.

“Minor showers won’t do that,” Kuhn adds. “It’s when you get half an inch to an inch.” Should Irene follow its projected model, the region could get 6-12 inches.

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Straight out of Centre Hall, Pa. comes this week’s grocery news of the weird: a couple stands accused of stealing more than $1,000 of groceries just after tying the knot.

The Centre Daily Times has the sad tale of a wedding day gone amiss. Police allege that Arthur Phillips III, 32, and Brittany M. Lurch, 22, both of Centre Hall, walked out of a local Wegmans with $1,049.26 worth of merchandise that they didn’t pay for. The couple had just wed that morning and told police they intended to use the stolen items for their 5:30 reception.

Alas, the newlyweds never made it to that reception, as they remain in Centre County jail in lieu of their $2,500 bail. Phillips and Lurch have been charged with misdemeanor counts of retail theft and receiving stolen property. The bride appears to be keeping her maiden name in the legal proceedings.

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Food semantics are tricky. When you buy “organic” blueberries, you can pretty much count on the fact that those berries were grown and processed according to federally established guidelines. But labels like “natural”—which sounds sweet—and “local”—trendy!—are unregulated to the point of being meaningless. The state of Maryland recently sought to codify the word when used to market food but couldn’t agree on a definition, leaving it to retailers to include their definition of “local” any time they market products as “locally grown.” D.C. and Maryland have no such regulation.

But most of the region’s supermarkets police themselves on local, adhering to chain-wide policies on which produce gets the coveted “local” label. Margaret Badore at Diets in Review.com does a handy job of rounding up the policies of major grocers, with a small assist from the Market Report on local stores not on her list:

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Photo: Peter Menzel, from the book

With no more pithy earthquake tweets to move the work day along, consider Peter Menzel’s incredible photos from the book Hungry Planet, featured on Time.com. The book documents what people eat, where, and for how much, following families from Cairo to North Carolina. Family recipes (mutton dumplings from the Batsuuri family in Mongolia, bacon and herring from the Melanders in Germany) included. Our German family spent the most for a week of groceries ($500.07) compared to the family from Chad ($1.23).

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Photo: ec yew/Flickr

Food holidays are dumb. Utterly fabricated, rooted in nothing, purely promotional, and never ending, they rarely warrant mention. The Market Report addressed this topic after discovering that “National Chocolate Ice Cream Day” was not recognized by the International Ice Cream Association, the International Dairy Foods Association, the National Ice Cream Retailers Association, or the federal government. (Unlike National Ice Cream Day, designated as the third Sunday in July by Ronald Reagan.)

But the Market Report won’t let the inauthenticity of today’s “National Peach Pie Day” stand in the way of a good deal. The P Street Whole Foods is selling petite peach pies for 99 cents, marked down from $2.49, all day. Go forth and eat pie at a reasonable price.

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Safeway stores in Annapolis (Forest Drive), Oxon Hill, Baltimore (Harford Road) and Waldorf are currently closed after today's earthquake. Company spokesperson Craig Muckle says other stores sustained minor damage to fixtures and ceiling tiles, but nothing that forced closure.

The Annapolis store apparently sustained significant damage to the ceiling, pictured above in this shot from Twitter.

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Money isn’t everything, but it’s certainly helpful sometimes. Thanks to today’s $1 million gift from local billionaire William E. Conway Jr., the Capital Area Food Bank will not have to charge members for fresh fruits and vegetables, the Washington Post reports.

Conway, co-founder and managing director of D.C.-based private equity firm the Carlyle Group, learned that rising food costs had forced the bank to implement a 10 cent per pound fee for fresh produce in June. The cost of acquiring fresh fresh foods and veggies is up 31 percent, just as many of the bank’s 700 partners (food pantries and nonprofits) were striving to increase their fresh-produce offerings.

“I had fresh produce last night with dinner. I had blueberries this morning with my cereal. It’s a luxury for some people,” Conway told the Post. “I wanted to try to help.”

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Photo courtesy of Erwin Timmers.

Groceries and fine art rarely collide. Says Safeway spokesperson Craig Muckle, “I think if we’ve used art, I’d characterize it as ‘on a selective basis.’”

Indeed. Other than a student-created painting outside the Georgetown Safeway, Muckle recalls an artistic experiment at a store in Pikesville, Md. “Some historic art,” he says. “I forgot what that was. That’s going back a couple of years.”

This fall Safeway steps up its aesthetics with the work of Erwin Timmers of the Washington Glass School. With a store on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda set to be demolished and rebuilt, the company engaged Timmers to create a piece for the new store. Muckle says it made sense to feature art in the Bethesda store, as Bethesda has a “pretty thriving arts community.”

Timmers, who works with used materials, salvaged all of the glass for his mosaic series from the former Safeway. “There’s no real avenue for recycling [glass],” he says. “It just gets tossed along with the other materials.” Timmers took most of his material from freezer doors and partitions and is now constructing a metal framework with mosaic panels in it.

The design is herb-themed, with the glass cast in leaf patterns. “We sort of wanted to reference what Safeway is about, but not make it an advertising thing,” Timmers explains. The leaves include a basil or bay leaf, a variegated leaf in the manner of cilantro or parsley, and a rosemary-type needle leaf. It’s not exactly Andre Serrano in terms of controversy, but Timmers says this is Safeway’s first foray into public art. “So it’s a new process for them too,” he says. Maybe we’ll save the crucifixes for the new Alexandria store.

Timmers and his team are out working almost daily, trying to work around the scaffolding and construction going on around the site for the mosaics. The grand opening of the store is Oct. 12. “I think everyone’s going to love it,” he promises.

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I want to enroll in DCPS immediately. School started today, and lucky students at 27 schools were treated to new salad bars in the cafeteria.

There will be no browning iceberg lettuce, but vibrant greens ranging from mesclun to arugula to baby spinach. No wan tomato slices trucked in from some farming hell in Florida, but local heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, bok choy, and kale.

Nutrition chief Jeff Mills tells Mike Debonis of the Washington Post that his goal is to help students develop “natural palates” and lose their taste for added salt, sugar and fats. Mills says he spent the summer testing 30 local greens and has worked to create more options for students.

Kids can make their own creations of the many ingredients, including sunflower seeds, oven-roasted turkey, jicama, snap peas, and oriental chicken strips, or they can opt for a “featured signature salad,” like the Mexican Caesar: chili lime shrimp, parmesan, and avocado on romaine.

The cost for these Chop’t-shaming salads? $1.60. Every skinny twentysomething lined up at Sweet Green is green with envy.

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When that retail employee innocently asks for your zip code at checkout, most will rattle it off without a second thought. But one California woman is alleging that Whole Foods used those zip codes, along with additional information from credit cards, to obtain customers’ home addresses.

Donna Motta filed suit against the fancy-pants grocer in California last week, claiming that Whole Foods doesn’t tell customers that they don’t have to give their zip codes, when in fact it’s illegal in California for retailers to collect and record that kind of information.

As reported by Law360, the suit alleges that Whole Foods “does not disclose its intentions to its customers, and instead relies on the common misconception of consumers that defendant is using the zip code information as a security measure to verify cardholders’ identities similar to ‘pay-at-the-pump’ gas station transactions.”

Whole Foods isn’t the first retailer in California sued for its zip code collection — Best Buy, Genesco, Crate & Barrel, and Bed Bath & Beyond all face similar suits.

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Photos: David Hoffman/Flickr

Greater Greater Washington has the hyper hyper local scoop that the Safeway at Seven Corners has fixed its pedestrian problem—it has moved its cart corral. Previously, the store’s shopping cart corral blocked the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to walk in traffic.

The store’s manager tells GGW’s Steve Offutt that they realized a few months ago that the design was not ADA compliant. Offutt had reported in March that the Safeway’s renovation vastly improved the store but left something to be desired for pedestrians, documenting the situation in incredible detail.

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