Pros: Great ready-made food, nice environment

Cons: Lines can get long; they sometimes run out of my favorite items; regular supermarket stuff can be expensive/lacking variety; short hours

Rating: 9/10

Fresh Market @ 18295 Biscayne Boulevard, Aventura, FL

I shop at this Fresh Market regularly, and by far I enjoy it the most of any supermarket I go to. Serving the hoity-toity high-end shoppers of Aventura, this supermarket carries lots of fresh produce as well as prepared foods (in addition to regular grocery stuff). In that regard, it whips Whole Foods’ ass – the hot case foods are as good as eating restaurant food, but are very affordable. There is also a great variety of prepared salads, sides, and sandwiches, in addition to a nice and tasty baked goods section. THE COOKIES. That is all.

My favorite Fresh Market item of all is the pizza – just pop it in the oven at 350F for as long as you want it crispy, and you have yourself a solid pizza for $5.99 (better than any chain and most of the pizza dives scattered across the city).

As a place to do your regular groceries, though, Fresh Market is lacking, especially if you don’t exactly have a free pocketbook. The general groceries section is obviously small and expensive compared to the mega-retailer options out there (e.g. Super Target), though common supermarket products are not marked up too high compared to just buying them at Publix. The registers are also usually sparsely staffed, meaning that if you’re picking up some food coming home from work, you’re going to find yourself waiting in a pretty sizable line.

The drink fridge is also pretty neat, as it offers a nice selection of alternatives to the regular COKE MOUNTAIN DEW ROCKSTAR sugar-fest offered at gas stations. The beer selection is somewhat lackluster for a "fresh foods”-type place, but they still offer some great beers (e.g. Dogfish Head 60 & 90 minute IPAs).

In all, I’m glad I have a Fresh Market so close by, as it’s a great place to pick up a nice treat, whether it’s for breakfast or dinner after a horrible Florida summer day.

Price: ~$14 including shipping.

Pros: Immensely practical; nice aesthetic design

Cons: Adhesive is very fussy and fails to hold up to proper use

Overall: There’s not much in the way of criteria for bag dispensers… if you want to buy the best in grocery bag dispensary, get this simplehuman unit (unless you absolutely need an adhesive wall-mounted dispenser).

Sick and tired of your bag of bags sitting under your kitchen sink? Want to upgrade your bag dispensary to match your hyper-modern stainless steel kitchen? SimpleHuman has taken the retail world by storm with its line of stainless steel products, so it’s no surprise that they’ve expanded into the grocery bag dispensary sector.

The unit comes with double-sided tape pre-attached to the back, and also comes with holes and appropriate mounting screws for a more permanent installation. How the grocery dispensary function works is elusively simple: you put bags in through one hole, and pull them out of another that is built to put a force between the inside and outside of the dispenser that will separate the grocery bags as you pull on them. Bags come out with a firm pull, which is only a problem if you’ve mounted the unit on a location that doesn’t handle that kind of force routinely (like a cabinet door, for example), or the unit is mounted improperly.

And about those mountings. Since I am a renter and want to minimize the amount of damage I have to repair upon moving out, I tried using the adhesive method. However, the force required to pull out the bags in some instances put a lot of pressure on the adhesive wall mount, which actually lifted up a layer of paint and caused an air bubble to form before breaking free from the wall. Considering I used the adhesive to avoid damaging the paint in the first place, that was a pretty poor outcome.

I ended up working around this by placing the bag holder horizontally on top of my refrigerator, and it works great now. When I have to throw something nasty away that I don’t want in the general garbage (food that will rot, dog poop, etc.), I now have a bag in my hand within seconds. As I always advise, making your life more efficient is a matter of adding little practicalities one-by-one. The $14 I spent on this item (including shipping) is well-spent, and this dispenser will be part of my kitchen for years to come.

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