Gateway Produce

I've been meaning to go check out Gateway Produce on Andresen since we moved back here in Oct. '08. I pictured the store to be very Farmer's Market-ish or a Ma and Pa type place with displays of their home-grown goods. I get their mailers in the Val-Pak coupons and lately, I have not been able to find decent produce in the area without spending an arm and a leg at Safeway.

So today, I decided to go. It looks like a decent, clean place from the outside and when I saw the outside marquee it said; "Banana's .39/lb and Pears .09/lb"; I got excited!

I have to say that what I expected to find
and what I actually found were 2
TOTALLY
different things.

enlarged photo off their mailer

Starting with the great things.
The banana's were, indeed, .39/lb.
The selection was small-ish and most of the selection was already very ripened. I picked through and found some small somewhat greenish bananas.
(I like banana's to be very small in size).

The pears were .09/lb,
but all 3 ginormous bins of them were very un-appealing.
There were a lot of ones on the top that were
rotting/molding
and starting to smell fermented. I dug through and managed to find a handful of decent ones.

Another great thing is they have a "discount grocery" section. Most stuff looks very old and questionable (completely smashed boxes of brand name cereal for $1.00), but there were these 3 gigantic bins, overflowing, with ALL different kinds of candy, candy bars, and gum.
Everything in the bins was
4/$1.oo!!!!
I got 4 packs of Orbit gum
and
4 rolls of SweetTarts!!

(Side story about the SweetTarts. I LOVE them, but I only like the ones that come in the rolls. The ones in the box or in shapes just aren't the same texture. Every time I really want some I have to go to a random gas station and pay anywhere from $.99 to $1.20 for 1 ROLL! I was SO stoked to come across them in the bins during my digging.)

The bad thing
is that 89%-ish of the produce was wilted/molding/slimy/too ripe or just plain ugly. The inside of the store was not "farmer's market-ish" at all and looked worse than WinCo or Grocery Outlet.

I would go again for fruit and to dig in the bins for treats, but I'd need to go with some time on my hands so that I can dig.

The one pear that Asia and I just shared was pretty good. It had good texture and flavor. The bananas are fine, too.
(Pretty hard to screw up a banana, imo. LOL!)

The Fuji apples were .67/lb (not that great, imo)
Gala apples .33/lb
Cucumbers .67/ea (I know that's not a good deal, but I needed them)

This is the front and back views from last month's mailer