(SpoCOOL) A Spokane Blog

Social media. Restaurants love and embrace it as a way to reach out to customers. It makes sense, really; be it Twitter or Facebook or whatever, social media is a good way to inform your customers about the latest going-ons.

Except... As more and more restaurants start posting in a personal tone on whichever network they prefer, we're seeing a trend where the messages are increasingly getting a bit too personal.

A good example is two South Hill alehouses located a few blocks apart, which have waged a passive aggressive Cold War against eachother on Facebook for some time now. For the diehard fans of each individual spot, this can, of course, be fun, as fans like to cheer on their favorite.

Winning over customers you already won over, though, makes little sense, and it seems odd, to us, for businesses to wage such public fights. It's off-putting to potential customers to see this kind of petty arguing, and as potential future customers tend to look for information on social media these days... Well, this is a good time to remember that professionalism goes a long way toward making you look good.

Restaurant owners and workers, too, have made their way on to the Twitters and Facebooks. Many have made their unabashed opinions about their paying customers rather well known, and again... It just comes off as being unprofessional. A business that doesn't rise above individual blog/Urban Spoon/whatever opinions looks bad, and anyone who works for these kind of establishments represents them when they post about them, no matter if they have a "opinions posted here are solely my opinion!" in their profiles.

So, our free advice for the day: Be professional if you represent your business online; don't be a jackass. Engage your customers in appropriate debates; don't get into arguments with someone who doesn't like you. Post links of interest; don't repeatedly spam networks with unwanted links back to yourself.

The whole social media thing is really quite simple that way.

We quite liked Spokane Public Market after our initial visits, and while we haven't been back there in a while, their Barrels & Bites wine tasting fundraiser sounds like a pretty cool event.

The benefit -- which will benefit Spokane Public Market itself, because why shouldn't they support something they really care about? -- will feature ten local wineries, and appetizers and desserts will be provided by chef LJ "Extreme Chef" Klink in association with the market's vendors. Hey, you love Extreme Chef, right?

Tickets will run you $50 for the Friday, April 13th event. Not a bad deal if you wish to support one of the more interesting additions to downtown over the past few years. Hell, if you haven't checked the public market out yet, what better way to do it than when filled with wine and food?

We step away from the keyboard for a few days, and the world moves on without us? What are the odds?! Anyway, this is what we, and possibly you, have missed:

Method Juice Cafe has opened will open (our reading abilities are less than awesome sometimes) downtown. Located on 718 W Riverside -- former home of 24 Hour Fitness -- the spot is all about organic juices and food. Owned by the guys behind Seven2 and 14four, Method has been garnering some positive buzz on the social webs, so check the cafe out. They have a nice logo too. Hey, those things count!

We might have our opinions about Fiesta Mexicana, and our opinions might not be shared with many in town, so, based on the latter, we were surprised to learn the place is changing ownership. The current staff will apparently be switched out in its entirety on April 15th. More as it develops... Or whatever that expression is.

Another place you'll soon find liquor: Rite Aid. As it joins other high-end boutiques like Wal-Mart and Walgreens, we can't help but wonder if that 10,000 square foot rule was just a wee bit dumb. (Although we're sure the kid at Rite Aid will be equally helpful to those working at a specialty store...)

Did we miss anything? You can always tweet us @spocool and let us know!

We might not have been head over heels into Main Market a year ago, but thankfully things have improved quite drastically since then. No longer does the store seem like a wannabe-Huckleberry's with a sub-standard selection; Main Market has taken on its own unique identity, one that we quite approve of.

Pretty much everything has improved over the last year. The selection of meat is wide, and you can pick up local oddities like yak sausage. Hey, trust us, it's good. This is also the only store in town where we've found coconut wraps. They're not cheap, but pick a pack up and you can make both sweet and savory wraps from them.

The notched-up beer selection is something we also approve of, not shockingly. It's good enough to have put Main Market in the rotation for our rare-ale-hunts, even though the PBR is still displayed on the shelves, though not quite as visible as it once was, thankfully.

And the tomato soup from the deli might just be the best in town. Let us know if you want to challenge that notion, and we'll take you up on it!

Some might say the improvements have been incremental, and that is probably true. It also doesn't matter, seeing the improvements are visible across the board.

Hopefully Main Market will keep doing its thing. Stay on this course, and it might just turn into a clear-cut favorite. 

Original review from 2/11/2011

It's been open for more than a year now, and finally Main Market feels like an actual grocery store. Thankfully. For a while it was touch and go, with empty shelves and few shoppers, and things were looking grim. Now the shelves are more or less stocked and there seems to be people in there at most times. Not a lot of people, but people none the less.

There are definitely things to like about the co-op, and particularly a focus on local goods is, for the most part, very good. This is -- depending on your perspective -- one of its advantages over Huckleberry's, a market that has more of an "organic" bend than "local." There's probably a whole debate in there about organic VS local VS quality VS whatever, but we'll leave that for another day.

Yet, with that said, I find it baffling how  Main Market proudly displays PBR in the beer aisle. I mean, really? PBR? Pabst Blue Ribbon? That's just sad.

The aisles, meanwhile, are set up pretty nicely, and navigating the store is easy. None of the chainstore layouts in other words. The colors, though, I find kind of... Clinical? They just aren't that inviting, and feel kind of early-2000s-trying-to-be-hip.

Anyway, other than that, there's not much to say about Main Market. It's a grocery store and its deli is decent and the beer selection is good. As is the produce, and there's even a decent selection of local-ish meats.

Hell, if you're reading this, you've likely already made your mind up about the spot. I just don't love it. I want to, but for now, I would put Rocket Market and Huckleberry's and even some Yoke's locations (Argonne, in particular) in a higher class than Main Market.

At least the co-op has started putting up a fight. Regular membership is $180.