Super Fresh

In your average non-Y2K year, the Super Fresh on West 41st Street sells maybe two or three flashlights. That's it, over 365 days."You don't sell stuff like that," said manager Brian Miller. "Not in a grocery store."Well, Miller's grocery store sold about 700 flashlights in the past 30 days. Not surprisingly, he has expanded his flashlight display from the normal two hooks in Aisle 9.Even though officials and computer experts say reassuringly that Y2K bugs in computers have been exterminated in time for New Year's Eve tomorrow, some local residents are stocking up, not entirely convinced their power won't go out for at least a bit.Problems are feared because computers were programmed to read the last two digits for years and might recognize the year 2000 as 1900, but government and businesses have been working to correct the programming.

Harundale has its first supermarket, and a new post office is not far behind.With the opening last week of a Super Fresh store, the shopping center -- once a marvel as the first enclosed shopping mall on the East Coast -- took another step in its rebirth as a community retail center.The 54,700-square-foot "Super Fresh Super Store," as it is called, is the last of the three "linchpins" of the new Harundale Plaza, said Dicky C. Darrell, director of retail for the Columbia-based developer, Manekin Corp.

PoliceWestminster: A resident of Pennsylvania Avenue told police Wednesday that two bicycles were stolen from his home. The loss was put at $359.Westminster: A resident of Stone Road told police Tuesday that a truck window was broken while his vehicle was parked at Super Fresh. Loss was estimated at $250.

Mid-Atlantic Realty Trust said at its annual meeting yesterday that it will launch renovations and expansion projects at two shopping centers in Baltimore and Harford counties.As part of the projects, a Super Fresh is to open as a new anchor grocery store at the Rosedale Plaza.Also, a Gap and Old Navy store will open at Harford Mall in October, the company said."These are two very significant transactions most REITs can't pull out of the bag," F. Patrick Hughes, president of the Lutherville-based real estate investment trust, told shareholders.

You've come a long way, sushi.From Japan. To the West Coast. To the East Coast.And, now, to the supermarket, America's newest melting pot. Sushi chefs are becoming as commonplace as the neighborhood meat butcher and produce buyer. "Sushi's very popular," says Jeff Metzger, publisher of Food World, a Columbia-based trade journal. "It's pretty hot right now. It's something new and different."But we were curious. After all, it's one thing to grab a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store for dinner, another to pick up a plastic tray of seaweed and fish with strange-sounding condiments like wasabi (green horseradish paste)

In an effort to reduce the heavy and sometimes dangerous traffic congestion at Ridge Road and U.S. 40 in Ellicott City, Howard County and state highway officials are completing plans to add a road and a second turn lane on Ridge Road.Officials say the traffic problem grew worse when a Super Fresh opened Dec. 3 on Ridge Road. There were already townhomes, a Wal-Mart and an office building along the road. With the addition of food shoppers, the line of motorists trying to make a right turn from Ridge Road onto westbound U.S. 40 sometimes grows maddeningly long.

Jennifer Kalista fills her cart with ground beef, paper towels and other staples of family life. Brian Sutton buys toiletries. He's on his way home from work, running one of those errands that men run for their wives.A few minutes later, Skip Schirmer comes along and picks up a frozen pizza -- Tombstone Original -- along with a cold Pepsi and a bottle of Advil.Ah, dinner time.Except that it's 1: 30. As in 1: 30 in the morning."This is what I normally do," says Schirmer, stopping at the Timonium Super Fresh after working the second shift at a northern Baltimore County printing company.

Three familiar businesses -- a drugstore, supermarket and bank -- announced closings or shut down recently in Waverly, creating inconvenient vacancies in the pedestrian-friendly Greenmount Avenue business district, but not daunting the community's optimism about its economic future.Provident Bank of Maryland, which has maintained a Waverly branch for 90 years, announced last month that its 3111 Greenmount Ave. operation will close March 19.A Super Fresh grocery store at Gorsuch Avenue and Old York Road shut down last month after 60 years in the neighborhood.

American consumers have learned to help themselves at the gas pump, bank machine and restaurant soda fountains. Now, they can add self-serve supermarket checkout to the list.Super Fresh Food Markets is introducing shoppers in the Baltimore area to a checkout lane that allows them to scan their own groceries.The customer does it all, swipes bar codes over electronic scanners, punches codes on a touch screen monitor, weighs produce, totals the order, bags it and tears off a receipt to give a cashier at a separate register.

American consumers have learned to help themselves at the gas pump, bank machine and restaurant soda fountains. Now, they can add self-serve supermarket checkout to the list.Super Fresh Food Markets is introducing shoppers in the Baltimore area to a checkout lane that allows them to scan their own groceries.The customer does it all, swipes bar codes over electronic scanners, punches codes on a touch screen monitor, weighs produce, totals the order, bags it and tears off a receipt to give a cashier at a separate register.