Your Favourite Gourmet Food Store?

Do you prefer an online gourmet food store or a brick-mortar one?

A gourmet food store can be a little hard to come by, and with most of them operating online, it is rare to see one of these great little stores on a main street in a large city. But when you do find one and it’s local, you will obviously want to rave about it – so tell us, what makes a great gourmet food shopping experience?

So you may have heard of or been to health food stores so you will know that there are many different types of shop that hold all types of food to meet the requirements of their customers. When it comes to gourmet food shopping, there are entire stores dedicated to gourmet food shopping and different ethnic varieties of food too. And why shouldn’t there be? If there are whole stores dedicated to selling wine, there should also be places you can shop to get the best quality produce as well.

The gourmet food shopping experience is totally different when it is done online. Which do you prefer? Online stores are easier in terms of access, and searching for products can take literally seconds with the help of the site’s search tools. But perhaps you prefer the live’ shopping experience, where you can enter the shop and smell the fresh food as you walk through the door. There is something exciting about collecting your food, hand selecting it and purchasing it that makes the experience a more realistic one. Also, picking out the actual product itself means that you can check any fruit or vegetables for ripeness – something you can’t do online.

A gourmet food store often carries local produce!

We hear many people talk about how important it is to buy local produce, and in fairness this statement is true because without local people buying from local businesses, the economy of that town or city could dip, and some businesses may even go bust if they don’t get enough customers. Does gourmet food shopping count if you are doing it overseas? Well, that is down to personal opinion, but gourmet foods can come from all over the world and if your country genuinely doesn’t grow a certain product, then you have no choice than to buy from overseas!

Gourmet food shopping is all about the quality of a product and its freshness and is the most important aspect in drawing us back to a speciality store. If a gourmet store doesn’t stock top quality produce, you wouldn’t go back; simple as that! And this will surely reflect in your recipes.

Please feel free to tell us about your gourmet food shopping experiences? Can you recommend any stores to us? Do you buy all your food from speciality gourmet stores or is it just as a treat? Do you buy online or go to the shop yourself? We want to hear from you! Tell us about your favourite gourmet food store on our Facebook page or Tweet us.