It's a wonder anyone goes into the grocery business. The margins, we're told, are so impossibly thin you expect to read SUPERVALU POSTS RECORD LOSS BECAUSE SOMEONE TOOK THREE SAMPLES OF CHEESE.

Large portions of the merchandise are perishable. You never hear a bookseller say, "Well, we lost power for a day, and the whole nonfiction section rotted and had to be thrown out."

They know that everyone who shops in the grocery store is fickle, because people walk right in with reusable bags from other stores, which must be like seeing a hickey on your significant other after two weeks on the road.

Yet every so often you read that a new chain is coming to town, or Whole Foods is opening up six stores, or Partial Foods, which sells half-consumed items people have returned, is going up across from Aldi, which is a block from Lund's, and so on. But every so often … a store closes.

Two more Rainbow stores are shutting their doors, as the chain does a slow fade out of the market.

Once I wrote a column about their paper bag handles, because a) that's the no-holds-barred stuff we do in this space, and let the chips fall where they may, and b) the bags always broke, and the chips fell where they may, along with the bananas and glass bottles of pasta sauce. The handles were attached to the bag with toad spit instead of glue, and anything heavier than cotton candy made them tear.

After writing about this I got a box of food from the Rainbow home office, with a nice cloth bag. Because I can't accept such emollients, they went to the food shelf. A nice gesture, but again, given the margins, I can't help think that's why they had financial difficulties.

The Byerly's by Southdale is also closing, but also opening: a new store was built next door and opens next week. It looks spectacular. We'll still be sad to see the old one go, for it was something special when it was first opened. You suspected that if you went around back, you'd see a service bay where mechanics had the carts up on pneumatic lifts, adjusting the wheels so they went straight.

I lived for a while on the East Coast, where the local Safeway was known for its faint stink of bygone milk and vermin poison and the carts had wheels as jittery as a Chihuahua in an earthquake, When I came back to Minneapolis I would go to Byerly's, to remind myself why I wanted to move back. Yeah, yeah, lakes and parks et cetera, but look at this fish! I mean, where are the flies?

Now I spread my shopping around. Trader Joe's — fun! funky! Everyone wears Hawaiian shirts, to reinforce that psychological bond between Polynesian culture and low, low prices on frozen tiramisu. I go to Target because it is encoded in our DNA to do so, and because I need light bulbs, dog food, eggs, a TV, shoelaces, and the thing my wife asked me to get, whatever it was. Bed sheets? Dryer sheets? Get both. (Turns out she wanted a rutabaga.)

I go to Cub for low prices, and because no one asks me if I want to save 10 percent by opening up a CubCard, if there is such a thing. Of course, I do the self-checkout, and there are times I'm tempted to ask myself if I want to save 10 percent, just so I can say "no."

Byerly's is for those things you can't get anywhere else. A man is handed a list by his wife that says "organic anise-infused minced truffles in Dijon," he goes straight to Byerly's, where he expects he will be directed to a long row of items people buy once every 17 years. "Truffles? Next to the cloves."

But they also have the BOGO going on to pull in daily shoppers, and while you have to love the BOGO, it's wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. BOGO means "BUY ONE GET ONE." Yes. That's how it usually works. What they mean is buy one get one free, which would be BOGOF, which is accurate but sounds like the surname of a member of European royalty. Count Bogof, at your service. Where might I find the minced truffles?

But there's still a space for another chain. At the State Fair I wore a shirt with the Red Owl logo, and I was stopped every 10 minutes by someone: Hey! The Owl! All right! I'm not sure why people have an emotional connection to the Owl, because he seems rather irritated. You want double coupons on cling peaches? What do I look like, cling-peach Miracle Guy? I'm an owl. I have limited influence on the pricing structure. The Red Owl always seemed to be judging you, but reserving final evaluation for the moment.

People love the Red Owl because it was ubiquitous when they were younger, perhaps. It's where Mom shopped, and you have nice warm indistinct memories of going to the store in the afternoon and hearing Muzak trickle overhead. Or you went there with Dad when he did one of his trademark runs for watermelon, and ended up buying a gallon of ice cream and Pop-Tarts and cinnamon buns for breakfast and chocolate milk and sure, Lucky Charms, toss 'em in the cart. Diabetes, schmiabetes, I say.

It's not like Piggly Wiggly, whose grin had a sweaty note of pleading: I'm wearin' a butcher hat, see? Don't make me into sausage. I'm like you! The Red Owl did not care what you thought.

Bring back the Owl, play vague '60s Muzak, use vintage typefaces everywhere, erect a big pyramid of cans by the door, and you'd capture an untapped market of people who want some nostalgia with their weekly routine.

Meaning: people who have completely forgotten that grocery bags didn't have handles.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858