Earth Fare

we stopped in here to prepare for a camping trip because we like to support local/​non chain business when possible. they have a decent selection of goods and the staff was friendly. i noticed a lot of old/​moldy things in the produce section. i also noticed that their prices are a bit high even for a «health/​specialty» store. i tried a few deli and hot bar things but didnt purchase since they were either lacking in flavor or had too much sugar added. the store itself could be tidied up some but mostly it was shopable and nice. i would stop in here again but only if whole foods was closed or inconvenient.

Earth Fare is one of Asheville’s oldest health food stores and holds many memories for me.
Since I was a little kid I would try and stick my hands in the granola and chocolate bins and try to convince my mom to buy me the organic fruit leather. Although this place seems a little frantic and crowded, it feels like home.
They have a great hot bar for a quick pick-​up for dinner and a salad bar for sides as well as smoothies and juices made fresh! They have a pretty good produce selection and their meats are butchered for you from all of the best farms around town. I love their Earth Fare snacks section in the middle of the store with sides like pasta salad and, my personal favorite, their curry chicken salad. They have $ 5 sushi Wednesdays when I am on a budget and craving something healthy and tasty and their Tomato Bank is helpful if you’re a regular Earth Fare shopper.
They have a great organic cosmetics section and awesome health and body products. Their organic cleaning products are pricey but hey, to each is own. The best section, in my opinion, is their wine and beer section! They have tons of local brews as well as craft from all over the U.S. their wine selection is huge and they always have great specials.
Generally, I don’t do all of my grocery shopping at health food stores because I am a young lady who is «ballin’ on a budget» but I love to come to Earth Fare every chance I can to grab some small things that make me happy.

I this grocery store! It is especially great if you are vegetarian/​vegan! They have a wonderful produce selection as well as bulk spices/​items. I can’t say enough positive things about this store! It’s clean, and the staff are friendly and helpful. I exclusively shop here for all my grocery items. I’m vegan. Prices are very fair in comparison to whole paycheck (literally) down the street. Sign up for their e-​mails to get the sale flyer! The only complaint is parking, but it’s worth it.

This is where it all began: store 101 (or 100, I can’t remember). But this is my favorite EarthFare. It attracts lot’s of the «fully present» affluent Asheville hippie types, so expect the check out to take a bit longer than at Whole Foods or Ingles. No kidding: I was behind a woman that inquired for 5 minutes regarding how the buttons worked on the ATM pad; another wanted to discuss out load with the cashier whether it made sense to use her Tomato Bank points now or later. Life is fully of tough decisions I guess! In a zombie apocalypse you only need to go to Earthfare to learn who will be the first to have their thigh eaten like corn by zombies. But going back to selection; it’s great and the employees are always cool and helpful.

Great store generally speaking… HOWEVER the pastry counter (first I’ve ever used it) sucked it. This was late at night but all the other high end (I.e. wholefoods, greenlife, ect) stores I go to have never been so shabby.

Earth Fare is a pretty typical health food store and they have a nice hot and cold bar, plus smoothies and juices being made fresh. The food on the hot bar was ok, nothing special. I was happy to see biscuits and gravy on there, considering it’s a health food place, but the biscuits were pretty dry and the gravy was bland. The green goddess smoothie was good, too and the prices are very fare. The service is a little odd as no one working there seemed very happy and I was never greeted by anyone, even at the registers. It is what it is though and it’s worth a visit. Good beer selection, too.

I am a strong believer in buying healthy and organic food. Earthfare is my go-​to grocery store, whether it be this location or the South Asheville location. I’m at these two grocery stores enough to practically call them my second homes. The employees are always so friendly and delightful. My only complaint is that this location is always running out of things. It kinda sucks when I’m super excited for my grocery trip and I walk in and half of the things on my list are out of stock. However, I will keep returning because I love Earthfare’s atmosphere, their produce is always fresh, and there is a great selection of organic products.

This is my favorite supermarket in Asheville!
This place has a great meat department, huge selection of cheeses and fresh produce all the time. The selection of specialty products, like gluten free is a huge plus. The prepared food bar is also great, and the café has great stuff for a quick meal that’s affordable.
I love the layout of the store, it makes it really easy to find things easily and quickly. As a member of their tomato bank club, the amount you spend is credited to your account in points. They constantly have great sales and the email updates make it really simple to keep track. The text message updates about your individual tomato bank points make me feel special lol.
My only problems with this place is they have very limited selection when it comes to individual products, meaning a lot of times I have to supplement my food shopping at Ingles. The earth fare brand is always a good choice for stuff tho.

I really love shopping at Earth Fare — their products are top-​notch and the prices are definitely not too high.
HOWEVER — I was on a three day no-​sugar green juice fast with my family and the girls working the juice bar were EXTREMELY unfriendly and even told us not to come back for more juices during the happy hour because we’d «hold them up»!!!
I’m sorry — I’ve worked in countless restaurants, costumer services jobs and even worked at a Publix for 3 years in high school and the NUMBER ONE rule is to ensure the costumer comes back happy. You’d think that girls working in a juice bar would be happy that they have costumers because that brings in money to their company, thus having money steadily coming into their individual bank accounts. Never in my life have I experienced such attitudes at a place like that. It was very unfortunate for Earth Fare, too, because that was the beginning of four people’s cleanses and we were so excited to get out juices at Earth Fare… You better believe that after that incident we did NOT do business with them throughout our cleansing. We drove our happy selves over to Whole Foods down the street and paid the few dollar up charge for a much more pleasant experience.
I even tipped the girls the spare dollar or two for their services right after I ordered it and was SO tempted to take it back! I’ve never wanted to take a tip back in my life!!! My boyfriend’s mom thanked them and said «have a great day» to two scowling girls that didn’t even make eye contact with her or give her a smile or response. Are you kidding me?!
I WISH I got the names of those two girls working that day, because their behavior really ticked all of us off and was completely uncalled for and unprofessional. I most definitely would have said something to their managers and wanted to call corporate on them.
I will continue to shop at Earth Fare for their produce and groceries, but I will NEVER get juice from their juice bar after that experience and I advise everyone else to go anywhere else for juice.

This review is specifically for their in house pizza. It brings them quite a bit of business and I’m sure others do what we do and pick up other things while they’re there, so it’s a significant draw although I realize it isn’t their primary focus. When the order is correct, the pizza is really good. BUT — three times in the last month the toppings have been not at all what we ordered. The last time the guy making it listened to our order, then said «wait, let me find a pencil», then took the order again, and made it wrong. I think it would be worth hiring people who are a bit more competent.

I don’t get it. Shouldn’t a health food store know what I mean when I tell them I am celiac and wondered if there was anything in the deli I could eat without worrying about cross contamination. I spoke to 2 people. One gave me a blank look at the word, celiac, and the other kept wanting to talk to me about cross contamination with peanuts and peanut oil.
LAME! Waste of my time to shop there with people who are not knowledgable… plus way too expensive.

Equal with Trader Joes. Great atmosphere, selection and people. Wonderful place to eat hot and cold food in the deli. Highly recommended!

I’d like it to be known that a 3 star review is a positive review.
It’s not negative, it’s A-​Ok. Some things are Ok, somethings are just okay, some things are A-​Ok. Subtle differences. Earth fare gets a solid A-​Ok.
Earth Fare is a great place to get a nice hot bar lunch. It’s also great for… uh… Tamari from a vat rather than a bottle! Maybe some Bulk frozen ravioli… or uh… natural tinctures of echinacea and goldenseal… maybe?
Aside from Earth Fare’s awesome hot bar, they seem to have a lot of the same items that other health food supermarkets carry, and not competitively priced. The other day I walked through the entire market with a real impulse to buy something… anything, but I couldn’t find any items where I felt like there was a real value.
The meats in the deli case all look great, but on average cost anywhere from .50−1.00 more per pound than other specialty market deli cases. The produce is gorgeous, vibrant, but once again more expensive.
It’s a popular destination, so there must be some allure to it. Maybe there are sales and specials that I’m not aware of. I’ll keep on checking it out, but I personally am willing to drive a bit farther for a better deal.

For the people caring about health!
They have many kinds of natural and organic things. I had lunch and bought local beer there a few times.
One of the great things there is that they have a military discount. 5 or 10% off.
Big parking lot is in front of the building

This place could have lived up to its great name with a few changes in personnel. I was expecting a much smaller store when I entered, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a large Whole Foods-​esque supply. Excited, I rushed to the prepared foods section to get myself some delicious dinner. I found a man behind the counter who was less than willing to meet my needs. Because I was sharing a meal with a friend (she is a meat eater and I am a strict vegetarian), I asked that the meat section of our 3 part meal was put into a separate container as to not touch my portion of the food. He was straight up unwilling to do that for me. I find it very hard to believe that I am the first vegetarian to propose what I think is a not-​so-​outlandish request, but he seemed very put out by my asking and unwilling to budge. It wasn’t until we asked to see the manager that he agreed to oblige us. It was a second container, for goodness’ sake! The food was OK, but definitely not worth the hassle. I also bought some delicious fresh fruit and organic milk that lived up to the hype, but our checkout woman was also less than pleasant. Maybe they need a better screening process for their employees.

This is a great grocery store to have nearby when you’re visiting Asheville for a week. I stocked up early with a mini loaf of bread, sandwich meats, yogurts, snacks, and champagne to ring in the new year.
The hot bar is great for a quick and nutritious lunch. I even managed to make it in for a late breakfast and snagged a breakfast burrito packed with eggs, tofu, onions, and spices for just $ 4.
It feels similar to a whole foods but not quite as pretentious. I guess you could say it’s more down to «earth.»

The tira misu is the real deal. I love the produce selection (better than Whole Paycheck). It is also great to have ample parking unlike the blood sport parking elsewhere.
The cheese department looks magnificent, although I was not in the market for cheese today.
The prices are high. But so is the selection and the shopping ambience — roomy, pleasant, nice gourmet treats.

This is another of those Asheville stores where it helps to be a trust fund baby or have a hemorrhage in your wallet.
Great selection if you don’t mind taking a second loan out on your child.

I’ve never been in an Earth Fare store before but I like to support health food stores that are trying to compete with the Whole Foods Corporation. I like to go to Turnip Truck in Nashville for Carolyn’s local eggs and Hatcher Dairy milk because they’re both local, hormone/​antibiotic free and from pastured animals. A friend of mine suggested Earth Fare because we could buy bread she’s been raving about from Farm and Sparrow Bakery, so it was an easy decision to stop in on the way to the cottage we were renting for a few days.
Indeed they had Farm and Sparrow bread and some nice fellow behind the bread counter noticed me inspecting each loaf and offered to slice it for me, sweet! We had brought a lot of food with us, so we were just after some quality bread, eggs, and milk. My boyfriend splurged and bought some beer from their extensive collection of local options and some really freakin’ good local cheese from the cheese counter.
Anyway I will definitely shop here again if the opportunity presents itself. I would like to go back and really look over their produce for locally sourced options. I didn’t really see any local milk or eggs in the that section, perhaps I missed them? Or perhaps there just isn’t anyone local producing these options and selling to Earth Fare in Western North Carolina. I know there are hardly any dairies left in the south, it’s hard to find quality milk in many places. I grabbed some Pasture Verde eggs which are from TX and a glass milk bottle from Homestead Creamery which is located in VA.
They also had a hot bar and salad bar which looked great! By the way Farm and Sparrow bread is amazing even at $ 7 a loaf.

Amazing cheese section. (cheeses are the answer)
This place is the best natural and organic food store I’ve been to in a long time. Great café and groceries. Very knowledgeable staff. Nice section devoted to vitamins and personal care.
I love Earth Fare.