How dare Braum’s not come downtown. We already have Sonic, McDonald’s, Subways galore, and Carl’s Jr. Braum’s not adding to downtown OKC’s world-class fast food offerings is blasphemy. What do you think we want, real restaurants downtown?

Your continued encroachment upon our territory is both sick and alarming.

Blog war.

How about we get a restaurant open past 10:30 first that’s not IHOP.

Baby steps.

Most of the comments here seem to be missing the point entirely. The point is not to get Braum’s for their fast food, but for their grocery offerings.

At this point, no one is willing to bite the bullet and open a full blow grocery store downtown (and especially the national grocery chains with the national economy). Like other fast food restaurants downtown, Braum’s would probably make it just fine– but they come with many grocery store items!

And I don’t know why everyone gets so worked up at fast food restaurants downtown. If you don’t like them, don’t eat at them. I certainly don’t, with the exception of Subway. There are what, 10 fast food places around downtown? And 30 sit down restaurants? That seems to be a good ratio– probably better than suburban areas.

Braum’s offers $3.50 bags of potato chips..which is more than 2x markup on what other grocery stores are selling. That pretty much sums up their slim grocery offerings. They do have some pretty good lemon lime soda though.

Do people not realize that there is a small gourmet grocery store that just opened on 2nd Street? People keep talking about baby steps towards a Whole Foods.. so what, we’re going to forget about Sage and try to coerce Braum’s to come downtown? Hmmm

Nick, I agree – people who want to see a Whole Foods downtown should absolutely be patronizing the Sage market and doing it as often as possible. As an aside, to all of you dreaming of Whole Foods, have you ever been to Central Market? Whole Foods, my friends, is not the gold standard here in my humble opinion.

Steve, you are absolutely right about Central Market. That is the best grocery store! But it is an HEB concept, so I am not sure they would ever come to OKC considering we don’t even have regular HEBs here.

And I absolutely think that people should be shopping at Sage. To suggest otherwise is insulting. But Braum’s offers different things than Sage. Having a Braum’s does not mean Sage could not thrive. BOTH would be great! BOTH + Central Market would be even better!

HEB is based in Texas..but so are Whole Foods, and Wild Oats. It’s not really any secret that the Texas chains like Pappadeux, Einstein Brothers, and Central Market could come into Oklahoma and dominate.

Get over it! The lack of a large grocery store is old news and is not required for successful living conditions in the Downtown area. Downtown Dallas has very limited grocery availability and the population living downtown is much larger and continues to grow.

Downtown Oklahoma City is looking great and it only needs more affordable housing for the younger people whom would like to live there. Living in the inner city is much more about housing prices, product, and entertainment than a full service grocery. Three of my four children live in the inner city of Dallas and Chicago and they live there because they like it and the life style it offers them.

I would argue that eating is a vital component of lifestyle. It happens to be a basic function of human living…believe it or not.