While I love the food talk, I read the original poster and chuckled about Mervyn’s being used as an economic barometer.

Mervyn’s went under during the good part of economy. The economy didn’t kill mervyn’s, I think Kohl’s and a few others did. In my neck of the woods, they closed the mervyn’s in like 2006 or earlier.

The I read the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyns They shut down their last stores in Oregon and Washington in early 2007, went bankrupt in July of 2008.

No matter what the economy is doing, some companies go under for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the economy and everything to with how they do business or their business model. Sometimes chains die slow, maybe the poway mervyns lasted longer than most so it looks like it was economy, but it wasn’t. And Borders, well Amazon is doing well, I think the customer habits killed borders, just like blockbuster video lost to digital delivery and netflix.

The economy may still suck, but those examples don’t alarm me.