Aunt Maggie’s

Great place for all my vegetarian needs. Love the soup selection and your cracker selection. So good
…and great staff too

At what point do you cross the line from food lover to food-​fad loving hipster? Is it when the coconut oil hits your shopping basket, or when you consider stocking up on $ 1.80 bundles of Kale because you know you can make huge amounts of Kale chips?
Well, whatever that line is Aunt Maggie’s was partly responsible for me crossing over. Yup, I’m now a fully fledged kale-​chip, coconut oil, kombucha loving woman. I visit regularly to see which healthy items are on sale and to buy well-​priced vegetables between market shops. The store is huge and there is aisle after aisle of beautifully packaged «health» food that will make you feel virtuous as you throw them in to the wicker shopping basket provided at the front counter.
My only gripe with this store is that not all items have prices on the shelves, making it very hard when you’re trying to weigh up the value between three different kinds of activated almonds. It’s easy to spend a lot of money here if you don’t pay attention and compare brands but with some careful consideration you can actually get out of here having spent not much more than the local supermarket.

I love the take home lasagne (regular not gluten free). It’s very good when you’re looking for something quick and hearty to make for dinner but can’t be bothered cooking.
I also like a lot of the specialty /​organic /​fancy things available. I know I can always go in and find something new and wonderful on the shelves.
The only negative to Aunt Maggie’s is that it’s a little pricey.
That’s not a comment about value though. I think most of the products at Aunt Maggie’s are a higher quality than regular stupidmarket stuff.

Aunt Maggies is part of the move from grungy and hip to high end gentrification aka ‘pricing themselves out of the market’ that Gertrude Street is currently going through. Sadly many places on Gertrude St, once one of the roughest toughest streets in Melbourne and a key meeting place for local Koorie families, has increasingly disappeared up its own proverbial. Many of the shops cater only for the $ 100,000 plus market — high end homewares with $ 200 cushions, paints that cost twice the norm, and clothes from Paris designers. The genuine local resident run shops are rapidly disappearing and moving down to Smith Streeet as landlords up the rent on them.
Aunt Maggie’s, while relatively inoffensive, is a high end version of the Smith Street Organic Foodstore or Friends of the Earth. You get better value at either of those places.

A bastion of loveliness on Gertrude Street, merely walking through the doors of Auntie Maggie’s northern outpost will lift your spirits.
Inside, all is light and healthful, from the wooden shelves encasing organic free-​range eggs, to the beautiful selection of organic vegetables. One gets the feeling that each fruit is lovingly polished.
Auntie Maggie’s has it all, from German juice (Bionade) to crackers, wraps, and locally-​sourced feta. They even have a juice/​soup bar for the lucky workers on Gertrude St. who can visit for lunch. (When will they stay open at night for the rest of us, hmmm?)
Of course, all of this comes at a premium — would you expect anything less from an organic shop, and one in Fitzroy, no less? However, if you sign up to be a member you’ll be texted about the monthly 20% off day. Run, don’t walk, to fill up your basket.