I know several San Francisco moms whose kids take swimming lessons at La Petit Baleen in San Bruno, so I assumed they’d be jumping ship for the new location in the Presidio.
“Absolutely not,” one mom assured me. “The kids fall asleep in the car on the ride home. And besides, if I drive to San Bruno, I can experience the wonder of Mollieland.”
Mollieland is the child-minding center at Mollie Stone’s (upscale, expensive) grocery store. As long as they stay in the store, parents can drop off their potty-trained kids aged 2-12 in a clean, attractive little room staffed by a smiling babysitter who urges them to play games, fiddle with the computers, color, or encrust something with stickers. The kids are on closed-circuit TV, so parents can stop by the monitors in the store and make sure their kids aren’t screaming.
It is so much fun, says my savvy mom friend, that her children regularly beg her to take them grocery shopping (!) and to leave them in Mollieland longer (!!), and my friend gets to slowly peruse all the types of cheese, and maybe even sit down and have a salad from the superbly appointed salad bar, in total, blessed silence. There’s a Peet’s coffee too.
Since I regularly find odd items in my cart due to my daughter’s sticky fingers, or my own distractedness, see you there.
Mollie Stone’s Market is located at the Bayhill Shopping Center, 851 Cherry Ave. (at Bayhill Dr.), San Bruno. Call 650-873-8075 or visit molliestones.com. There is another Mollieland at the San Mateo location, 49 42nd Ave. (at El Camino Real) but none in San Francisco. Hey, Mollie Stone’s: Where is the love?
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June 22nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm