Let's Help Our Neighbors in Palm Beach Create a "Palm Beach-Worthy" Publix

Flickr: Jonathan Vazquez

​Attention, working-class mortals! There's a crisis atop our local Mt. Olympus (the island of Palm Beach), where the high-society luminaries are in danger of having an ordinary Publix grocery store blight their otherwise extraordinary commercial space.

At a recent symposium hosted by the Palm Beach Civic Association, 23 residents of the island expressed their dread of a "cookie cutter" store and called upon the grocer chain to conceive a market that was "Palm Beach-worthy."

Neither you nor I are Palm Beach worthy, of course. But maybe we can put our heads together and imagine a Palm Beach-worthy Publix -- an idea so brilliant that one of our social superiors will steal it, then mock us with it.

After the jump, I'll get the ball rolling with a few ideas.

Obviously, they've already thought of the valet, which may be luxury enough for Boca's upper crust. The Palm Beach-worthy Publix will need to go beyond that.

Example: Considering the number of wealthy Jewish families that now occupy Palm Beach, it behooves the store to have a kosher deli and a full array of the rarest, most delicious kosher foods. But this being Palm Beach, the store should be sensitive to an older set of elites who long for the days when people of certain ethnic groups "knew their place." So how about a section of the store where Jews aren't allowed?

The ensuing litigation will ensure that Palm Beach lawyers have a cash cow that will last them long after this economic slump.

You'd expect the prices at a Palm Beach Publix to be higher, but that means that Island-dwellers have to lug around those enormous money clips and go through the exhausting process of retrieving it at the register, followed by the humiliation of counting out their money. So the Palm Beach-worthy Publix should do away with that transaction altogether.

Instead, it should be the civic duty of each Palm Beach family to recruit investors for some murky fund that will show consistent, handsome returns -- at least judging by the monthly financial reports the investors receive. In reality, those funds will be pooled by Palm Beach and applied entirely to the expenses that come with operating the world's poshest grocery store, where residents are free to pluck merchandise straight from the shelves and walk out.