It looks like the second Savannah Chipotle will be opening in late September 2014. The second local store will be at 318 Mall Blvd., Suite 600, Unit C — that’s near the new Kroger store.

I like Chipotle just fine, but I was unprepared last year for the crush of interest in the chain, which follows stricter standards for animal treatment and other issues involving “food with integrity” than most other chains.

Anyway, I’ve already started getting hits on this website from searches for the opening date of the Southside Savannah store, which will be convenient both to Abercorn Street and Hodgson Memorial. So here’s an embed of my Twitter exchange today with Chipotle:

@billdawers If all goes well, we're on pace to open at the end of September. We hope we'll see you there! -Skyllo

— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) August 31, 2014

I haven’t been posting quite as much here in recent months since I launched the music blog hissing lawns, but this blog continues to be an interesting adventure.

And it has sure told me a lot about what my largely Savannah-based audience wants to read, what types of posts attract search traffic, and other details I could only discover through running a site.

So here, with a little commentary, are the 13 most-read posts on Savannah Unplugged in 2013.

This blog doesn’t get all that much traffic really — I’m averaging about 300 page views/day in recent months. Only rarely do posts here get over 1,000 views, and many are only read by a couple of dozen people.

But a post had to get over 775 views to make my top 13 in 2013.

13: A few thoughts on the passing of Ben Tucker

What a tragedy in early June. This was a pretty quick post on the day that Ben died, but included some quotes, a video, and pics from the 2012 Savannah Jazz Festival. I suspect I would have gotten even more hits on my photos of the second line procession after Ben’s funeral, but some folks who should have linked to that post chose to download photos and post them to private Facebook pages — a frustrating puzzle.

12: Kanye West video projections in Savannah on Saturday night

So this didn’t even happen, but it was an interesting testament to the power and immediacy of the internet to disperse information. For the most part, young people — i.e., not the core Savannah Unplugged readers — were looking for information on the the Kanye West projections, and they found my blog in huge numbers on that particular afternoon.

11: Private Savannah screening of “CBGB” gets a good reaction

There was obviously a huge amount of local interest in CBGB when it filmed in Savannah in 2012 (Rupert Grint! Alan Rickman!), and that interest carried over to the anticipation of the release. I wasn’t invited to this private screening at the SCAD Museum of Art, but I did give the film a disappointing review when I saw it months later.

10: Mayans in Georgia?. . . Here we go again

I can’t believe how much traffic this post got — almost all from search engines. A few spurious claims on cable TV and — boom — viewers are ready to ignore the findings of serious researchers. This post also got hundreds of hits in the final days of 2012.

9: A Savannah intersection voted third worst in the nation

I’m proud to live in a city where posts like this can generate 1,000+ page views on a blog. A large portion of our citizens are interested in traffic, transit, urban design, architecture, and other subjects that deal with the public realm.

8: About the size of new apartments at 61st and Abercorn . . . .

Ditto from #9 above. I agree that the new apartments on 61st near Habersham Village are a little tall, in part because the ground had to be raised a few feet. But the height was otherwise within the longstanding zoning limits, and other objections — especially parking and noise — later proved largely unfounded (as I suspected they would be).

7: Mary Lee — a 16.5 foot, 3500 lb. great white shark — in surf off Jacksonville

The work of OCEARCH has been fun to follow — especially when a huge great white is in the surf break just down the shoreline. Again, this was one of those posts that generated a ton of search traffic since so few publications covered the story relative to the amount of public interest.

6: The Greyboy Allstars booked for SCADâ€s new alumni graduation concert in Forsyth Park

1,200 hits? Really? I think in part this post did so well because of the thoroughness of the title, which has all the key search terms: SCAD, new alumni, graduation, concert, and Forsyth Park.

5: So whatâ€s up with Savannahâ€s future Whole Foods?

Whole Foods eventually opened in late summer, of course, but this post from late April included an embedded tweet with the scheduled opening date as well as pics of the site. Not everyone in Savannah fully appreciated what a big development this was for the city, but regular readers and random searchers simply ate up any information about Whole Foods before it opened.

4: Chipotle opening in mid-September in Savannah

I made a couple of other posts about Chipotle after this one, both of which got many hundreds of hits. Again, the vast majority of the traffic for this post came from search traffic. People like reading about what’s new, and people like reading about popular chains like Whole Foods and Chipotle.

3: No, Mumford & Sons is not playing SCADâ€s new alumni concert in Forsyth Park

A clever hoax went viral. Debunking it attracted well over 2,000 views.

2: When The Rolling Stones stayed in Savannah. . .

Yes, people love anything having to do with celebrities, but this post wasn’t just pandering to that impulse. The Stones stayed in Savannah in 1965, just after appearing for the second time on the Ed Sullivan show. With the help of friends online, we pinpointed where they stayed and took photos of the motel as it appears today on US 17/Ogeechee Road. I’m glad that so many people seem to have gotten pleasure out of this post.

1: An interview with actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers from 2000, unpublished until now

Published almost exactly a year ago, this post continues to get 5-10 hits per day from search traffic or links from forums or sites devoted to Jonathan Rhys Meyers. What a fascinating character he is, but he was in some ways even more interesting back in 2000 when I interviewed him at The Groucho Club in London. I was freelancing for Contents Magazine at the time, but the edited interview never appeared. This lengthy post is pretty much just a raw transcript — and I think the quality of the unedited interview speaks very highly of the young actor.

So then all of you who have been incessantly searching for the opening date can give up on Google and actually just go to the restaurant.

But you might want to give it a day or two so that you’re not all frustrated by the lines, especially with the staff working through the kinks, and by the parking crunch that will no doubt ensue if everyone goes at once.

Seriously, take a look at these stats for this blog over the last 30 days, with search terms and the number of hits generated by them:

Really, what the hell?

I’ve never seen this kind of mania about the opening of a new business since . . . the recent opening of Whole Foods Market right next door.

Some of the interest in Chipotle is no doubt due to the corporate policies in terms of food quality and ethics, but there wouldn’t be this sort of interest if Savannahians hadn’t tried the chain in other cities and weren’t excited about the taste and value.

I’m glad readers come to this blog for some of the posts exploring complex issues like residential density and the housing market.

But my blog statistics tell me what people really want to know.

They want to know when Chipotle on Victory Drive will be opening.

A post from early August about the opening date has gotten over 700 views, including a couple of dozen every day this week.

Well over 100 people have found that post by searching for some combination of “chipotle” and “savannah”.

So I bugged Chipotle’s pretty amazingly responsive Twitter team for an update. Sometimes you just have to give the people what they want.

Here’s the latest:

@billdawers Should be mid to late Sept.  Stopping by and asking the manager is the #1 best way to nail down a date though.  -Wayne

— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) September 3, 2013

So look for an opening date in mid- to late-September to be announced soon. I’ll pop my head in and ask the next time I’m over that way.

The new Chipotle in Savannah will open in the same plaza as Whole Foods Market.

The upscale grocer, known for its pricey organic products, is increasingly emulating the discount tactics used by traditional supermarkets. It is also moving beyond the realm of grass-fed beef with more lower-priced items like frozen meatballs and vacuum-packed fish fillets.

The new strategy comes as Whole Foods fends off a growing swarm of rivals competing for customers who have become more careful with their pocketbooks. […]

One of the chain’s latest initiatives: nationwide “flash” sales on specific items promoted on Twitter and Facebook that run for just a few hours, like a five-hour buy-one-get-one-free deal on ice cream last month. The chain also is increasing one-day sales […]

Whole Foods long avoided such supermarket tactics […]

The chain has increasingly been opening new stores in smaller markets, suburbs and lower-income urban areas […]

Meanwhile, competition has ramped up from other natural grocers as well as traditional supermarkets that are expanding their selection of natural and organic products. Kroger Co., the country’s largest traditional grocery chain, has been trying to attract a more affluent clientele in certain markets with items like dry-aged beef, fancy cheese and a larger vitamin section. Kroger last month agreed to acquire upscale grocer Harris Teeter Supermarkets Inc. to deepen its reach into the high-end segment. More direct rivals such as The Fresh Market Inc. and Sprouts Farmers Market Inc., which became a publicly traded company earlier this month, have been opening more stores.

I’d really suggest reading the entire WSJ piece — it contains fascinating details about one of the key elements of life: how and where we find our food.

Savannah certainly qualifies as one of those “smaller markets”, although you might not realize that if you drop by our new store on Victory Drive. Some friends have reported finding slow times to shop there, but the place has been pretty much packed for the last 10 days. Even company employees who have relocated from much larger metro areas and who have helped open stores elsewhere seem a little overwhelmed.

This evolving strategy to try to shed the “Whole Paycheck” reputation is nothing new. In February 2012, when we pretty much knew that Whole Foods was coming but when some local cynics refused to accept the obvious evidence, I posted Why a Whole Foods in Savannah makes more sense than you think, citing an earlier WSJ piece: Whole Foods Aims to Alter ‘Price Perception’ as It Expands.

I’m a random shopper who never has written lists and has little on my mental lists beyond cat food.

So I generally sort of scavenge my way through grocery stores, and that’s what I’ve done on my two trips to Whole Foods Market since the store opened. (I also had a nice tour before it opened and posted a lot of preview photos.)

I’ve bought organic cherries for $4.99/lb (amazing flavor and freshness), organic grapes for $2.99/lb (perfect), and even vacuum-packed fish fillets like those mentioned in the WSJ piece. I got a couple of beautiful pieces of Mahi Mahi in coconut/mango sauce — less than $8 for about 3/4 lb. When I was ready to cook them, I thawed them quickly in warm water before opening, wrapped each fillet in aluminum foil, added some freshly diced mango (from Kroger) and thinly sliced Vidalia onion (from Berry Farms via the Forsyth Farmers’ Market), and stuck them in the oven. So, so good.

Whole Foods also has their company brand milk priced about 5 percent higher than Kroger prices its own brand. I bought a jar of pure, freshly ground peanut butter too, but don’t know what I even paid for it. It’s so good that I don’t really care.

There are many people in the Savannah area who are simply willing to pay more for better food with more transparent supply chains, purchased from employees who are passionate about their jobs and the products they’re selling.

Longtime shoppers at Brighter Day Natural Foods here in Savannah fit that description too. Interestingly, rather than seeing Whole Foods’ arrival as a positive thing for the city, quite a number of those shoppers have been adamant on Facebook that they see Whole Foods as a dangerous competitor. As I’ve said before, I really don’t think it does either business justice to try to make a comparison. After all, Whole Foods is 10 times larger than Brighter Day — WF is a full-service chain grocery store, after all. I’d say Whole Foods’ presence will dramatically expand the potential clientele for a niche store like Brighter Day.

Savannah Bee Company products at Whole Foods Market

It seems clear that Whole Foods’ presence in the Savannah market is going to make other major grocers step up their game.

Even if they never set foot in WF, customers of Kroger and Publix will surely see some changes for the better because Whole Foods is just down the road.

And Whole Foods’ obvious success here is surely going to be noticed by some other corporations, including Trader Joe’s.

Call it “Whole Paycheck” all you want, but it’s already clear that Savannah is the perfect spot for the company’s evolving business model(s).

Consider: Whole Foods and Kate Spade just opened, Anthropologie plans to open here next year, Drayton Tower has been largely rehabilitated, One West Victory is moving ahead, a number of smaller construction projects like the Avenues on 61st are finished or nearly so, tourism is booming, etc., etc.

But all those visible developments don’t guarantee broad-based regional job growth. The Savannah metro area is still several thousand jobs below the peak of employment about six years.

Meanwhile, the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has been spiraling upward — an increase of .6 percent since April to 8.8 percent in July. That’s the 5th worst in the nation, tied with Michigan.

Some of Georgia’s smaller metros have posted some really bad numbers lately, while Atlanta is zipping along with annual job growth of over 3 percent.

For more numbers on these trends, check out my City Talk column today Latest Savannah employment data even worse than it seems and my post to Peach Pundit yesterday: Georgia now has the nation’s 5th worst unemployment rate.

From Calculated Risk:

So what gives? What’s going on outside the Atlanta area?

As I have noted ad nauseum, Georgia was always at particular risk from sequestration. The state has a number of federal installations in smaller metro areas; sharp cuts in their funding was predicted by people like me to start showing up in employment data around now. The number of federal employees has fallen about 4 percent over the past year — over half of those positions have been civilian employees in the Department of Defense. Many who are still employed are coping with pay cuts because of furlough days.

And the deep cuts to the state budget in recent years and the really anemic level of transportation funding are surely playing a role too. We have smaller metro areas and small towns that have taken some big hits.

I’m quite sympathetic to the arguments that some of those government cuts were needed, but the sequester has cut some really basic services offered to low ranking members of the military and caused other unnecessary pain.

Hugh Acheson’s Savannah restaurant will be called the Florence, officially. He’d tentatively called it Vittoria at first, then settled on the double entendre that the Florence provides: It’s not only the name of a city in Italy but also the name of Savannah’s famous waving girl statue.

Yes, Florence Martus. I wonder if she ever ate the Italian-ish cuisine that Acheson has planned. Click here for more on Acheson, who will also be featured at the Savannah Food & Wine Festival in November.

Now, let’s be clear that March 2014 looks like a really ambitious goal. There’s active construction on One West Victory, where Florence will be, but we haven’t really seen anything come out of the ground yet.

In other news, the Whole Foods Market in Savannah is now on Twitter at @wfmsavannah. I’m taking a preview tour of the store tomorrow (Saturday), which I will likely write about for next Tuesday’s City Talk — Tuesday is opening day.

Also of note: the Facebook page for the Whole Foods in Charleston (actually in Mount Pleasant) has 3140 likes, while the yet-to-open Savannah store has 8514.

In other foodie news, my City Talk column on Sunday is about my first trip to The Bier Haus, which got its beer and wine license just a week ago.

Spudnik will be opening soon on West Broughton.

Chipotle and Zoës Kitchen will both be opening in the next month or so next to Whole Foods.