March 7, 2006
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Truthfully I am concerned when I read in the news that Wal-Mart is now the largest purveyor of groceries, elbowing aside Tom Thumb, Kroger, Albertson's, etc. In fact, over the past several months - ever since the SuperTarget opened off Montgomery St. and a Wal-Mary Food Center opened on Vickery - those two stores have received the overwhelming majority of my grocery dollars.
Yesterday, taking heed of the warning if enough people do the same we won't have the traditional stores to shop at, so will be held captive if the big boxes decide to raise their prices, I elected to shop at Tom Thumb for the few things I needed.
Painful. If there's a price difference of 20¢ that's no big deal, but often the differential was much, much higher. A couple of things I tend to buy at Target or Wal-Mart for $1.99 were a full dollar higher at Tom Thumb! Frequently the spread was in the 50¢ range. To be fair, the bread we favor was on a good sale (2/$3.00) so I saved over 50¢ there, and milk was on sale for $2.50. But those savings hardly offset the higher prices found on virtually everything else.
So I dunno what to do. Shop for groceries where the prices are lowest, thereby hastening the exit of traditional grocery stores from this area and leaving us at the mercy of predatory pricing once the competition's been eliminated, or split my shopping in an effort to support the trad stores, even though it means I pay more?
Comments (18)
Tom Thumb is always the most expensive. I like to shop at Kroger. I can't stand going to walmart unless there is something I reallyreally need and can't get elsewhere, or when my budget is low and I want name brand things.
BTW I started that survey you tagged me for but havent managed to finish it up ! I should just post it half done . .haha.
We are having a huge controversy in my town about allowing Super WalMart to be built. All the reasons you mention have been cited. However, the best pro WalMart argument I read was that it is not WalMart that drives the other stores out of town, it is the people who are looking for lower prices. They take their business to the stores where they can get the most value for their dollar!
I shop at a variety of stores for food and have no idea if WalMart is really that much cheaper, since we don't have one (yet!!)
Sue
That's true...Kroger is good. Personally, I've found Albertson's to be frequently higher even than Tom Thumb.
They're significantly cheaper, no doubt about it, Sue.
I nearly (not quite!) wish Wal-Mart and Target hadn't gone into the grocery business at all.
I'll admit it, I shop at the Super Wal-Mart because I can afford it. Kroger and Albertsons I'll go to when they're having sales...I usually buy meat elsewhere than Wal-Mart.
What I need is an HEB Grocery store here in the Denton area. HEB beats Tom Thumb/Kroger/Albertsons with a big fat stick, but I've not found any North of Waco. I'd definitely shop there over Super Wal-Mart if they opened one up.
If you're in the area, don't forget Central Market at Hulen and I-30 is owned by HEB and carries its private label merchandise. Plus it has the best produce in the world, bar none, and at decent prices, too.
Good topic. All I need is Super Target and a Central Market/Whole Foods, with a little Sunflower Shop thrown in for good measure. I get frustrated with the regular grocery stores b/c they are so expensive! It's a competitive world out there. Super stores make money by selling more stuff at a lower price. Grocery stores sell less stuff at a higher price. The grocery stores could lower their prices and sell more (and probably even out their profits), but my guess is they are too scared to do it.
My favorite grocery store might be Market Street in Colleyville. I go there for Gluten-Free cooking classes. Not only do they have a good selection of GF items, plus good meat and produce, they have regular staples (cleaning supplies, etc.). The problem for me is that I like the staples from Target and the speciality items at Central Market/Whole Foods. Market Street does a good job of both (but it way to far away!).
We do our primary shopping at Aldis. Since nearly everything is store brand there are things we can't get there. Then we generally go to Krogers and using our shopper card get some good deals. Always check the markdown meat section.
We fought Walmart and kept them from going in across the street from Kroger (instead they are building where the town had originally planned on letting them build, it was a "in town vs in the county" sort of thing. They will be "in town"). Closest to me we have Safeway and Vitamin Cottage. A couple of miles down the road we have Kroger 15 minutes past that we have Whole Foods. After karate on Friday nights we have a family thing of hitting up Whole Foods for pizza. Cheaper than McD's (where I refuse to go) and we do most of our grocery shopping there. During the week if I need something I go to Vitamin Cottage, where I'll go this afternoon or tomorrow (because we waited for 3 years for them to open here) or Kroger. I have often found that Whole Foods brand of things are cheaper than Walmart prices for the same things, sometimes higher, depends upon what you buy. We also do some grocery shopping at Costco. If I had to choose between Walmart and Target, Target would win. Hands down.
I do like the Central Market for picking up Gourmet foods, but their price scale is way different than standard HEB. I need the grocery stores that cater to the po' folks.
They've got regular HEB stuff, too, though. I live close to Central Market and shop there with some regularity, you see.
Not as often as I used to, now the SuperTarget opened, but still...I get in there once every week or two.
Wow! $2.50 is on sale for milk?! Yikes! I can usually get milk for $1 a half-gallon or occasionally $1.66 a gallon.
I don't shop super walmart, here in ohio, their produce isn't very nice and I don't like that there's no meat counter or loss-leaders
Meijer, OTOH, matches sale prices of all the local stores, so I usually take my Kroger ad and buy at their prices without a stupid card that says I can buy at their price! (which I basically refuse to get)
They're trying to put in a Super Wal-Mart up here. I'd probably shop there occasionally as it will be 10 minutes as opposed to 25 minutes. I usually shop while my mom watches the kids, and there's a Meijer 5 minutes from their home. So, I'll still do the majority of my shopping at Meijer.
At this moment, Dawn, I regret to report $2.50 is dirt cheap for a gallon of milk around these parts.
It's beyond cheap for milk here, too. But milk doesn't go "on sale" here either. I don't know that I've ever seen milk on sale. Lots of other dairy products, but not milk.
We have three major grocery stores, each with their own strong points. Wegman's is the store that has a gorgeous produce department with a big stone hearth in the center in which they really do bake their breads daily, seemingly round the clock. There's always some kind of bread, warm from the oven. Their seafood is excellent as well and they have a decent organic and whole foods section, too. As for international products, they can't be beat. And they cost more than another store in town. Their specials equal the other two stores regular prices, more often than not.
Weis is a locally owned chain rapidly spreading across PA and surrounding states and has the best prices on staples, almost always, and has, in the last year or so, become very competitive with their "B1G1F" specials, etc.
Giant is another East-Coast chain, and is by far the one with the better bargains. They have an excellent produce section, as well, and their meat is decent.
And that's it for a small city in the middle of nowhere. There's a SuperWalmart 25 miles away, and there are various meat shops and produce suppliers and a farmers market in another direction 25 miles away.
We shop at Giant, most of the time, unless Weis tempts us with specials. They are closest to us by far, but Jason hates shopping there. And he's the shopper...
Of course, his favorite place to shop is the Most Expensive Wegmans
It's a jungle out there when you're food shoppin'!
me<><
I believe I've heard of Wegman's....your description is tickling my memory. Seems as if there was a story about fancy-schmancy grocery stores in Time magazine several years ago.
And IIRC Giant was where I shopped when Don and I lived briefly in Burlington, Vermont back in early '74.
You know what I most hated trying to find? A loaf of bread I liked. Took me three or four tries before I found It.
Interesting -- around here, Wegmans is the most reasonable of the name-brand stores. Their meat beats everyone else's, their house brands are competitive and higher quality than most, and even their national-brand packaged goods are usually priced better than the competition. Their produce is not cheap, but they have better specials. You can always find one variety of summer fruit on special for $.99/lb any week of the summer, whereas you never see it at any of the other stores (except Walmart, where the peaches taste like potatoes) for under $1.59, usually closer to $2. The thing Wegmans will "get" you on is their in-store stuff -- the fresh-baked bread, specialty foods, etc. But if you stay away from that stuff, you usually win at Wegmans.
Except, of course, as compared to Walmart. So what I generally do is shop at Walmart (five minutes away) once a week for the basic stuff that doesn't vary as much in quality from store to store or brand to brand, and at Wegmans (15 minutes away) once a week for meat, produce, and other things I'm fussier about. If I watch the specials at Wegmans and pack the freezer with meat on special, I think I do nearly as well as Walmart prices, for way, WAY better quality. But I couldn't do as well if I bought everything at Wegmans. I survived doing that before Walmart came, but I have definitely noticed the savings since. As far as the other stores around here -- Tops, Quality, or Giant Eagle (not to be confused with Cindy's Giant), based out of W. NY or W. PA -- I resist darkening their doors except in absolute emergency, since every single item is priced noticeably higher than Wegmans, and meat and produce significantly so. I've gone into one of those places for something I thought I "really needed" but didn't have time to go somewhere less convenient, and been so appalled at the price that I walked out deciding I didn't need it that badly after all.
Anne, Wegmans is really a beautiful place to shop (and consistently places in the top 5 of Fortune magazine's Best Places to Work in America, which is another reason I like to patronize them), and has very professional behavior among their employees, but I don't notice that I'm paying more for those amenities than I pay at less pleasant supermarkets. I wonder if it is because Cindy is farther from Wegmans central distribution center (in Rochester, NY) than we are? Or are Weis and Giant (both of which I'm familiar with because they're local to my mom) just more reasonable than the highway robber regional chains we have around here?
Or it's always possible I'm misremembering, and Wegman's wasn't the featured upscale grocery store in the Time article at all.
Not a possibility to be rejected out-of-hand.
No, I wouldn't be surprised if Wegmans was one of the featured markets -- they were one of the first to have the glitz and glamor and the massive square footage as part of the canned bean buying experience.
All I meant was that in my experience, contrary to Cindy's, I don't pay extra for it. I remember a story told me by a friend when I lived in Rochester (Wegmans World Headquarters, dontcha know) that Wegmans carries underwear (I don't think they do anymore, this was about 15 years back) because one time the head of the company was travelling and found himself without sufficient packed underwear, and thought to himself that in HIS store, they were going to carry underwear (they were also one of the first 24 hour markets) so that people wouldn't get into that fix. Wegmans was the first supermarket I ever heard of that carried significant stuff other than food, disposable household goods, and the usual "grocery store" stuff -- now it's commonoplace. It couldn't have been more than 13 years ago that I moved to Erie, and Wegmans was just building their first store outside NY here and I was describing to a new Erie friend what Wegmans was like, and describing some of the merchandise they carried, and she said, "Oh, so it's not a grocery store?" This was stuff most of us now consider fairly ordinary for a large supermarket -- I think it was Rubbermaid storage boxes or something like that. They were a trendsetter, at least in their region.
Anyhow, that's a lot of blather. I just think it's interesting how in a fairly short space of time, a few major players, such as Wegmans here and others in other regions have really changed our notion of what supermarkets look like. Maybe that's the key -- Walmart is going to nail stores that "just sell food" and don't manage to keep their prices under control, but a company that manages to deliver both an "experience" and prices that aren't far out of line with Walmart's will hold its own. That's why I'm not shedding a lot of tears over the nearby market that is said to be imperiled by the newest Walmart -- it's not as pleasant nor as tidy as it might be, the staff isn't required to keep their minds on the customers rather than their personal lives, and it's relatively overpriced.
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