海角大神

Why do you shop at your preferred grocery store?

Think about it for a minute. What reasons do you have for shopping at one store over another? Is it purely the prices? What about the location 鈥� is it because it鈥檚 close to your home? Cleanliness (like a while back)? Store organization? Convenience? Shopper rewards programs? How they treat their employees? How their company behaves? Availability of certain specific goods? Cost to get in the door (a la Costco and Sam鈥檚 Club and B.J.鈥檚)?

All of these (and more) are factors when you choose where to shop. Some stores are going to excel in one area or another and do poorly in other areas. A store that excels on prices will often tank in other areas, like employee treatment (like Wal-Mart). A store that excels on prices and employee treatment fails on cost of admission and organization (like Costco). Experiences in some of these areas will also vary from place to place.

My choice of store centers around a handful of factors. At minimum, a store has to have a certain level of cleanliness or I鈥檒l turn around and walk out.

I won鈥檛 bother to go more than about three miles farther than the nearest grocery store to shop, but that rule includes Hy-Vee, Wal-Mart Supercenter, Aldi, Fareway, Dahl鈥檚, Sam鈥檚 Club, Super Target, and Cub Foods, so there鈥檚 plenty of choice in that range.

I tend to prefer stores where it鈥檚 easy to find what I want 鈥� the more bad experiences I have wandering around trying to find something, the less likely I am to come back, even if the prices are great. After that, prices rule, in my book.

I鈥檓 not too worried about the shopper鈥檚 reward policies or their corporate behavior, and the cost of entry issue mostly comes down to 鈥渄o I save money over the long run.鈥�

What am I left with? I have a handful of stores I prefer to shop at (topped by Fareway) and another handful I鈥檒l stop at for specific sales or specific items.

That鈥檚 great and all, but why am I writing about this?

First of all, the sticker price is rarely the bottom line. Almost always, if I strictly chase the absolute lowest price on an item, I end up costing myself more because of the additional costs.

For example, I won鈥檛 drive an extra ten miles (and spend that extra time) to save an extra dollar. The automobile wear-and-tear and maintenance costs will eat the savings and you鈥檒l have spent a chunk of an hour chasing that imaginary dollar. I鈥檒l happily spend an extra dollar at a different store to save me that twenty minutes and the wear on the car.

Second, a bit of planning trumps most of the other factors. Be patient on your staples, for example, and don鈥檛 be afraid to buy a lot of them when the right price comes along. This requires some planning, of course, but it allows you to buy the items you need from locations that are acceptable for you, ethically or otherwise.

An example: I would have to drive significant extra mileage to hit a CVS (around here, DrugTown is the most common drugstore chain) in order to take advantage of their bargains. What I鈥檝e learned, though, is that patience, planning, and coupon use often trumps their bargains elsewhere, which enables me to not have to spend time and money traveling to CVS to get a 鈥渂argain.鈥�

So what鈥檚 the best solution?

For me, it鈥檚 simply a matter of knowing and using a small handful of local stores, being patient, and hitting the good sales there hard.

Knowing two or three local stores makes them convenient and increases my ability to find things in those stores, making shopping trips faster (and time is money).

It also allows me to narrow my searches for sales. I only really pay attention to a few different grocery store flyers when planning my grocery shopping. I pay attention to coupons, but only in the sense of 鈥渢his is a coupon for a staple, let鈥檚 clip it and see if it eventually matches a store sale.鈥� This attitude saves a ton of time.

In a nutshell, patience trumps 鈥渟uper鈥� bargains for me in that it saves me time and allows me to be choosy about where I shop so I can take advantage of the other aspects of grocery shopping (like convenience and being able to easily find items).

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