CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
1493
This post is called, “Galdangit! PICK YER UNITS AND STICK WITH `EM!”.
Two Dominos sugar packages side-by-side. One is slightly smaller (3.5 lb) as their “Golden” sugar and the other is 4 lb of their regular granulated.
Of course the store helpfully gives you price per mass so that you can more readily comparison shop, amiright?
Except they give one in $/lb and its neighbor in ¢/oz. Very helpful. In this case it’s apparent just on its face that the regular sugar is the cheaper, but they’ve got other instances in the store where the cousins are more different in size, and the arithmetic doesn’t just jump out at me.
Japanese supermarkets and other such stores have ZERO price per unit tags on the shelves for packaged foods. The ONLY foods which are priced per unit are produce and meat/fish (and always per 100g, not per kg). I’d buy a package of chocolates and one package would say the package contained 15 pieces (and not say how many grams each piece was). Another brand’s package would say it contained 156g. While I wouldn’t say it was IMPOSSIBLE to figure out which package was the better deal, it was difficult enough that I would just give up and bought what I was in the mood to eat and try not to think about what was the better price. The Japanese system is clearly geared toward the food manufacturers getting the best deal, NOT the consumer. So I’m happy to have put that behind me.
So this is not so much about the market as it is about the patrons. A patron gets their cart from the parking lot, walks it into the store and stop and get the disinfectant and wipe down the cart. Even if they take their cart from the row inside then wipe, same thing. Damage, if any, already done!
I’ve only seen one store where the wipes are stationed before the carts (and you can’t get carts from the parking lot; it’s a small family-owned grocery).
New peeve (actually old, but hitting me a lot recently): Stores that discontinue what are (to me, anyway) staples. ShopRite has discontinued Diet Barq’s Root Beer (which is one of the few root beers without caffeine–the regular Barq’s has caffeine). They also seem to have discontinued Bob’s Red Mill TVP–at least I can’t find it in their app. And they don’t have most Patak’s curry pastes, just the “simmer sauces” which cost more and take up more space. Of course, even Patel Brothers doesn’t have the vindaloo paste any more–I had to settle for hot curry instead. (All ShopRite has is the mild curry.) Luckily I could also get soy granules at Patel’s, along with soy nuggets.
(ShopRite also discontinued Tattooed Chef frozen meals, as well as some of our favorites from other brands.)
At places like Dollar Tree, of course, things regularly disappear. They had canned mango for a while, but then it went away. Given that it costs about four times as much in the grocery, that’s probably it for canned mango for us. (I keep hoping I’ll find a stash in some Dollar Tree that I don’t visit regularly.)
It’s interesting that regular Barq’s has caffeine but the diet version doesn’t. Though there MAY be others, I personally can’t think of any other soft drinks like that.
I’m a bit sensitive to caffeine and try to avoid it after lunch. So when I’m in the mood for root beer, I drink A&W (diet) which like Barq’s, doesn’t have caffeine.
Sprecher Lo-cal root beer (45 cal per 16 ounces - it’s got honey in it) has no caffeine listed. It’s also really, really good. Hard to find here, but I’m persistent.
I, too, am irked when products I love are no longer stocked. With changing tastes, brand consolidation, and so on, I get it, albeit with sorrow, when Mr. Mustard, Cross and Blackwell Chow Chow piccalilli, Rose’s lime marmalade, currant jelly, etc. go away, but I simply do not understand why things that are being grown are no longer offered. I assume that a stalk of celery also had a celery root. I am not asking for a giant bin of them, but couldn’t a few be given as much space as cilantro or baby bok choy?
I loathe having to shop at several different stores now to get what one trip, maybe two, would yield. New brands come along and kick out the ‘tried and true’ ones I depended on. Gotta get with the times!
I shop at several stores, but at least two are ethnic groceries (if I can still use that term). I am not surprised that ShopRite (my main store) doesn’t have Maesri Curry Pastes or canned baby corn or papads. Costco is for OTC drugs and large cheap quantities (e.g., a case of individual cans of pineapple juice). Aldi is for small cheap quantities (e.g., cereal). Walmart is for stuff I can’t find elsewhere (e.g., Peter Pan Honey Roasted Peanut Butter, Close-Up cinnamon toothpaste) and some cheaper stuff. Dollar Tree ditto (Jumex liters, canned mango [until recently]).
Does stopping at the farm stand count as another store?
Mark loves it because he hates mint and it’s the only “mainstream” non-mint toothpaste (other than children’s flavors). Mint in toothpaste seems to be like pumpkin spice in everything in October.
