Grocery Tip #3

My local neighborhood grocery store went out of business on the 4th of July and I have been trying different stores trying to find my new "home" store.  I went to two different Shoppers Food Warehouses, an International store down the road, a Food Lion and a Safeway.  None felt like "home.

I went recently to Giant Foods, however, and was pretty blown away. The first thing of note was that hey have an optional hand-carried scanner that can you can take with you in the grocery store.  You grab some bags, your "wand" and head out.

As you find things you want, you scan them into the device and then put them in your grocery bag.  If you have produce or salad bar, there are scales everywhere.  You press a button to indicate which item you are buying and it prints out a label with bar code which you can scan and then stick on the item.  So entirely cool!

Down side:  It can be a little cumbersome and it can feel a little time consuming as you weigh produce or scan and bag as you go.

Up side: Because you are really taking your time and thinking about each purchase, you are really considering if you want the item or not.  Also, you get a running total as you go, which makes you completely aware of how it's adding up.  Best part?  Sail right through the check-out (self checkout) because you just point your scanner at a barcode, it reads the info from your handheld device, you pay and leave.  The scanning and bagging's already done!  Love it.

I ordinarily spend over $200 at the grocery store.  (I know - that sounds so bad but healthy isn't cheap!!!)  But at Giant I spent only $129 and got most of what I needed, without a bunch of stuff I didn't need!  If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.

Giant Foods had a great variety of everything I was looking for.  There were a lot of organics mixed in with everything else as well as an entire long natural, whole foods and/or organic aisle.  I was pretty impressed.

They also have the peapod service where you can order online and get the groceries delivered right to your door.  I've done that in the past - their produce was always very fresh and good (compared to Safeway delivery.  I swear Safeway hand picked everything that was about to go bad or that the public wouldn't buy and stuffed it into the delivery orders.  Ack!)

So if I was rating with a star system, 1 star being "bad" and 5 stars being "great," Giant would get 4.5 stars from me.  It's VERY consumer-friendly, affordable (wait, there are no groceries that are affordable these days), good quality and the store was impeccably clean.  Yay Giant!