18. August 2009 by admin.

My Kroger hasn’t lived up to my expectations over the years; tainted by significantly higher prices than Walmart and somewhat higher prices on a lot of other goods that can be had at places like Food Lion, I have decided to change the routine for a bit - maybe longer. Read the rest of this entry »

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28. April 2009 by Matt.

I’ve written several articles here and on MySpace regarding product that has expired, yet is still on the shelves for purchase. I had a rather bad experience Sunday at our local K-mart located on Hershberger Road - 24012.

Kroger is a store I frequent for groceries, in spite of the fact that they are typically more expensive than say Wal-Mart.  I like their selection, ease of getting in and out, and the proximity.  Kroger has cleaned up it’s act quite a bit.  I’m not sure if it was due to the several emails from me, a survey, or what.  K-mart on the other hand is not impressing me at all.

K-mart on the other hand, had many expired snack chips.  I think the only brand not exclusively out of date was Doritos and even those had one from March and another from February.  I finally bought some off-brand cheese puffs dated to expire in early May.  They were just as good as the name brand, btw.

My point in writing all of this is to alert buyers that they might be buying expired product and to be wise and sharp about how to keep it top of mind.

Consider that K-mart is NOT a grocery store, so buying from them should raise your awareness simply because they do not have the traffic for grocery type items as a grocery store would.  Plus, the bags of chips are usually too big to steal, so the locals aren’t as likely to try to walk out with them.  They may try to eat them while purusing the store, however.

Chips are especially bad when running close to or beyond the date of expiration.  Unless you eat your chips fairly quickly, in a day or two, I would not buy chips within 5 days of expiration if you expect quality.  Also, examine the bags for punctures and/or tears.

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17. April 2008 by Matt.

Well, the category would better represent this entry if it read “Grocery Shopping”. We typically shop the Kroger store on Rutgers due to selection and proximity. That might have to change unless some of their newly formed habits change soon.

Over the course of many months, we’ve noticed a problem where certain items had already expired or, at least, had a really old manufacture date - close to a year in some cases. The thinking here is they are buying a lot ahead - maybe even over buying - and they’re not unloading (it isn’t being purchased) quickly enough and/or the stockers are not doing a very good job at rotating the products.

The other problem is bread. The last couple times I’ve been there, the bread choice was very low. In fact, the time before last when I was there, they announced a bread delivery at the back door over the intercom. Of course, this didn’t do me any good, as it would probably be the next day before they would have it unloaded.

Yesterday wasn’t much different. They didn’t have EITHER of the breads we normally buy! We like the small-slice bread they offer, but they were totally out of it. Probably another item they spuriously decided to discontinue, like the chocolate covered cashews.

Any of the other breads that were basically small in slice are all chocked full of crap like high fructose corn syrup or something else you might not want to consume in high amounts. So, I buy no bread.

Hopefully the issue is an endemic one. Our next shopping experience will be at the Kroger at Towers. I’ve been there before and they seem to be a lot better in their selection and organization than the one on Rutgers. The one at Towers shopping center is about the same distance from us as Rutgers, so travel isn’t an issue. We’ll see what comes of this little excursion.

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6. October 2007 by Matt.

Ok. So every grocery store has it’s ups and downs. We were prompted to check out Food Lion recently due to a few issues with our shopping experience with the local Kroger on Rutgers (next to Lowe’s). The problem at Kroger was the continuing decline of the quality/freshness of produce available among other things, i.e. Half and Half that is FROZEN on in the display. I don’t know about you, but I never wanted to buy my milk product frozen - especially half and half, because it separates the cream from the milk fairly badly and is difficult to reconstitute.

To mix it up a bit and try out Kroger’s competition, we traveled over to Food Lion on Hollins Road. It was a bit more out of the way and traffic is pretty intense right where the store is situated. Getting there wasn’t all that bad, it really didn’t take that much longer, and we got in and out of the store and the parking lot to get back home in much the same time had we shopped our usual Kroger.

We didn’t have produce on the list, but were impressed with the apparent quality of what was available on display. The prices were not so much different I would break my neck to go there to save that .10, but they had a reasonable selection for what we went for and I was also quite impressed, though didn’t buy from this section, with the bread and cake area. We failed to find an organic section like Kroger has been beefing up over the past year or so, but will look into that on our next visit.

The checkout clerk, according to the receipt, named Christina, was less than cheery or responsive to my attempts to provide friendly discourse. So, I let her be and concentrated on getting my groceries checked and waited for the total. We purchased a variety of things, including Tostitos restaurant style for $3.49, Minute Maid - no pulp orange juice with the MVP card for $2.99, and 12 pack Diet Coke with MVP at $3.79!

Yes, you have to have an MVP card, much like the Kroger Plus card in order to reap the savings they’ve setup. Granted, we only saved $5.47 due to our MVP card on a purchased of $68.89 (after savings). Not a bad shopping experience at all. BTW, we did purchase bananas, but I didn’t include those earlier when talking about produce, because Kroger’s bananas always look pretty good anyway.

Pros: Decent selection, nice looking produce, fair prices.

Cons: Tight aisles (especially toward the back near the meat section), unfriendly cashier.

Recommend: Yes!

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