Shop Local or Supermarkets?

For most of our family's food and household items, I can only shop in local stores. There are no local stores that offer an extensive selection of grocery items in our area. For fresh produce, especially vegetables, I consciously choose to buy from smaller and local sellers rather than from supermarkets. By buying products from local sellers, I know that I am helping an individual entrepreneur make a living. The money they earn funds the education of their children and feeds their family.

 

It depends on where you live. A few months I wrote some articles for a site which sold organic groceries. They claimed [I didn't do any price checking] that they sold their products at the same price you'd buy them elsewhere. For someone who can use such a service it would not only be convenient but if you had to drive to town to do your shopping, you'd do save some cash on gas.

For people like me who live in small towns, we buy groceries from Ma and Pa shops because they are cheaper. And then there's the local market . . .

 

It’s the latest TV advertising campaign for Co-operative food shops, extolling the virtues of doing your shopping at local stores... preferably the Co-op’s local stores.

On the face of it, this is a plea to turn the retail clock back several decades, to a time when we shopped more regularly, more locally and bought only for our immediate needs.

 

I also live in the UK, and in a very small countryside town. There are two small express stores which are Tesco and the Co-Op and about two small local convenience stores. Weirdly enough, one of the smaller local stores is actually quite pricey and I have found out-of-date stock in there before such as a milkshake and food. When I am in the town centre I usually go to the Co-Op as they are more competitively priced than Tesco.

For meat, I usually shop at the local family butchers, which is priced very good and the quality of the meat is outstanding.

 

I find that Tescos offer quite competitive prices in the area when I live, as there is a large Tesco Extra just down my road, due to the clubcard points as well as most of the time we get coupons and vouchers that gives you money off if you spend over a certain amount. Also, the current fuel save is actually quite good, as every time I go to fuel my car, there is at least 4p off per liter, which puts the petrol prices way lower than any other filling station. But I have to say the meat sold at Tescos are very highly priced and I tend to go to locally sourced butchers that offer higher quality meats for a much more reasonable price, and my butchers gives me a 5-10% discount as I have been going there for many years now.

 

I get my groceries wherever the quality and prices of products are good. My favourite place to shop are local Farmer's markets, as I can buy fresh, organic produce there, along with jams, nuts, pastries, and many other delicious home made foods. Also, at the end of the day, I can often get bargains, as many stallholders just want to get rid of their left-over fruit and vegetables before they go home.

 

I moved a couple years ago from an area that had a lot of high end supermarkets, some were local chains plus we had the national chains like Whole Foods, as well as a Trader Joe's. Of course during my several years living there, my average grocery bill each week more than doubled because I was buying all kinds of exotic and expensive ingredients, and trying out a bunch of recipes. It wasn't until I moved to my current location, which has mainly discount grocery stores, that I learned to start shopping more efficiently again - like I did when I was in my early 20's and money was much tighter. Now it drives me nuts if I am in one of the big chain grocery stores and I need to buy something, but I know I could have gotten it way cheaper at the discount grocer instead.

It took me a little while though to adjust to the more stripped down selection that the discount grocery stores had. I had to go back to cooking more basic stuff. But now I feel like I got my grocery shopping more under control these days.

I prefer shopping locally, just because I hate driving long distances with fresh food in the car, especially in summer. But I will go a little further if there is a store that's open 24 hours, because I really prefer shopping late at night when no one is around.

I've never had groceries delivered to me (nobody in our area does it), but there was a period of time I couldn't drive and had cooked food delivered to me quite often. If I was out of groceries and my family/friends weren't going to be taking me to the store for a few more days (I lived an hour from them), then ordering delivery was the next best thing. A few dollars for a tip is a lot cheaper than hiring a taxi driver to take me to and from the store, and you have to tip them too anyhow. I would just order a lot of food, stuff I knew would be fine for a few days in the fridge. Plus I would order a few two liters of soda too, if they sold it. Dominoes was one of my favorites to do this with. I would order a few of their sandwiches, and a couple two liters every few days.