if i ever hear someone call whole foods 'whole paycheck' again...
i swear i'll take my $0.99 reusable shopping bag and throttle them.
or, how my obsession with food shopping has caused me to understand the weird weird truth: "real food is actually cheaper at whole foods"
So recently, i've been spending a lot of time thinking about how much money we spend on stuff and where and is it necessary and how can we maintain the same level of comfort while perhaps shaving a few pennies off the monthly bills. i'm assuming a lot of folks i know are doing the same sort of things because of the whole shitty economy, winter coming up, various states of employment and what not.
well, i'm an extreme sort of person when it comes to these things and i also have only 1 braincell to rub around inside my skull these days so instead of trying to keep everything in my head i started this nifty excel spreadsheet. I spent some time every weekend planning out our weeks meals, trying to re-use leftovers or at least use them as lunches, y'know trying to stretch our food dollars while still eating like foodies, or at least middle class foodies (ie no truffle oil and saffron...) so i type up all of the food shopping receipts and break up the items into different categories, i break down our per meal cost per day and i have an average. it's actually pretty cool.
after some discussions with josh it occured to me that i may want to try shopping at various stores (i exclusively shop for food at whole foods during the week with a roughly monthly/6 weekly trip to sam's club for various things like coffee (starbucks free trade) some meats, avacados are super cheap there, paper towels and zippie bags, etc. i don't buy chicken anywhere but the whole foods because i know just enough about how horribly chickens are treated and i can't tolerate buying purdue. i know that if i did a little research, i wouldn't be able to eat other meats from sam's club, but um, i'm purposefully not doing that.
anyway, this week i was perusing the weekly circulars for the various stores around here, shaw's, stop 'n shop, and i looked up eastside marketplace online, and i checked out whole foods (unbeknownst to josh and i'm sure some other folks, they actually do have weekly sales... anyway) today i decided to see what it was like shopping for the sales at lots of places, trying to get the things we need for as little as possible. i popped myself in the car around 10am, hit the trip recorder on my odometer and went first to shaw's in attleboro.
there are many things i find annoying about shaw's. people look at you like you're crazy for having your own bags, the self checkout doesn't let you use them because it can't tolerate the extra weight on the little weigher thing and it only lets you skip bagging so many items. i needed the helper person 3 times, it was annoying. i bought the stuff i came for on sale and then i went and looked at 3 items that we buy every week, stonyfield farms yogurt in the large container, stonyfield farms yobaby (which is crack for clara) and 2lb bags of onions. for shaw's the price was insane! on sale 2lbs of onions in a bag was 1.50 it's normally $2.00, the large yogurt was 4.79, and clara's yogurt was 4.69. at the WF, the same items are 1.29 (onions) 3.79 (large yogurt), and 3.69 or 3.79 depending on whether we get the yogurt with the cereal or not. when i got through the checkout i had spent way more than i had anticipated and i was annnnnnooooooooooooooyyyyyed. actually, i felt a little ill, but i kept on.
the next stop on my list was east side market place, so off i go there for ground lamb (i got a great recipe for stuffed eggplant from a turkish woman who comes to my open knit) apples, and milk (which was 0.10 less on sale than WF normally) checked out my "staples" 2lbs of onions 1.49, large yogurt 4.49, clara yogurt 4.49. insane! also, the aisles there are so narror that two carts and one browser can't get through at once and again with the crazy concept of bringing your bags.
so i ended up at the whole foods on butler to pick up the things i needed there, boneless skinless chicken on sale, the aforementioned yogurts, and something else, i forget. the end result of my 1.5 hour shopping trip is 14 miles on my car, way way more money spent than I would have believed and i had so many lists that i ended up forgetting to get eggplants (for the turkish recipe), tomatoes and bananas for clara.
so i ended up having to go back to the WF (this time the one i normally go to on N. Main) for the things i forgot and also for guinness, because after all that, i need beer!
i am perplexed as to why people think WF is so much more expensive than other grocery stores. perhaps they are buying cheetos? perhaps they aren't trying to shop natural/organic? Perhaps everything is so beautiful that you buy way more than you should and you end up spending more money because of it? i always go with a list, i shop my list and i leave. if i end up straying from my list, yes, it is possible to spend way way too much money. there are things i definitely don't get there, like paper towels and toilet paper, cause that stuff is insanely expensive. but if you are going for just food, things that you have to cook for yourself, raw ingredients, you are far better off going to my whole foods than my shaw's, or my eastside marketplace. I feel vindicated in many ways for my insistence on shopping there because the food is better now i know it's cheaper too.
But i'm curious, why is it so much cheaper there for the things that I eat? how come they can charge 1.29 for a 2lb bag of onions and shaw's can't? is it their commitment to buying local as much as possible, does it cut down on delivery cost and spoilage? do they just make so much money off of hippie chips that they can justify charging less of a margin on "real" food? and don't even get me started on buying their bulk foods!!! i mean their oatmeal is so cheap! and it's frankly better than their packaged variety, it tastes so much better.
so while it was in some ways a failed experiment in that i spent more than i would have had i just gone to the WF in the first place, at least now i know that when i go and shop there I am actually getting a pretty good deal, especially on things we can't live without. and i don't get the comments from josh about how expensive it is. yay.
or, how my obsession with food shopping has caused me to understand the weird weird truth: "real food is actually cheaper at whole foods"
So recently, i've been spending a lot of time thinking about how much money we spend on stuff and where and is it necessary and how can we maintain the same level of comfort while perhaps shaving a few pennies off the monthly bills. i'm assuming a lot of folks i know are doing the same sort of things because of the whole shitty economy, winter coming up, various states of employment and what not.
well, i'm an extreme sort of person when it comes to these things and i also have only 1 braincell to rub around inside my skull these days so instead of trying to keep everything in my head i started this nifty excel spreadsheet. I spent some time every weekend planning out our weeks meals, trying to re-use leftovers or at least use them as lunches, y'know trying to stretch our food dollars while still eating like foodies, or at least middle class foodies (ie no truffle oil and saffron...) so i type up all of the food shopping receipts and break up the items into different categories, i break down our per meal cost per day and i have an average. it's actually pretty cool.
after some discussions with josh it occured to me that i may want to try shopping at various stores (i exclusively shop for food at whole foods during the week with a roughly monthly/6 weekly trip to sam's club for various things like coffee (starbucks free trade) some meats, avacados are super cheap there, paper towels and zippie bags, etc. i don't buy chicken anywhere but the whole foods because i know just enough about how horribly chickens are treated and i can't tolerate buying purdue. i know that if i did a little research, i wouldn't be able to eat other meats from sam's club, but um, i'm purposefully not doing that.
anyway, this week i was perusing the weekly circulars for the various stores around here, shaw's, stop 'n shop, and i looked up eastside marketplace online, and i checked out whole foods (unbeknownst to josh and i'm sure some other folks, they actually do have weekly sales... anyway) today i decided to see what it was like shopping for the sales at lots of places, trying to get the things we need for as little as possible. i popped myself in the car around 10am, hit the trip recorder on my odometer and went first to shaw's in attleboro.
there are many things i find annoying about shaw's. people look at you like you're crazy for having your own bags, the self checkout doesn't let you use them because it can't tolerate the extra weight on the little weigher thing and it only lets you skip bagging so many items. i needed the helper person 3 times, it was annoying. i bought the stuff i came for on sale and then i went and looked at 3 items that we buy every week, stonyfield farms yogurt in the large container, stonyfield farms yobaby (which is crack for clara) and 2lb bags of onions. for shaw's the price was insane! on sale 2lbs of onions in a bag was 1.50 it's normally $2.00, the large yogurt was 4.79, and clara's yogurt was 4.69. at the WF, the same items are 1.29 (onions) 3.79 (large yogurt), and 3.69 or 3.79 depending on whether we get the yogurt with the cereal or not. when i got through the checkout i had spent way more than i had anticipated and i was annnnnnooooooooooooooyyyyyed. actually, i felt a little ill, but i kept on.
the next stop on my list was east side market place, so off i go there for ground lamb (i got a great recipe for stuffed eggplant from a turkish woman who comes to my open knit) apples, and milk (which was 0.10 less on sale than WF normally) checked out my "staples" 2lbs of onions 1.49, large yogurt 4.49, clara yogurt 4.49. insane! also, the aisles there are so narror that two carts and one browser can't get through at once and again with the crazy concept of bringing your bags.
so i ended up at the whole foods on butler to pick up the things i needed there, boneless skinless chicken on sale, the aforementioned yogurts, and something else, i forget. the end result of my 1.5 hour shopping trip is 14 miles on my car, way way more money spent than I would have believed and i had so many lists that i ended up forgetting to get eggplants (for the turkish recipe), tomatoes and bananas for clara.
so i ended up having to go back to the WF (this time the one i normally go to on N. Main) for the things i forgot and also for guinness, because after all that, i need beer!
i am perplexed as to why people think WF is so much more expensive than other grocery stores. perhaps they are buying cheetos? perhaps they aren't trying to shop natural/organic? Perhaps everything is so beautiful that you buy way more than you should and you end up spending more money because of it? i always go with a list, i shop my list and i leave. if i end up straying from my list, yes, it is possible to spend way way too much money. there are things i definitely don't get there, like paper towels and toilet paper, cause that stuff is insanely expensive. but if you are going for just food, things that you have to cook for yourself, raw ingredients, you are far better off going to my whole foods than my shaw's, or my eastside marketplace. I feel vindicated in many ways for my insistence on shopping there because the food is better now i know it's cheaper too.
But i'm curious, why is it so much cheaper there for the things that I eat? how come they can charge 1.29 for a 2lb bag of onions and shaw's can't? is it their commitment to buying local as much as possible, does it cut down on delivery cost and spoilage? do they just make so much money off of hippie chips that they can justify charging less of a margin on "real" food? and don't even get me started on buying their bulk foods!!! i mean their oatmeal is so cheap! and it's frankly better than their packaged variety, it tastes so much better.
so while it was in some ways a failed experiment in that i spent more than i would have had i just gone to the WF in the first place, at least now i know that when i go and shop there I am actually getting a pretty good deal, especially on things we can't live without. and i don't get the comments from josh about how expensive it is. yay.