West Virginia Sucks

[Al B. Sure!]

Holy crap that mesquite grilled chicken with tomatoes and green pepper on a whole wheat wrap is ****ing delicious.

The boneless chicken breasts were $1.99/lb
The marinade was 2 bucks but I really could have used 1/3rd of the bottle. I wasted a lot of marinade.
The pepper and tomato was negligible in cost.
The wraps are 6 for $2


Yes, I really have a ****ty diet

[Egbert]

I bought some of their Gwaltney brand pork sausage as it was $1 a pound but found the stuff to be to be made entirely of the pork equivalent to pink slime. We're talking highly, highly processed and treated garbage which is really cheap but not worth eating. Their chicken is actually pretty good, they have really low prices on canned foods, watch out for their other meats (which are often cut razor thin) and their bread was just junk (more air bubbles than wonder bread).

Good points

I find I can eat well with fresh vegetables, fruits, salads, eggs, milk and the cheaper cuts of fresh meat as the basis of my diet. I don't each so much of the processed foods. I generally buy round steak as I find it just as good as the expensive cuts. (I leave the expensive cuts for those with more discerning taste buds). I find I can eat well economically {ie without needless expense} and I think the above diet of fresh foods is better for me than highly processed junk and greasy take-aways.

[Dinner]

There's a store around here called Price Right that sells stuff for really cheap. For instance I once saw vodka there that came in a half gallon milk jug.

Is it Price Rite? I looked it up and there seemed to be some good deals but others which weren't all that good. For instance their "hot buys" showed bone in chicken breast for $0.99 per pound which is a decent every day price but Food 4 Less normally sells it around here for $0.79 a pound while their eggs were $1.99 a dozen where as if I shop around I can find the same large AA eggs for $0.99. Their ham and whole pork shoulder prices did indeed look very low in price though so maybe it is just regional price differences.

I would like to see more non union stores like that around here though as every bit of extra competition lowers prices. Unless they have a sale I tend to avoid the big union chains (Vons/Safeway, Ralphs, Albertson's) simply because their prices suck. The big problem I have with the really cheap places like Sav-A-Lot or probably Price Rite is their meat tends to always be USDA select or lower where as I tend to want USDA Choice or Prime if I can find it. Specialty butcher shops always stock Choice and Prime rated meats but they cost a lot more and that means Costco and sometimes Fresh & Easy are really though only places which consistently stock Choice or Prime meat at reasonable prices. I love Trader Joe's and Bone's for organic stuff but their meat (even the organic free range stuff they charge outrageous prices for) tends to normally be USDA Select.

[Al B. Sure!]

So Oerdin is now admitting that union labor hurts consumers. Good to know from a Democrat.

[Dinner]

If you're looking for the absolute lowest price possible then yes paying your employees a decent wage does drive up prices. That said, I tend to look more for quality and service rather than lowest price possible but I did give examples of how to get good value. The union super markets do carry a much larger selection compared to the discount stores and if they're having a sale then they can be worth going to (for instance Vons runs some good 10 items for $10 sales and right now they're selling the large AA eggs for $0.98 per dozen, they also have very good bread and cheese selections) but their meat and produce is generally more expensive than I can get else where.

For produce I go to small local ethnic markets like North Park Produce as their prices as normally at least half that of the big super markets; sure, their stuff is often smaller and you have to check carefully for bruises but the prices are so good it's worth the extra effort.

[regexcellent]

It could be Price Rite, but what it should be is Price Right, Everything Else Wrong. Seriously, never go there unless you're a broke crack whore. Think hard for a minute about what it means for vodka to come in a plastic jug.

[kentonio]

The other thing that's worth bearing in mind is that shopping for low prices is also much easier if you aren't living hand to mouth. If people don't have much variety of stores locally, then just getting to the places with the best prices can be out of reach/eat up any saving.

[Hauldren Collider]

How can it be hard when all you have to do is go to Wal Mart?

[kentonio]

Are you competing with Mitt Romney to see who can come across as most out of touch?

[Dinner]

The other thing that's worth bearing in mind is that shopping for low prices is also much easier if you aren't living hand to mouth. If people don't have much variety of stores locally, then just getting to the places with the best prices can be out of reach/eat up any saving.

This is so true. I mean let's say you find a really good sale on something like bacon (but it could be almost anything); if you have a bit of extra cash saved up then you can buy 10 packages of it and put it away in your extra freezer in your garage insuring that your family has all the bacon it needs for the next year or so all bought at a really low price. If you're living hand to mouth though then maybe you can only buy one or two packs which means in short order you need to buy more again but, sadly, the sale is over so you pay full price this time.

The extra money means when you do find a good price you can stock up thus getting a low price. Alternatively buying in bulk often is cheaper (in a per unit price) than buying one package but it costs a lot more money up front because you have to be able to buy a dozen at once. It takes money to get the bulk discount.

[Dinner]

How can it be hard when all you have to do is go to Wal Mart?

Walmart sells somethings very cheaply but a lot of what is sold at Walmart is just out and out garbage. We're talking the dregs. Clothes which fall apart after a single wash, fruit which goes bad in a day or two because it took three weeks to ship it from Africa, or Chinese toys with lead based paint or Chinese toothpaste mixed with plastics and pesticides. Walmart is ok for a quart of oil or things like stationary supplies but that's about it.

[Dinner]

Example from today's shopping trip: Ralph's had very large very perfectly colored avocados priced at $1.00 each, they were shipped in from Mexico or Chile I'm not sure which but they said "foreign grown". North Park Produce, a small local chain owned by immigrants and mostly catering to mid-eastern immigrants, eastern European immigrants, and east Asian immigrants was selling locally grown avocados for 5 for $1. Yes, the local ones were small because the biggest and best get bought up by the big packing companies while the small, off color, slightly bruised, or other wise not perfect fruit is what the small two store chains like North Park get to sell at a discount. I'd say North Park's avocados were about half the size of the other ones but I'm just going to peel the skin off and then mash it into guacamole so why does it matter? I still got a better deal.

[Zevico]

Wow. Welfare in the US is an unmitigated success.

[Elok]

Walmart is ok for a quart of oil or things like stationary supplies but that's about it.

If there were supplies that could move around on their own without transport, I don't know if we'd need to have retailers at all.

[regexcellent]

Are you competing with Mitt Romney to see who can come across as most out of touch?

Not only is it pretty easy to be more out of touch than Romney, but HC is also right in that Wal-Mart can be pretty consistently depended upon to have affordable prices, and it's located in lots of convenient places.