We split most grocery shopping in our household between Fred Meyer and Costco (bulk items).

A few times we’ve patronized Wal-mart grocery, particularly when they have the good deals on specific produce like tomatoes. The Wal-mart located near the South Hill mall in Puyallup was the busiest Wal-marts in the state according to one of our clients who works as a manager there. It seems with this success Wal-mart got a bit greedy and decided to build a store within 10 miles of that location — silly for a store as large as Wal-mart — further south on Meridian a few blocks from the Fred Meyer where we shop and a mile or so from a dying Albertson’s. My favorite bakery french bread is Albertson’s, it’s kind of sad to see their fall.

Two Wal-mart stores could be worse than one — for Wal-mart
The new Wal-mart store which is almost the same distance as the other store from our home is nice, but now we notice neither Wal-mart in Puyallup is as busy as the one was before. I wonder how many of the South Hill Wal-Mart customers are now dividing their time between the two stores. With two stores are they doing twice the amount of shopping? Unlikely. I’ve heard from some other Wal-mart employees — again pure speculation and not checked — who work at the new store that Wal-mart wishes they wouldn’t have built the new store. I wonder if unwise expansion like this will become Wal-mart’s achille’s heel.

What Wal-Mart didn’t seem to count on — at least grocery-wise — is pictured in this post: Winco is the new super savings game in our area. Winco [note: their domain is wincofoods.com not their name] has very competitive grocery prices, just like Wal-mart’s claim to fame, based on our first trip there and unlike Fred Meyer and Costco, Winco Foods is 24 hours like Wal-mart.

Winco beats Fred Meyer on a lot of things and clearly challenges Wal-Mart grocery. We didn’t see any of those self-service checkout lines where you scan and bag your own groceries. Instead, Winco has checkers and they make you bag all your own groceries.

We don’t mind bagging our own groceries although it still seems like double work. When is a major grocery chain going to use technology to allows us to bag our groceries as we shop and then avoid the whole: take them out, scan them, put them on the conveyor, then put them in bags? I was hoping RFID would help but for whatever reason, that’s not here yet.

We like Fred Meyer because it seems more warm than the warehouse feel of Wal-mart. As for groceries, the deli, produce and butcher section is higher quality than Wal-mart. Winco was bright and everything was new and it didn’t feel as warehouse-like as Wal-mart although the store didn’t have the warmth as Fred Meyer. If we want bulk and good prices, we go to Costco, not Fred Meyer. We might be splitting more of our dry storage and staple purchases between Winco and Fred Meyer, though. Wal-mart? They should have stayed with one busy store versus two semi-busy stores.

The closest grocery store to us is Safeway (less than 1 mile from home) and the most expensive of the stores mentioned and don’t offer a rewards program with money back like Fred Meyer or Costco. They will bag everything for you and even take it out to your car if you like, but the money saved on the grocery bill is worth the gas to drive up on the hill. Also, I don’t think their meat is as good as Fred Meyer. Finally, the rewards check you receive periodically is nice.

How do you split up your grocery shopping?
Do you do your grocery shoppinp primarily at one store? Split it between stores like us based on what you’re buying? Do you prefer a single one stop shop like Wal-Mart and Fred Meyers or would you rather do your shopping at stores based on what yuo’re buying (groceries at one store, electronics at another, clothes at another)?

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