Ohio: The Alter-universe of Grocery Stores

After living in the west my entire life I have become accustomed to having several stores that not only have similar wide ranges of selection on products but very little difference in price overall. We have Safeway - a little pricey but good, Albertsons - generally known for being more expensive but has good 10 for 10 sales, King Suppers - the average man's grocery store and of course Wally world- but I have to specify here that until I moved out east I had never even realized that they had "normal" Wal-marts and that everyone wasn't a Super Walmart. I suppose I figured Walmart had some kind of complex about itself and just wanted to be called super. In Utah we had Smith's & Maceys which was hands down the best grocery store ever known to man. If they gave Oscars to grocery stores it would have had one every year for every category.

Enter Ohio: land of crazy grocery stores - Here is my review of each of the grocery stores.

Nothing seems to make sense here. There are so many different kinds of grocery store chains and each one appears to be somewhat oblivious to common sense shoppers and each other. Lets examine each of the grocery stores together. We will move from bottom of the grocery store food chain to the top.

Aldi's- great prices, probably because every item in this store is an "off" brand and so they can sell pretty super cheap. Its sort of funny to walk around this store because all the brands are close to sounding like the brand names they are mimicking. Instead of Stouffers you might find "struassers", instead of Pop Tarts, you get Pop Toasters. You get the idea. Also don't worry about ruining the environment here - they don't bag your groceries - they instead will drop all your items back into a cart for you and you can then put them in boxes yourself after checking out or walk the items to your car and unload them into your trunk. I also think they may only take check or cash.

Fishers: A little bit up the totum pole here. The selection is better however it seems the one I went into was arranged so crazily that I wasn't sure if i was in some kind of rat maze and the scientists were watching me with their tablets watching to see how long it would take me to find the chopped almonds and the Cinnamon which incidental - neither of these "baking items" were in a baking aisle or even the same aisle. The plus side of this grocery store is they have a "scratch and dent" section that allows you to buy cans and other food items including produce that is dented, bruised or otherwise not fantastic at super cheap prices. Its a great place to get some last minute produce that you plan on using pretty soon because the peppers aren't as crisp etc. Also this grocery store doesn't seem too expensive for everyday items.

Marcs: Very nearly a normal person's grocery store in price and selection. However this little gem is all together a weird sort of store. In order to get into the store you have to maneuver your cart, kids if applicable and other luggage such as diaper bags etc through a little looping maze of doors until you can reach the inside where you still have to ring around the checkout stands to get to the food behind. Did I say food? I meant food AND any other random stuff they can find to sell. They have a wall of "discount socks" that they are apparently "known" for. They also have all kinds of random appliances, clothing and home decor items that don't seem to match or have any kind of order to them. Its sort of like sorting through a second hand store- some things are in boxes, others are just there for you to grab. I got a really nice 3 foot by 2 foot painting in a frame for my wall there for $20. The groceries are reasonably priced but instead of having a price displayed under the food item - LIKE EVERY OTHER GROCERY STORE IN AMERICA - you need to pick the item up and search for the little white sticker with the price on it. I saw all kinds of employees with their little price gun, "stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp" ing a way on every little item which made me think-- does this make sense to someone? All food is priced higher in Ohio than anywhere else I have seen and Marcs seemed somewhat normal in price so that is a plus for them. When I got to the counter to check out they didn't have a conveyor belt only a 2 ft square patch of counter to load my truck load of groceries onto. It sort of made me laugh. Oh and if you want to have your groceries bagged here you have to ask them to do it. Get ready to pay: check, cash and discover card. They don't take Visa there. For a moment I had a psychosis and thought I might have actually been at Sam's Club and not realized it.

Buehler's: This store is the first step up into fancy pants land. They have good prices for normal people's things and good selection for the most part too. However they also have a artisan bread bakery, a restaurant off the side of the store, an organic and tree hugger section and a specialty wine and cheese section. They also have a huge selection of toys for a grocery store. It was almost like stepping into a miniature Toys R Us in that aisle. The one I have been to also has an Ace Hardware attached to it as well. They have occasional sales that make it an OK place to shop too. One thing that really caught me was that they have a kids zone there - that's right ladies - if you don't WANT to shop with kids climbing on your arms, nearly falling out of the cart, grabbing everything off the shelf and taking like 20 coupons from those automated coupon dispensers - you can leave them at this kids zone place to play while you walk around the store in peace and tranquility. Its free and they can only be checked in and out by you and there is an employee there to watch kids don't fight or get stolen. The place is completely made of glass so you can go and peek on them whenever you want as well. Kind of a neat idea. But that isn't even the funniest thing about this store. They don't like you to bring your carts outside because then they could get dirty or wet from the weather and then their floors would get dirty and wet. So how do you get your groceries to your car after you buy them? They bag them for you and put them into little numbered laundry like crates for you - give you a plastic tag with the matching number and send your grocery tub on a conveyor strip out the outside world. You pull up in your car, give them the tags and they load your groceries under a covered drive through. Its like valet groceries.

Giant Eagle: A little more expensive than Buehler's and not as good as selection of the normal person's stuff but basically the same on the artisan bread, fancy pants organic, and health food nut's section. They devote nearly a third of their store to specialty wines and other alcoholic beverages. They also have the kid zone but no restaurant or hardware store. Both Buehlers and Giant Eagle have discount cards that give you discount gas if you spend enough. Giant Eagle's discount card will just keep adding up the cents off feature until you use it or after 90 days so you could potentially get free gas at one of your fill ups. That is a nice feature because once we paid .27 a gallon -- to bad we had a measly 12 gal tank and couldn't take advantage of the full 30 gallons allotted to us. Though you do have to go to their special gas pump to get the discount and not every Giant Eagle has a gas pump on its property. In fact most of them don't so you have to drive until you get to one of them to take advantage of the program.

The answer you would think to all my problems is to just find a Super Walmart and all my troubles would lift away with that weird little happy face logo of theirs as it flies through the store slashing prices. Well easier said than done here. Did you know there was such a thing as a "normal" Walmart? Where its mostly just clothes, appliances, beauty products etc. -- Really more like a Target? I didn't - I saw the Walmart and though "phew" I can live here, I can get anything at Walmart that I'll need. Not so! The Walmarts within normal distances from my house (there are 3) are all "normal" walmarts with grocery sections the size of gas station ones. I have to drive 40 minutes south to get to the nearest SUPER Walmart. I'm not sure how everyone here survives on shopping at 15 different stores for all their grocery needs because one has this and the other has this sale and the other has better selection of that etc. I like to call these "normal" Walmarts - Baby Walmarts because they seem like they are just cute little things that are still growing - I hope.

Lastly - Just try to get some decent Mexican food items out east. I didn't realize that I lived in Mexico before and now I am in mainstream America. I even went to a "Mexican grocery Store" here and they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for some uncooked tortillas! Total twilight zone.......