Shop-Rite Respite

Between some stocking up, some travel, and some annoying experience, I have no need to go to Shop-Rite for a while.  My freezer is full.  In less than a week, I will be away for a week.  And my last few sessions at my town's destination grocery for its kosher consumers have not endeared them to me.  I did not open the current weekly ad or download any coupons.  The coming week's circular arrived in yesterday's mail, not separated from the other weekly supermarket advertising that the postman delivers in a small bundle.  I bought bread and cheese at Trader Joe's, as I usually do.  As kosher meat got repriced with yellow-sticker discounts I bought some.  And to be fair, Shop-Rite usually has the best deals on frozen food.  For a while I can maintain reasonable nutrition and sensory fulfillment from my freezer.

They probably have a difficult business model, one with thin profit margins, competitors, worker shortages, and supply chain issues.  But as the end user, my need to use the cashiers to check out as they limit what you can take to self-checkout seems the biggest deterrent.  Front end cashiers and sometimes baggers were the norm until very recently.  They still are at Trader Joe's, Sprouts, and Super G.  Our Governor did not help by eliminating grocery bags for environmental reasons, so to avoid a cumulative surcharge, people like me bring their own.  Unlike TJ where the cashier pulls the items from the cart and scans, then bags, at SR the customer puts the item on a conveyor, then has to hustle past the cashier who deposits the items somewhat randomly onto the platform where the bags should go.  Since the larger orders go to the cashier, there is more sorting to do, done by the customer who can no longer see the price accuracy as items are scanned.  I usually try to keep three reusable bags on the platform at the same time, one for cold stuff, heavy stuff to be evenly distributed among the other two.  But sometimes by the time I get there, the platform is too cluttered for three, so I only have cold one other.  No doubt, the cashiers do not seem any happier than the customers.  So that's my biggest irritation, by far.

Availability of what they advertise each week could be better.  Selection of kosher meat has been scaled back, with niche products like lamb, duck, or liver largely eliminated.  The kosher deli and kosher certified bakery rarely have items sufficiently discounted, and usually of lesser quality than I can get from TJ.  For staples, I have ample pasta, rice, couscous boxes, and sugar.  Coffee rarely goes on sale anymore.

So conditions are optimal to give me a hiatus from major food shopping expeditions.  I once liked doing this recurrent chore, making decisions, planning menus, hunting for discounts, rearranging my freezer when I got home.  But the joy and challenge have given way to deterioration of the experience.  And they sell that experience as much as they sell what shoppers put into their baskets.