Pluggers by Rick McKee for April 06, 2023

I do this by having a printed grocery list with check boxes for everything I regularly buy. Several copies held by a magnetic clip on the refrigerator door. Items are listed in order of the aisles in the supermarket, starting nearest to the front door.

I gear my shopping dry goods and can foods first perishables fruit and veggies then last cheeses ice cream frozen dinners etc to cut down on the chance it melts or defrosts before I get home.

The grocery store at which I’m employed rearranged some aisles. So some things will be difficult to remember where they once were and now are. Specially when you’re on the clock and you have to take something back when a cashier calls you. As for on your day-off doing your own shopping, it may help to go through the aisles in order to familiarize the new layout.

Practice shopping? An interesting concept.

I believe the produce section is generally first in most grocery stores. And the dessert section is the most tempting of course.

Because of severe back and leg pain, my wife does the grocery shopping nowadays. Occasionally I will make a quick drive to Five Guys burgers and hot dogs, since I get tired of diet meals every day. Yes, I do make a point of getting walking exercise each day.

This plugger needs some exercise. It would be a little healthier to take a long winded route through the grocery store.

As another commenter said I just make sure to get the cold stuff last before Check-Out ;-)

Back when Palm Pilots were the rage, I created a FileMaker database that contained all of the most common items we would purchase. Along with each item was a value containing the item’s position in the store. Instead of writing items on a list, we would just open the database, and click the checkbox for the items we need. Come shopping day, open the database, and choose to view the checked items. They were automatically sorted by their location in the store. Sweet! Until the store decided to rearrange the shelves. >:(

My shopping list is organized by aisle and store layout. That’s why people have “favorite” stores.

I use “Our Groceries” app and I LOVE IT!

I too write my grocery list out based on my walking path and aisle layout. That lets me get my frozen, dairy and meats last. Really burns my hide when the store rearranges things.

There are things I only buy once a year or so. Maybe they get moved, maybe not, but I don’t remember anyway. Double concentrated tomato paste in a tube was not with the other tomato products, it’s in canned fruits.

I end up getting my groceries at four different stores in three different towns in order to get the flavors and brands that my family prefers. Why a major chain with 6 stores in one town and 3 in the town 8 miles away doesn’t carry blueberry Activia yogurt in any of them [but you can get peach, strawberry, vanilla, black cherry usually on sale because they need to get them off the shelf before they expire] continues to astound me. Similarly, specific flavors of major cereal brands, canned vegetables, cake mixes, etc. And those are just the ones I notice — I’m sure other shoppers have the same frustration locating their favorite items.

This isn’t just because of pandemic-related shipping issues. I had to discover different stores to shop at when we first moved here 16 years ago. And the varieties and lack thereof hasn’t changed at all. At least in the items I want to buy.

It would seem to me that if a grocery chain is going to have 6 stores in the same town and 21 stores in the same county, they might want to provide a greater variety of food options to keep their customers coming back. Is the cost of shipping one flavor of yogurt more than the cost of selling four other flavors at a discount and/or having to throw them out? Another cost to consider is the cost of losing sales to other stores because that yogurt shopper doesn’t just drive to another store to get yogurt. That shopper will end up getting all the groceries on her list that are available at the yogurt store because it is more economical, both in time and in money.

This plugger goes through the whole store. I need the steps.

They keep rearranging the aisles in my favourite grocery store. It’s very annoying.

Got that right

Good luck shopping at Costco. Seems like they rearrange the entire store every couple of days. A shopping list there acts merely as a suggestion, before your cart fills up with other impulse buys….

Costco and some other stores do this deliberately as it keeps the customer there longer which results in increased sales. Yes, it is a major PITA if you just need to pick up only an item or three.

Stores move items in order to keep you in the store and going to more aisles in search. They thrive on impulse buying.

We’ve been getting groceries delivered here but maybe I could use the in-store exercise..

Go in the front door, turn right and keep going.

One of our local stores got so many complaints after a corporate total rearrange they actually printed out a before and after layout.

Love my little neighborhood RED OWL grocery store. (The last one in existence!) Only five aisles, but they carry a little bit of everything, including fresh meats, produce, and deli items. Shopping is easy, whether you are stocking up, or just running in for a few things. Only the left side of Aisle 1 ever gets rearranged, to accommodate whatever is on sale or special. Since they use the same supplier as a large state-wide chain, their prices are comparable.

Are you kidding? A real plugger makes up his/her grocery list by mentally going up and down each aisle of the grocery store, which they have been going to so long they see each aisle with their eyes closed.

In the “military” town [i.e., town next to a military post with large population of military and retired military] we used to live in there were eleven grocery stores [both national chain and local] and a huge commissary on the post at the edge of town. The town population was about 30,000. The post population averaged around 5,250. Another national chain decided to open another supermarket. Big ad campaign. When it finally opened, they hadn’t gotten around to providing aisle signs. One had to wander around and around because whoever loaded the shelves did it by product shape, not type. In other words, all the stuff in bags (e.g., dry pet food, chips, some cookies, flour) were on one aisle; boxed goods (e.g., crackers, cereals, other cookies, cake mixes) on another aisle; canned soups, meats, veggies were grouped with canned pet foods; catsup, vegetable oil, and other bottled things were with the colas, etc. They said they were waiting until the aisle signs came in before moving things around. Unfortunately, three months on there were still no aisle signs and also no customers. I think the store closed before the end of the year.

It was a silly place to open the store in the first place. With the commissary there [where military and retired military could shop tax-free and with military discounts], the other grocery stores already had a hard time making it.

I have shopping list on Excel that I add and subtract items I’m going to buy. The list is laid out according to the store I go to. They haven’t done any changes in the layouts since they expanded and remodeled 6 years ago. Makes my shopping so much easier.

But once that’s done, he just takes that route every time.

During 2020 we tried (as mentioned in post for a different strip) ordering food – it did not work well. So we ended up going out every 2 months (did not want to go out and get sick) to buy food. First time we did this was a mess – so exhausted husband his blood glucose dropped and he had to sit in the car while I paid and bagged.

So I figured it out. We went into the store and bought all the items which were NOT cold, rang them up, paid for them and took the bags to the car. We then went back in and bought all the cold items and did same. (We were buying in excess of 8 doubled paper shopping bags each time we went – for 2 people.)

Oh, and at the start of March 2020 when Covid started here – a law was to go into affect that stores could not have plastic “one time use” shopping bags and could charge a fee for paper bag (unless their county or city imposed a fee on paper bags) so one was dealing with people not knowing this while panic food shopping. (Law was delayed right after taking affect as some filed a legal case against it – later lost the case, of course.)