Looking for a way to stretch your grocery dollar? Extra savings may be no further away than your friendly neighborhood ghetto! Although many people assume that all stores in a particular chain in a particular area have the same pricing and specials, close inspection will find that prices can vary from store to store. I first noticed this with Kroger and their produce. When I first moved to Houston, I would shop the Kroger near River Oaks (the area with the highest real estate values in Houston) and find cucumbers were always 79 cents each. However, the Kroger a few miles away in a less fancy area (but still pretty nice) had cucumbers at 3 for 99 cents as regular price. It was amazing to me that a difference of a few miles more than doubled the price!
We soon realized that the prices on a lot of stuff that was not in the weekly circular varied between locations, but it wasn’t until recently that we realized even the advertised specials varied between stores. Now the closest Kroger to us is super-ghetto (pimps and hoes shopping together in the frozen food aisle ghetto), while a Kroger a few miles away in the other direction is solidly middle class. We get the circular for the ghetto Kroger in the mail, and figured out when we went shopping at the nicer Kroger that the things on special in our circular weren’t all the same as those in the circular for the nice store. To illustrate, notice the slight differences in these two circulars for Kroger and the notation at the bottom of the first one stating the specials are only valid at two of their stores:
So if you need to stretch that food dollar even further, take a little trip to the ghetto! Just be sure to get out before dark!