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[Half Smoke]

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It's not like you're going to save a fortune by not getting beat by grocery stores - maybe a few hundred a year - but its nice to know their tricks didn't fool you



trick 1:


of all of their tricks - this one is the trickiest


most of the time you get a better deal on the larger size. but not all of the time. sometimes the smaller size is the better deal and if you don't pay attention to the small print on the price label - the per ounce stat - you can end up paying more by buying the larger size. Utz potato chips used to sell a tiny bag that was a much better deal than the large bags. lots of other examples. they know lots will automatically go for the larger size and they'll make more profit



trick 2:



not totally fair to blame the stores for this one, more the factories - but the stores are surely complicit:
the price stays the same but the amount of food in the package is less than last week or last month
many times, if the food is sold in a carton the carton is the same size - its just the food inside the carton that is less
ice cream is a good example of this - ice cream used to be sold mainly in half gallons - then maybe 30 years ago the cartons started shrinking - now its nowhere close to a half gallon
Breyers is the worst with this: their cartons are tiny - maybe only 1.5 quarts - as their cartons shrink their price stays the same



trick 3:



bait and switch. of course just about all retailers do this so its not really fair to just point at grocery stores. but they do it often with their meat, advertising a sale price and then when you go to look at the meat it can be seen that its low quality stuff - particularly beef



trick 4:


showing a very low price or a sale price on store brands
store brands are usually significantly inferior to name brands
there are a few exceptions where the store brands are pretty good


trick 5:


my store does this. a sale item is shown at 3 for $6.00 and that usually means you can buy 1 for $2.00
but sometimes you can't. in very small print it says you must buy 3 to get the sale price
but you didn't see that and you're already at the register with just one - and you don't want to buy 3 - then you say what the hell I'll take it - so you didn't get the sale price



to be fair to the stores, particularly the larger chains, because of intense competition you can sometimes get good deals on good products


I hate to knock the little stores but the reality is they are much more conscious of having to secure a nice profit on everything they sell




one more that relates to quality, not price




all grocery stores instruct their stockers to rotate the stock
this means that when a new shipment comes in before putting it on the shelf they pull out the older stock out first and put it on the floor
then they put the new stock in the back and the older stock in the front
this way they don't get stuck with out of date stuff on the shelves that they have to throw away


so, if you're going to buy a box of cereal - if you take the time to move the boxes and pick one from the back - a lot of the time you will get a much fresher product



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