Here, south of the Disney bubble, your grocery choices are delivery-only Kroger, Trader Joes or Whole Foods both 30 mins away, a Winn-Dixie 40 mins away, a half-dozen Publix stores, or Aldi.
All four of the Publix stores within a 15 minute drive have terrible produce that dies within days. But that’s not the worse of it, in some cases they charge 2x what Aldi does for fresh staples like produce, dairy and bakery items.
With all the predatory-pricing-masked-as-inflation going on down here, we’ve taken to hitting up Aldi first for fresh stuff and a few of their self-branded items, then over to Publix for anything else. It sucks having to go to two stores to get everything but it’s also cut our food spending by 30% and the produce lasts way, way longer than what Publix does. I don’t get it, Publix must be leaving produce on the loading dock to wilt in the Florida sun or something. All of them.
The Aldi-vs-TJ thing makes sense to me. In Canada, the three big grocery chains in the east (Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys) all also have discount versions (No Frills, Price Chopper, FreshCo) that sell similar pantry staples but lower quality everything else. It always paid to cross-shop both tiers.
