Tell you what, I’ve heard those ads on Minnesota Public Radio. And I’ve heard Minnesota Public Radio report critically on Walmart.
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I’ve heard other people say this about TJ’s, which feels weird to me, because I do about 99% of my shopping there (there’s always 1-4 items that I can’t get at TJ’s and have to swing by the co-op or another grocery store for).
I get the impression that what’s available must vary A LOT by region and store. Our TJs has a great big produce section, for instance. It’s stuff in good condition and I get almost all my produce there. My little brother’s TJs has, like, five sad apples and a sweet pepper.
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Another big fan of Woodman’s here in Wisconsin. We started being more aggressive about price comparisons when we started being more budget conscious a few years back. We still go to a different grocery store for produce and most dairy, but Woodman’s consistently undercuts even the other store by an average of 10-20%.
(No, not an employee either! I do like the fact that they are employee-owned, though.)
There’s a time investment in taking the bus versus walking, too.
Also, when I get my time machine I’m going back to 2009 and suggesting to Tiny Speck that they use something that runs on mobile devices instead of Flash.
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Well, when I become the next JK Rowling and make a billion dollars off of my young adult novel I am buying up all those art assets and redeveloping the whole thing for mobile devices, perfectly ready to suck up losses for the rest of my life (though I think it could actually be successful).
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While I will agree with you that best price is not always a viable business strategy, I must disagree with you completely with your statement that “…only wealthy people shop at places because they support the company’s ideals.” My partner is a librarian and my decision to return to college two years ago means we’re not even close to our income level of even a few years ago. (While we weren’t exactly ‘poor,’ we we far from what anyone would reasonably call wealthy.) We won’t shop at Walmart for many of the usual reasons you hear and we also avoid other businesses for similar reasons or for other reasons that would fall under the broad category of ideology.
I will certainly agree that it’s sometimes harder to do this when you’re poor – given the choice between not having something we need and ideals most of us will likely re-evaluate those ideals, but then again it might be better to re-evaluate the ‘need’ instead.
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That’s a debit card, yes. You’ve got a great bank that doesn’t “pass” the transaction fee on to you. Mine does.
If I go to a store to buy 10 dollars worth of stuff and use the “debit card” function instead of the “credit card” function … I’ll see a $1.25 fee tacked on when I look at my bank statement.
This idea is absolutely preposterous.
I have been shopping at WinCo over 10 years (started in college when I moved out of my parents for the first time). There are other factors for why I have continued to shop there that are not really mentioned in the Time article:
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It is alluded to, but not directly stated; every WinCo I have been to has happier, more knowledgable staff. They are quite literally invested in the store and for that reason seem better informed and capable of relaying info to the customer.
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There is a large selection of bulk-bins, where you can buy and bag (or use your own jars for that matter) a variety of grains, nuts, legumes, baking ingredients, etc. I cut down the packaging waste of my grocery shopping tremendously and started eating an almost entirely non-processed diet. So more important than anything stated in the TIME article; WinCo allowed me to save money as a poor student and take complete control over the ingredients of my diet.
From the comments it appears people are skeptical of any company that goes into a price war with the monolith of dietary alienation that is Wal-Mart, and I don’t disagree with that sentiment. I would be skeptical also if that was all a company had to offer its customers. But, that idea is more a failure of the journalist at TIME for “angle-ing” story to narrowly when it comes to reasons Wal-Mart should take notice. The reality for me has been that WinCo offers a superior product and service in addition to a cheaper price than Wal-Mart. What they offer is not apples-to-apples. There is a vast difference to any supermarket explorer.
When I lived in Austin, I’d drive home to see the folks in the D/FW area once or twice a month, which meant I’d pass thru Waco. My lingering memory of the place is from one stop that I made during the Branch Davidian standoff. A guy at the drive-thru had apparently gone apoplectic and was screaming at the intercom, and raw sewage (or something just like it) wafted from the big empty field next door. Around that time, Olive Garden won the title of “Best Romantic Dinner” in Waco.
Soon I began to look for ways to both shorten the drive† and avoid Waco. On Thanksgiving, I’d drive out west to US 281 and then go north that way. If it was going to be a 4 or 5 hour drive, no matter what, at least I had the choice between a (relatively) open road, or hitting bumper-to-bumper jams around Hillsboro and having to pass thru Waco.
No offense, Wacoites.
† When my parents would come down to visit they’d tell me about finding tchotchkes at this place or kolaches at that place, and had I ever stopped to check those things out? No, because I was doing what I could to whittle that road trip down as close to 2.5 hours as possible without being pulled over. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, when I made the trip with my own kids, that I realized there were tasty kolaches for sale in West.
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And nuts. That bag of almonds would cost 3 or 4 dollars more at Safeway.
I live in Maryland, though, where TJ’s doesn’t carry beer or wine. If I make the odd errand into Northern VA then I’ll stock up.
I wish I could say for me it’s a safety issue … but it’s not. It’s willpower.
When I have cash in my pocket, I find impulse buys happen ALL the time. If it is a piece of plastic, the impulse buys disappear (mostly)! 
That said, cash can also be a large pain if I need to make very large purchases. For instance, I threw a big 4th of July party and between food, drinks, plates/napkins, etc., I made a one time HUGE purchase of over $250. Last I checked, my ATM only lets me get out $200 a day.
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It’ll strangle their growth. I don’t carry a lot of cash and I have my debit card turned off as there’s no fraud protection when you use it.
Other than very small businesses, I mistrust places that don’t take credit cards, especially auto repair places. Your recourse is a lot better if you get screwed over if you can get the credit card company on your side.
The store would have to b very good to get my business, it looks like a tidied up Soviet era store and I happen to prefer choice over one or two of any given type of item.
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Yezus frak, if that was a movie you’d be dead or involved in a long car chase with multiple victims.
not to mention how Aldi stores in both the US and Germany do absolutely nothing but sell the worst possible ingredients. I’ve tried to shop in a couple of Aldi’s in Berlin and walked out to go to Reichelt instead because I couldn’t stand the piles of the cheapest, crappiest white sugar, white flour, potatoes and other calorie-rich but nutrient-low stuff. I hoped that their stores in the US might be different, but based on two visits here, the story is the same.
If you combined an Aldi with a TJ’s you might almost have a great grocery store.
Food product retail, in general, has pretty low profit margins. I’ve seen our product routinely marked up 100%, but that’s nowhere near the proportion the retailer got to pocket.
The only thing that strikes me as odd in the article is the notes about there not being a great deal of variety at Winco. Honestly, and maybe Fresno’s different, but the ones here have everything I expect to find in any grocery store, and in some cases more variety than what I’ve found elsewhere.
It really is a good business model though…happy and helpful employees, clean stores, excellent prices.
That’s not a Wal-mart ad, it’s a Post Office ad. Pay attention it’s Staples and Office Depot as well.
I grew up with WinCo and was always told it stands for:
Washington
Idaho
Nevada
California
Oregon
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So is now WainuCo?
