The above title does not stand for “Big Fucking Deal”, although given the average tenor of this website, you may be forgiven for thinking so.
In the grocery retailing business, BFD stands for “Best Food Day”; that day of the week when grocery stores launch their weekly price discounts on selected items.
The actual day varies from chain to chain, or from one area to another. Back when I was in the business, one chain’s BFD was on Thursdays, when they dropped their weekly flyer (called a “roto” because of the printing process); their competitor’s might be on a Friday to capitalize on the weekend’s expected sales uptick, and yet another competitor — whose typical shopper might trend towards an elder demographic — might have their BFD the day after Social Security payments were made… and so on.
Nowadays, I think the BFD concept might have disappeared to a greater or lesser degree because of changes in shopping habits by customers, whether online, delivery, at-store pickup and Internet deals.
I’ve certainly noticed this at Kroger — where I do perhaps 90% of my shopping — because not only have they de-emphasized the roto (the price deals aren’t as aggressive as they once were), there also seems to be a large number of Internet-delivered promotions that you have to visit their website to activate. And of course, there are the “loyalty card-only” deals which are their way of tracking customer shopping habits (I think; I haven’t seen much in the way of targeted deals the way I used to deliver them — a topic for another time).
In case anyone’s interested about the other 10% of my grocery shopping, it’s split between Market Street (a Texas chain, owned by Albertson’s) and Wal-Mart, both only for very specific items (e.g. Market Street’s French baguettes and rolls, which are superb and rival the baguettes I tasted in Paris).
Side note: when I still lived in Plano, I shopped a lot at Central Market (H.E.B.’s upscale outlet), but they saw fit to discontinue several of my favorite products which they carried exclusively — e.g. Old Forest Salami and Jambon de Paris sliced ham — so there’s no need to go there anymore. And in any event, their prices were stratospheric before, but since Bidenflation have become frankly unreachable to One Of Fixed Income Like Me. Also, their South Plano store is now too far from my place to justify the long trip, so there ya go.
By the way, I see that eggs are now selling for $3.99/dozen at Kroger — by “eggs” I mean eggs that we peasants generally eat and not the boutique premium stuff hatched in coops run by virgins and laid by hens sprinkled with holy water. Limit 2 packs per customer, but not enforced if you buy two packs, take your groceries out to the car and then go back into the store and buy another two, etc. (Once again, I used to enforce limits by putting a stop on the loyalty card daily quantities.) Although I cannot see who would need more than two dozen eggs per day unless you have four teenage sons and/or are running a commercial home bakery as a sideline.
I forgot where I was going with this post, but I assure you there was a point to all of it — I just can’t remember what it was. If I do remember (doubtful), I’ll follow up some other time.
If we are going to ramble about groceries, I’ll join in. When we moved to Houston 20 years ago, we immediately picked H.E.B. as our store, mostly for the quality of their meat. Where we came from Kroger’s was king and always had the best meat outside of specialty stores. In Houston, Kroger’s meat was only so-so. Of course there’s an H.E.B. on every corner down here which is not true of Dallas.
That said, we’ve been souring on H.E.B. lately because they are ever more aggressively pushing store brands over our preferred stuff. Other stores have long done that, but now the HEB is too. For example, you can find 100 different brands of ice cream, but good luck finding Birds-Eye or Green-Giant frozen vegetables. You can find several brands of gourmet butter, but no Ziploc bags, only store brand. I’d be fascinated to see their inventory and purchasing algorithms behind that.
I also noticed the other day that most of the items we buy are now $5. That reminded me that years ago you used to be able to count up the items in your shopping cart and multiply by $1 to get a good estimate of the expected total. I did it the other day and damn if it wasn’t now $5 x number of items. So, 500% in what, 40 years? Maybe it’s time to start shopping at Wal-Mart. Is the dog food cheaper there?
Yes, Iams dog food is less expensive at Walmart.
But always check the date.
A year ago I bought a bad and didn’t check the date only to have our mutt get very ill and that was when I seen the food was past the “use by” date and had flecks of mold on it.
I don’t know where you were going, either, but I enjoyed it anyway.
The store brand doesn’t bother me TOO much, but it is getting worse. Canned tomatoes, probably, are made by Hunts anyway, mustard by French’s etc. The stores don’t actually make the stuff.
But now it’s gotten to things like breakfast sausage, where customers have some specific tastes. I shop at Wegman’s in our area, but they stopped carrying Bob Evans bulk breakfast sausage, now you can only get their store brand of links. This is kind of stupid because every other chain in the area carries BE, so occasionally I go there to get a couple, one for the fridge one for the freezer. But I don’t just go there for BD sausage. I do my entire shopping there that day. So Wegman’s stupidly loses not only their sale of breakfast sausage, but all the other things I buy on that trip every other week or so.
Not very smart.
The fliers around here come out on Wednesdays and Thursdays. One local market does a Wednesday announcement for Whacky Wednesdays where they put a 3-6 items on sale but they have limited quantities. The other local single location store releases their flier on Sundays. The local chain releases their fliers on Thursdays, Big Y. The regional chain, Stop & Shop releases their flier on Wednesdays I think.
We go to Walmart about every other month or so for canned goods and bulk paper products. We might buy detergent and such there because it might be cheaper. We use cans of fire roasted tomatoes with garlic in a variety of meals. The last time I checked, Walmart has those for $1.29/can while the local stores sell them for $1.79 or so. My wife rocks the sales.
Under the Pedo Joe regime, lots of chickens were slaughtered due to some bird flue that surprisingly does not affect turkeys, ducks, quail, pheasant or any wild birds at all. Weird. then with the execution of said chickens, people are surprised that the price of eggs goes up. In regards to protein source, eggs are still cheap I would think.
“I forgot where I was going with this post, but I assure you there was a point to all of it — I just can’t remember what it was.”
================
HA HA HA HAAAA
That happens all the time around here, with my wife and me.
Right in mid sentence I’ll forget what I’m talking about.
I think Kroger’s “limit two per customer” on eggs is slightly ridiculous because it appears that it means two packages — of any size. You relate encountering it in dozen-packs. I buy in 5-dozen flats. Time I ordered before last, I ordered two and the online thing stopped me as I incremented up from one-in-the-cart. “Limit two.” There’s a bit of a difference between 24 eggs and 120.
I also enjoy the retail Grocery articles. The variables in that business are endless.
Did an IT project a while back for a company that makes the small environment recording and tracking devices for produce, meats and medical shipments. The wholesalers send these boxes to the growers and packing plants. They add them to each pallet that leaves. The devices track Temperature, humidity and any other factor deemed important. They can even “check-in” over the internet to report during shipment. The receivers than know which pallets of raspberries from Chile are good and which will have a 10 hour self life by the time they arrive at Stop & Shop.
Kim, since you were “in the trade” so to speak, I thought you might like a couple of observations on the current state of affairs in ye olde super markets from one who has worked in same at the dawn of such arriving in S. America. Moved to U.S. and on to electronics and industrial since, now retired.
Currently the roto is still around but timed to simply get the largest distribution possible in an era of computer screens and diminishing circulation..
This means in the local fishwrap where ever fewer people read newspapers, it appears every Friday (payday) and of course is at the entry of every store for the taking.
Local weekly trade lines newspaper (a few community notes and a lot of local adverts every Saturday)
Intrusive adverts on your phone if you are using same to listen to any of the local/regional radio streaming programmes.
I see this continuing to move to electronics which will just about put print news out of business completely (we are almost there).
My biggest beef with all of the local supermarkets is the matter of “use by date” on product and proper turnover planning. The store management seems to be waiting until the goods on the shelf are at or even past sell by date before restocking. What this means is that if you don’t check every blessed item including milk and vegetables, you end up tossing the slime after 3 or 4 days in your fridge.
A symptom of a faltering supply chain and/or lack of proper store planning (more the latter I think).
I do live in the fringe of the rust belt, so things might be very different in states with real and vibrant economies (have not seen that in years).
Cheers
Here in Tiny Town™ Wyoming we’ve got exactly two (2) choices: An Albertsons and WallyWorld. There are a couple of dollar stores and a discount house selling already-expired foodstuffs, but it’s almost uniformly junk, bad, and/or spoiled so we don’t go there.
Albertsons is a huge chain and owns a couple of other store chains, and they usually have pretty good marketing. Their flyers come out in the local fishwrap on Tuesdays and are effective for the following Wednesday for a week. They sometimes have pretty good sale prices on those items. But their biggest day is the first Thursday of every month when they offer “seniors” (which extends down to 55+ years old) a 10% off sale on everything. Most of the store people call it “crazy day” and the parking lot is loaded with cotton-tops trying to figure out how to park an extended-cab pickup truck in a space meant for a compact car.
Since this also includes their store-brand liquor store, I usually refer to this as “first Thirstday” and stock up on a month’s worth of beer and wine. Between a “buy 6 bottles of wine or more and get 10% off” they’ll also subtract yet another 10% for geezer-day. Since I’m often buying stuff that is routinely on-sale, I’m also getting that discount to begin with. This last Thursday (a week ago) I paid 55% of their (admittedly hideous) “full retail” price…but almost half off isn’t bad.
What’s really fun is that we shop for food about every 3 days or so. My wife is eating big salads every day and we pick up fresh stuff (lettuce, kale, green onions, fruit, whatever else she throws in). But we also stop by the meat area every time, since they’re often cutting the price in half on some things that are about to expire. We’ve gotten some excellent ribeye steaks for $6/pound and either cook them that day or re-package and freeze ’em for later. They once had boneless leg-of-lamb for $1/pound that they had apparently lost in the bowels of their freezer; we got three 6-pounders for a total of under eighteen bucks. Froze two, and ate off the first one for a week.
But we adamantly refuse to “get the app” on our phones which can lead to even further discounts. I just hate the idea of the corporation tracking our purchasing, or selling our information (or phone numbers). They might promise not to do that, but A) I don’t believe them, and B) They can always be hacked and the information stolen.
We mostly go to WallyWorld for pre-packaged goods…things in boxes or cans, bottled water, frozen veggies, etc. Only rarely do we get anything there like meat, fruits, or veggies, and only if it’s not available elsewhere or it’s on sale. And about once every three months we make a 100 mile trip to the nearest Big City where there’s a Sam’s Club, and stock up on dry goods and paper products. The discount level on Kleenex alone is enough to pay for the gas, even in the truck.
So essentially we shop at three different places for three completely different kinds of things. We’re also retired and stretching those dollars for food (after insurance and taxes that’s our biggest expense) makes a big difference. We also love to eat.
Why would anyone make a parking lot in Tiny Town™ Wyoming for compact cars? I would expect the demographic to skew heavily toward extended cab pickups.
“I’ve certainly noticed this at Kroger…”. So have we. Can’t tell you when we were last in one.
One of the reasons we chose our current location is that we are close to just about everything. At our age, this becomes ever more a plus, even though I am a country boy at heart. We are able to pick and choose within a short driving distance. Some observations:
Tom Thumb. Best “roto” around, but it is digital. My wife has their app on her phone and she is a whiz. I was confused at first until it was explained to me that in addition to the “digital deal” you see tagged on the shelf, the app customizes various products just for you in your app. Yes, obviously they are tracking our shopping. .Gov already has my photo, finger prints, blood type, address, etc. If they have a clue, they will just wait for me to expire of natural causes.
Winco. Cheap prices overall. Watch the expiration dates! You can feed yourself pretty cheaply with stuff from their bulk section. Literally bulk, where you scoop out the portion you want and weigh it. If the same item also comes packaged on the shelf ( like split peas) do the math just to be sure. I actually like their store brand coffee creamer, and their bakery sour dough is real sour dough.
Wally-World. Cheaper prices for cough drops and such. I like their store brand multi-grain bread. Their store brand coffee creamer is disgusting.
Costco. Best price per item and decent quality. Paper towels, TP, pork loin chops, store brand (Kirkland) alkaline batteries.
Aldi. Best price for Mayo and butter with olive oil and low salt bacon.
Short driving distance means we can also wait out high gas prices. Like today, gas at Murphy’s and Costco $2.43/gal per Gas Buddy map.
Went to Tom Thumb today. Digital deal–boneless skinless chicken breast and thighs, $1.77/lb. breast meat was red tagged on the shelf, thighs were listed in our phone app.