Life of (f)Utility: Hacking the Human Race

The Art and Science of Grocery Shopping

Went to WinCo yesterday and bought all these groceries for ~$78. We’ve got this grocery store in Oregon called WinCo. It kicks butt. You bag your own groceries and the prices are incredible. I tried to be conscious of following the advice of avoiding the middle sections of the grocery store, and was pretty much able to do that. The only exception was the peanut butter.

I alternate between WinCo and a chinese grocery store in SE Portland. The chinese grocery store has some killer vegetables at an unbeatable price. I’ve got grocery shopping down to a science. There’s three different stores I hit for the best foods and deals.

Here’s my main tips:

1. You-bag-it (in my case, WinCo) grocery store for: for meat (beef, shrimp, chicken, pork), eggs, milk, “American” veggies (e.g. carrots, potatoes, onions, etc…)

2. chinese grocery (in my case, Fubon) store for: asian veggies (bok choy, baby bok choy, gai lan, yue choy). These veggies are *really* good if you like chinese food and are really easy to cook. The chinese grocery store is good for fish, too.

3. Wholesale (in my case, Costco) for: 1. Oatmeal 2. Coffee 3. Sugar (items that I buy in bulk and save a lot of $$ on). Costco is ridiculously overpriced for practically every other food stuff item with the exception of this list. If you want to get violated: buy meat at Costco. It’s ridiculous.
For these three items, however, I’m practically paying 50% of what I would pay in the grocery store. Also, I’m lucky to have a Costco right across the street from my place of work.

4. For the frugal shoppers: Get used to looking at unit prices. I keep a moleskin notebook with me at all times and I use this to document unit prices for the various stores. I always chuckle when I see Costco intentionally reporting different units between brands (e.g. $/lb vs $/oz), just to throw off the consumer. If I’m too lazy to do the math in my head (which is often the case), I use my cell phone to calculate it.

Once you get calibrated for the reasonable unit costs for various items, you are armed with some very dangerous knowledge that grocery stores do not want you to be aware of.

5. One of the biggest revelations that I’ve had since becoming a self-conscious grocery shopper is that kids cereal is by far the most over priced item on my grocery list. Coming in at around $4/lb, this is nearly 30% more expensive than most meats I buy (for which an animal had to die). I buy the generic kind in a bag, and this brings it down to about $3/lb.

It may sound like a pain to visit three different stores, but the reality is that there is no one place that has it all. The variety keeps my household interested in home-made meals (vs. going out to eat). I make one grocery trip a week. If we don’t have it, I usually don’t make special trips.

I suspect that there are similar stores across the country. I’d be curious to know if there aren’t.

Since I’ve been eating more consciously, I’ve dropped 10lbs and have stabilized my blood pressure.

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