Moving? Adapting to a New Grocery Shopping Routine Takes Time, Patience and Detective Work
If moving, there is one dictum to keep in mind: change is inevitable, and it can be unsettling at first. Your routines—grocery shopping, going to a hair salon, finding a pharmacy and even shopping where you can buy books, gifts and cards—will be upended.
Grocery stores are at the top of our list of most important places to visit. For some, it’s a daily shop, European style, carting your little wire grocery cart to pick up a few staples or esoteric spices or ingredients if a novel meal ends up on your repertoire. The former owner of fabulous Lutece in Manhattan, Andre Soltner recently died, so you decide to prepare a Julia-Child-style French meal in his memory. But many of us have better things to do with our time than go at the end of the day when we’re tired, the store may be crowded and we have to hunt for this and that.
We have found that recently we have become food arrangers more than cooks for our daily meals with the ideal of three items on a plate and a colorful design.
Others do a weekly run. If you like to cook or eat at home and we both do, you need pantry and fresh items such as eggs, butter, cheese, salad ingredients, salmon filets, a few chicken breasts, cans of spaghetti sauce and fresh vegetables we want on hand for an easy meal and a steady new supply to replace the used-up items. If you have fabulous storage, you may be a Costco shopper and simply buy paper towels and toilet paper in bulk when they run low. Some we know buy chicken breasts and filet mignons by the pound there, cut them up, freeze them and defrost them when ready to feed a crowd.
That said, when you’re new to a neighborhood, either because you moved crosstown or 500 miles away, you need to have several stores or a longer list of places so you can try to find exactly what you’re looking for, at the right place, with the right fit for you with the background setting you are used to and enjoy.
More likely than not, you may not find the same type of store you had at home, so try to be open and flexible to adopt a new routine. Even the chains we’ve discovered do not replicate stores the way McDonald’s does with the exact same size, layout and stock. We have found Whole Foods stores vary greatly even in the same city sometimes due to their age, demographic and footprint; in Barbara’s new town, Baltimore, ditto for Safeway, Wegmans, Harris Teeters, Giants, or in Margaret’s neighborhood in New York City, Whole Foods, Morton Williams and some neighborhood markets such as Westside Market and Carnegie Market, Margaret’s grocery stores of choice.
We have compiled a grocery list of what to look for and what might be best for you in a search. Barbara is still exploring and hoping to find a great big store for staples and a small independent one for fresh and fancy that makes her excited to shop. A small chain would suffice for staples and great fish, and Barbara found one that is at the upper price range.
Our list:
Size. How much time do you want to spend shopping? If the store is so large that it offers every imaginable brand and size, it’s going to take time to get around. One newish Wegmans Barbara recently visited was so large—140,000 square feet and among its biggest she learned--that she realized she spent more than one hour going through most of the aisles. After an hour, she said to herself, done, fini. While she loved the inventory, she couldn’t imagine doing this every week, even once she learned her way around.
On the other hand, a small more exclusive grocery store had a somewhat limited inventory because it measured only 12,000 square feet and only had high-end brands and expensive prepared food. We like a mix of high and low, the way we also like to dress.
Location. How far do you want to walk, or drive, is the next big question? We think 15 minutes is ideal, but it seems that 30 minutes is more than the norm. That means the outing might be about two hours, factoring in getting there and back and once in the store. Best if you can do this when you don’t have a doctor’s appointment to get to or something else crucial. Go at off hours, not in rush-hour traffic in the morning or afternoon but maybe in the middle of the day if you can. And try not to go when you’re hungry. Head there after lunch rather than before.
Prices. Many stores offer discounts on membership or weekly specials, but we like a store that offers good affordable prices every day and not a dozen eggs for $7.00, a price we’re seeing more often at the more expensive places. To avoid such prices, go with a grocery list and compare prices, it’s a pain initially but helpful to know what they charge for a box of fresh lettuce, for example--$3.99 vs. $4.99 vs. $6.99 on a recent comparison-shopping expedition. You decide on your budget and stick to it. Also, see if you can access coupons online or sign up for email and text notices of specials.
Quality. This matters greatly to us. One of us demands the best quality chocolate and good European butter to make her fabulous chocolate chip cookies. One of us likes to buy meat and fish that looks fresh and hasn’t been frozen or farmed. So, we become detectives and look and ask. That takes time, sometimes asking employees. We are willing to pay extra for good quality but not for every single item. There are many high-quality small food stores in New York City with mega price tags that Margaret frequents such as Citarella for fish or one of many fabulous bread and pastry places such as Bread’s for a good sourdough loaf, cheese and olive bread sticks or the best chocolate babka in town. And then there are stores that mix specialty items like bread and bagels, salads, fresh deli meats, cheeses, desserts and so much more at places like Zabar’s where you may go with a list, be tempted and leave with foods you hadn’t expected to buy. But such places can be great fun.
While we’re not take-out food regulars, occasionally we’ll buy an already prepared chicken pot pie or all-white meat chicken salad if it looks good enough to tempt our taste buds. Barbara was gifted great chicken salad from a small shop that was worth buying again. But here again we like to read the ingredients and know that it will meet our lofty standards. Yes, we can be food snobs at times. But overall, cooking at home is still less costly than eating out.
Vibe. We care about the surroundings greatly. We want wide aisles to get our carts through easily, we want the stores brightly illuminated so we can see, read, and feel safe, we want merchandise on shelves we can reach without finding a tall person passing through who can help us, we like cleanliness most of all—shelves and floors--and prefer to shop in silence rather than have music blasting.
We also like that food and goods are arranged in a sensible order sort of like the Dewey decimal system to arrange books in a library. One store Barbara recently tried had so many smaller aisles and tables arranged in angles that she got terribly confused and almost took out her phone with its Waze navigation to find her way back to the cash registers. We don’t need to be reminded how directionally challenged we are. And Barbara dislikes stores with self-check-out lines since she likes to engage with the cashiers and keep them employed; she also likes ones with signs that say, 15 or fewer items, when we are in a rush and have only a few needs. A clean restroom at our age is always helpful, especially in New York City where there are so few public restrooms.
Extras. Some stores carry much more such as lovely fresh flowers and plants, great greeting cards, small appliances (again at Zabar’s), an area for sitting down and eating their prepared take-out food, a pharmacy with knowledgeable staff, good online shopping and delivery and a rewards system with points toward free gasoline or merchandise. We like such perks but generally we don’t need them for our routine trips.
Staff. We also like stores that are staffed—we know it’s hard post Covid-19 to find help—with employees who are pleasant, know their stores and can answer our questions. Where is the bread with Dave’s English muffins or lactose-free cream cheese and sour cream? You don’t have either? Thanks. One small grocery Barbara tried the cashier told her she had worked there for 42 years, a good sign. A little schmooze goes a long way to convincing us to return. Margaret has established a good relationship with one butcher at Morton Williams who calls her by name and knows when he sees her what she wants—real sliced turkey breast.
Like any task, make your list on paper or your computer so you don’t forget necessities and check it off as you find whatever meets your expectations. Nothing is perfect so you might have to compromise. But didn’t you have to do that when you bought your new home or apartment? We did so we’re in the compromise mode.