One of the sadder food developments in recent years is that Kroger barely carries ingredients. I don’t go there very often, but every time I do I’m shocked at the amount of prepackaged garbage on the shelves. Like a warehouse sized store that ostensibly seeks food might dedicate about a quarter of its floor space to “ingredients”. It’s maddening. Hence mounjaro and ozempic.
Trader Joe's isn't a supermarket. That doesn't mean it's not a grocery store. It's worth comparing mission statements: KROGER: "To be a leader in the distribution and merchandising of food, pharmacy, health, and personal care items, seasonal merchandise, and related products and services." SAFEWAY: "We earn the loyalty of the people we serve by first anticipating, then fulfilling their needs with our superior-quality products, a unique shopping experience, customer-focused service and continuous innovation, while generating long-term profitable growth for our shareholders." TRADER JOE'S: "The mission of Trader Joe's is to give our customers the best food and beverage values that they can find anywhere and to provide them with the information required for informed buying decisions." Kroger is all about we'll dominate by selling you all the things. Safeway is We'll hook you with not sucking which will allow us to stay in business. Trader Joe's is There's nothing cheaper, check out my powerpoint. Trader Joe's doesn't have a "supermarket" business model. They have a "low-margin high-profit" business model. They get their grocery products OEM'd by the big guys, under their own brand, at a low price... just like Walmart. If you aren't ADM or General Mills or whatever and they like your product they'll let you have your brand... for about six months. After that they'll buy you and rebrand you. There was a local outfit by me in North Hollywood called "the chocolate traveler." Their whole thing? Mediocre chocolate in a tin. Trader Joe's carried "the chocolate traveler" for six months and then it became Trader Joe's chocolate wedges. Yeah, they carry a few staples but they are, in the lingo, "cart finishers." They're things that will do at prices that aren't offensive so that you will buy all your groceries at Trader Joe's. If they don't have it, you'll do without. Compare and contrast with Kroger: "we have fucking everything." Of course they're being squeezed by distributors, their labor keeps going up and their uber-shitty employee and public relations during the pandemic have made it so that it's an island of hatred full of Lay's bags so they're leaning heavily into anything that will make them a profit, too. What's funny to me is they've been doing a lot of lease buyouts lately; I think they're positioning themselves for private equity to swoop in, carve it up and parachute their executives to Antigua, leaving a smoking hole for most of America. I wouldn't say TJ's is a store for people who don't know how to cook - but I would say that if you tell me it's your only grocery store? Then I know you don't know how to cook. There are anomalous products at TJ's that are dumbly cheap: wild rice is 20% what it costs anywhere else. They have gluten-free pasta made by I have-no-idea-who that cooks up better than Tinkyada. Their grated parmesan is a third the cost of anyone else's and their gluten-free bread is made by the same outfit as Kroger's in the same wrapper with a different name on it for 40% off. If TJ's can get a deal on it, they'll buy it and sell it to you for enough to profit. And if it's something that you gotta have or else you'll wander over to Food Prison, they'll stock it damn near at cost. But no. They aren't going to stock much in the way of whole wheat flour.
You can cook with just TJs ingredients you just kind of get shitty prices for meats and odd quality vegetables. You aren’t easily going to be able to replicate an ethnic recipe you found on the internet but you could probably cook some bland American recipe from pioneer woman of something. You and I are just spoiled because we cook sophisticated recipes with hard to find ingredients that most people probably don’t care for. Honestly short of a better spice and deli meat selection I can’t really think of something I commonly cook with can’t get at tjs or at least substitute with something acceptable. I don’t shop there because I’m lazy and don’t want to make 2 trips but in a pinch I could make it work. Also Nobody actually needs whole wheat flour unless you are baking whole wheat bread. I make waffles with it and bread starter but if it were to suddenly go missing I could deal. 5lb of whole wheat lasts longer than 50lb of white flour.
You mean Food Prison? Kroger didn't have yeast for eight months. That has a lot more to do with RJR Nabisco tweaking food the way they tweaked cigarettes. Walmart has tracked it, by the way - people on Ozempic buy less groceries. I've been on bootleg Ozempic for two months? Three months now? It's basically antabuse for food. Like, I can barely handle cheese, sweets fuck me up, and I kind of live off of bread. Fuckin' hell you eat less when everything makes you hurl.Kroger
Like a warehouse sized store that ostensibly seeks food might dedicate about a quarter of its floor space to “ingredients”. It’s maddening. Hence mounjaro and ozempic.
I think your are right that the grocery store manager has a surprising amount of independence and ability to source things from local and better vendors. Ive seen a store go to shit in less than a month when they had management turnover. Ive seen one improve over the course of a year as well.