Siouxie

That's interesting as I find Walmart Superstore pretty good, apart from the fact they don't have a deli / fish / meat counter - and they stock many of the same brands that Metro / Fortinos stock, but at a lower price; the range of foods they stock at my local one is extensive... one of those 'depends where it is' things I suppose!

scrubbedexpat091

Save On is my favorite store, generally clean, modern stores with good selection and wide aisles and doesn't feel like a sardine box, and prices are decent on most things, just gotta shop smart.

The Superstore in Vancouver is far too busy and crowded for me, and I don't find their prices low enough to go there and suffer...lol

Safeway is okay not my favorite.

Choices is well high priced but the hipsters seem to like it, I won't shop there since the prices are idiotically high like Whole foods.

No Frills is the only grocery store within a close distance to home, but eh I'll go further out now to avoid them.



The Wal-Martin Vancouver sucks, there is only 1 and its smaller then your typical Wal-Mart Super Store, smaller selection and crowded so I don't go there either.

BristolUK

I never liked Walmart. Never thought it was as cheap for food as people said - better prices in Superstore and even Sobeys. But when money was tight and a pair of jeans was needed they usually had an option around $15 and Wranglers for just a few $$ more.

Ask a member of staff if they had something - or where it might be - and you'd get a "not my section" response. But if you need jeans...

But since they went 'super centre' or whatever they call it, and added fresh meat, fruit and veg - and a great bakery department - it's so much better than it was. In the food area, that is. The rest of the store is much the same.

The much improved food part has also had a bit of a knock on effect with the other stores too.

Atlantic Xpat

Living, as we do, at the end of a long Supply Chain our choice, even in metro St John's is limited. Essentially we have Dominion (aka Loblaws), Sobeys, No Frills & Colemans which is a local chain. Dominion and Sobeys are much of a muchness - we have a new style sobeys which opened nearby a couple of years ago with a big fresh produce and bakery area but not so much in the area of general dry grocery goods. Does good sausages though. Being at the end of the supply chain fresh produce is more expensive than the mainland and can be pretty poor quality. Plus it's no trouble to tell when the Gulf ferries haven't been running for a day or two as the shelves get bare. Walmart hasn't moved into fresh groceries here much I believe. It's a store I avoid as much as possible so I might be wrong. Costco is the store of choice for meat, fruits and veg. Not terribly eco friendly but one can often buy veggies and fruit there in large portions that is equivalent price to the smaller portions at the other stores. So if some gets thrown out because you just can't eat 5lbs of peppers in a week, then we're still ahead!

dbd33

No Frills varies enormously from shop to shop, unlike Loblaws/Zehrs which is pretty much the same whichever one you go into. I recall being amazed at the No Frills in Shelburne (a small town north of Toronto) as it was clean and no shoppers had nibbled the fruit. What does differ with Loblaws shops is that the items on the shelves differs with the location, if you want to know the dominant ethnicity in an area a butcher's at what's in the "International" aisle and what's in the "normal people" aisles is instructive.

caretaker

Of course, Loblaws owns No Frills, same as Superstore, Independent, etc.

dbd33

The same organization owns the names but Loblaws stores belong to the chain, No Frills and Bulk Barn are franchise operations under that umbrella. I imagine this accounts for the variations in the No Frills shops.

scrubbedexpat091

It does and from what I can find the owner of the store decides what to stock and such, our store is run on the cheap so out of stock a lot of the time, and flyer items may as well not even try, they rarely have anything in the flyer, its a poorly run store, but because of the area it is in, nobody will really care, mostly poor people shopping there. The previous owner was much better at keeping the store up and stocked, but the new ownership isn't so great, and doesn't staff appropriately, will have 2 check out lines open at a busy time with 15-20 people in each line.

Atlantic Xpat

Indeed. Our nearest No Frills is actually branded as "Kevin's No Frills". Not sure, that if I were Kevin, I'd want to be known for my lack of frills...

Siouxie

Would that be "Cheap Frills" ??

BristolUK

1200 PC points for every $6 spend on PC coffee pods today. Nabob was advertised for $4.99 for 12 which is a great deal if you like it. The dark roast was always good in the drip version so I'm very okay with that price.

But when I got there, the store had responded to the Nabob price by reducing the PC 12 packs to the same $4.99, including the very wonderful Sumatra version

Five packs, $25, 60 cups, plus $4.80 off the next shop. Works out to 34c a pod.

Or, you could just look at them and say bloody hell, these things are normally $8.99 and today they're $4.99.

uk_grenada

dbd33

Tim and Heather's No Frills is a large, clean shop with hitching rails outside. I tend not to go in there as it caters for people who go to the grocer's by horse and cart. Accordingly, it has the sort of food one might expect at a country buffer restaurant in Nebraska and a spectacular selection of ice cream. Massive consumption of commercial ice cream is one of the less discussed aspects of Mennonite life. Jim and Lee-Anne's No Frills is where you have to go for Marmite, shortbread and Quality Street.

I don't know any of those four but I do know slightly the owners of a large Foodland. Owning and operating a large supermarket seems like hard work and lots of risk. For example, they have a generator but not an automatic one, failure to get to the shop and power it up when the grid breaks means risking the business as they don't have a cushion to fund replacing everything in the freezers and cold room. Selling local produce in the summer brings in the public and is high profit but falling below order quota with the big suppliers risks not having vegetables in the winter. It all seems a bit marginal.

BristolUK

No plastic. All compostable.
However, the pods are in reserve for when only one cup is needed and I don't want to make a pot of the 875g ground arabica dark roast for $7. It's the best of both worlds.

uk_grenada