Saturday Night at the local Kroger

Ever go shopping because you had a coupon that you had to use by a certain date and that particular date was today?

I had a "save $6 off your next purchase of $25 or more" coupon that expired 6/30/12, so I made a dash for the store on a Saturday night.

We're Meijer's people in the sense that we shop there for food more than we do Sam's Club, Target, Walmart, Cub Food, Dot's Market, Health Foods Unlimited, Gordon Food Service or Kroger, but we buy things when they are on sale if we need something and it's convenient trip-wise.

We live in a very food-friendly shopping area, seeing that we have the above places to choose to do our shopping. We get the Sunday paper for the ads, and we comparison shop.

Kroger and Meijer double coupons and give coupons to save on your next visit a lot of the time.

Kroger generally has the best price for Very Vanilla Silk Milk with a price usually under $3 for a half-gallon. Silk soy milk runs for $3.29 at Meijer, and K drinks at least a gallon a week(K grew out of his milk allergy four years ago, but he still doesn't eat anything with cow milk in it).

Our stainless steel Frigidaire side by side refrigerator gets filled easily with the other things we get, so I don't buy more than 2 gallons of K's milk at a time. With my needing to buy an additional $13+ in food, J made a list from the ad we had and gave me appropriate coupons for my "quick" trip to Kroger.

I get to Kroger and notice that there are a lot of people shopping for a Saturday night, but also, the sale prices quoted by J didn't jive. So I called J for a legit reason for once to see if the ad she used was current, and it wasn't.

Kroger's ad runs from Monday through Sunday, while Meijer's ad runs from Sunday to Saturday, thus ads get confusing at times.

Kroger runs crazy ads from time to time, so I bought 10 random items that I, at least, like, thus saved an additional few bucks upon check out in addition to the original $6 coupon.

Upon checking out, I prefer self-service. I really don't like waiting in line, but I had coupons and several bags worth of things, so I picked a human occupied check lane with a conveyor belt and dividers.

There were two of such lanes open. Both were at least three customers deep, but there was a person lingering kinda between them. I had to ask her in which lane she was, and she picked one that looked slower. I shop enough that I have a fairly good instinct for slow lanes. I always avoid lanes with old people because they almost never use debit/credit cards because doing such is frowned upon by certain age groups.


I get cash back rewards and always pay my monthly bill in-full, so I make money when I spend money using my BankAmericard or Chase Freedom card.

The guy in front of me paid for his $62.57 grocery bill with all fives. Who carries around 13 five dollar bills? Are five dollar bills the  current standard for tipping bartenders, strippers, waiters, and waitresses now?

Not sure what the woman behind me used to pay, but she was the same person I asked which lane she was using. She either chose poorly or she was a quantum physicist that can be in two places indiscriminately like Brian Green.


I supposedly saved over $16 using my Kroger Plus Card. My total came to $35.10 before giving coupons.  I only had to "charge" $27.15.

I say "supposedly" because I bought a few 12 count boxes of Kellog's Pop-tarts for $1.99 that are originally $2.29 when the price for an 8 count box is $2.27.

Grocery shopping is a science not meant for those shopping on an empty stomach.