Wal-Mart: Almost to many pluses to list. I think Wal Mart understands the average American shopper better than anyone and that's one reason why they've been so successful. I marvel at their ingenuity. They do not discriminate against elderly people or any people for that matter that I can see. They have a ton of handicapped parking areas in front of the store at each entrance and handicap carts and accessories in their store including handicapped and elderly employees. The grocery end of the store is well stocked with wide aisles and good value everyday low pricing. Good bakery/deli department although the deli doesn't stock some area specialty products. Their pricing on butcher cut products are not that good and their produce pricing is generally high. In fact, their meat and produce pricing is so high, that I can usually beat their price every week at other grocery stores in town. Some of their house brands (Sam's brand) are not very good. Finally then, I should note the Wal-Mart will honor sale flyer prices of brand products from other stores in the area.

Coupons:  I do occasionally clip coupons. I would do it more but there's not much by way of coupons in this area. Every Sunday I get the Sandusky newspaper and I never cease to be amazed at how few coupons there are in this paper. Apparently, Erie and Huron county grocery stores have such good specials they don't need coupons in this area. For those of you who happen to be in Sandusky County on any given Saturday, pick up a copy of the Fremont New Messenger and bring it home with you. Most Saturdays they have so many coupon flyer inserts that your arm will get tired cutting them all out. It's a shame no one around here sells the Saturday Fremont paper.

Other Stores: As noted before, there are other stores to purchase grocery items beside full service stores. By full service I mean stores that custom cut meats and have other specialty departments such as deli, bakery or fresh fish departments. Not all  stores have every department but a full service store should have a full range of custom services for the customer. I know that Aldi's has a loyal following but it's more of a mini-warehouse grocery store that relies heavily on it's own brands and therefore I don't list it with the full service stores. There's also a K-Mart close to Milan which has a pre-packaged grocery area that has weekly specials in their flyer. Norwalk also currently has four drug stores that sell some food products. CVS which has some good specials and bonus register coupons, Rite-Aid which has a good selection of food products and also has weekly special pricing, Drug-Mart and Walgreens which also has some food products and has a weekly flyer. If you're looking for good specials, always check the weekly flyers from these  stores along with the grocery store sale flyers. All of these stores are within the grocery shopping store area in Norwalk.

While we're talking about grocery store flyers, the primary store flyers appear in the Norwalk Reflector in the Saturday and Monday Editions. As of this writing,   Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and Meijers flyers are in Saturday's paper in Milan. On Monday, Gardners, IGA, K-mart and Aldi's. Apparently CVS doesn't advertise in the Milan area papers. If you're not currently a subscriber of the Reflector and you want to get some of the flyers, you can get a free Monday newspaper complete with the Monday inserts mailed to you by calling the Reflector and asking for the Monday free paper which you will then receive each week in Tuesday's mail.

Sandusky: If you're up to the drive, Sandusky has some very nice grocery stores also. Just keep in mind Sandusky is about 12 miles from Milan plus the distance to the stores themselves. So, for example,  if you're driving to Kroger's from Milan, you're talking about a 15 mile trip each way. Many cars get about 15 miles to the gallon of gas in town so a round trip will cost you a couple gallons of gas which based upon today's prices means you'll be spending $6.00 or more in gas for the pleasure of shopping in Sandusky. I already briefly discussed Kroger's and their pricing, but specifically this is a beautiful store. If there's a larger grocery store in this area I haven't seen it. Huge selection and good specialty departments with good everyday pricing and some great specials. The only negative is their location (on Perkins Ave.) and their fish department which is small and runs out of specials all the time. Lot's of handicapped parking at Kroger's. I wish there was a Kroger's in Norwalk because there's some things that Kroger's does better on pricing than anyone else including their house brands and pop.

Meijers is on Rt.250 near the Sandusky Mall and they're famous for their huge produce department which is a delight to shop. They have an average size deli department and bakery and a fish  department which has a nice selection of fresh fish. Their everyday pricing is about normal but they do have some great specials from time to time so watch for their flyers. They also tend to run out of specials from time to time so be warned. I would also note that the people who work in the grocery area are very helpful when you ask them questions. This is a huge store, but the grocery area is only about a quarter of the area of the store. Meijers like Wal-Mart does hire some handicapped and elderly people which is a plus. But they're short on handicapped parking spaces. In fact, there are so few handicapped spaces that it's nearly impossible to find available vacant handicapped parking spaces near the entrance to the grocery store. On the whole however, I really enjoy shopping at Meijers and I should note that some of their own brands items are very good, so don't be afraid to try them. 

Sam's: The new Sam's Warehouse Store has a large grocery area including a full service meat department, largest frozen food department in this area and a ton of pre-packaged name brand food in larger containers. They do have some good pricing but not in their meat area. About the same as Wal Mart which is over priced in comparison to other, smaller grocery stores in the area. Probably a good store to shop if you have a big family, but not a lot for singles or elderly people.   

Gordon Foods (GFS): The hook is that they sell larger quantities to restaurants and commercial establishments and therefore you should be able to get value pricing when shopping there. Don't believe it. GFS has very little value pricing and really not much that would draw a individual into their store. Their market is caterer's, small club's and at home parties but probably not to people doing weekly shopping for home.  Similar to Sam's in that to get good pricing you have to overbuy products which I guess works for large familes. Gordon's do have some food items that are better than other stores offer, so I do shop their store a few times each year.

Summary: I'm an elderly person on a fixed budget so that no doubt greatly influences my opinion when I review these stores. I think all of us who live in this area are fortunate to have so many full service grocery stores. Your age, family size and income level will influence where you shop and spend your money. I've made up a best of list which should point you in the right direction if you looking for any of the following:

BEST DELI DEPARTMENT: Schilds's IGA Good selection of local specialty brands - Bellevue Brand Dresden Ham and Isley's Chipped Ham for example. The sales clerks usually call up another clerk if more than one customer is waiting for service. They understand there is a difference between chipped, chopped and sliced lunchmeat. In fact, they seem to be the only grocery deli store I've found, in this area, that knows how to cut chipped ham. I think the service here is very good and I like their selection. They also feature a lot of pre-packed custom prepared foods and they have sale specials each week in the deli department. They're the best in the areas that count with me - service and selection. I would note also that in the last year (2009), the service at the IGA deli department has gone down quite a bit. At this point, I would still give the nod to this store, but we'll see what happens in 2010.

BEST SPECIAL PRICING: Gardners Super Value. Nobody consistently beats Gardner's when they have their loss leader specials. Unfortunately, they're loss leader specials are becoming less and less common. But, almost always have good weekly specials on meat and poultry products.

BEST IN-STORE BAKERY: Wal-Mart. Because of their selection of fresh hand made breads and rolls I have to give this award to Wal-Mart. Given the large amount of foot traffic in a Wal Mart store, they should have consistently fresh bakery items and they usually do. IGA would be a close second because some of their bakery products are excellent. The one thing I don't like about IGA is their cream sticks which are seldom filled with enough cream and that is a huge no-no in any bakery. If you have a really sweet tooth and want to take a drive in the country, try Burnham Orchards (on Rt 113 east) new bakery department which do put enough filling in their cream sticks when I visited it. The have a good selection of pastry items but come early and bring your wallet because it's really hard to get out of there without spending more than you planned. Burnham also had a fly problem in their bakery when I visited it and I hope they've got that problem corrected. If you really have a sweet attack, the best stand alone bakery I've seen in this area is the Danish Pasty Shop on West State Street in Fremont which has a huge selection. You could put on 10 lbs. just walking in the door.    

BEST FISH DEPARTMENT: The best place to get wild caught fish at this time is Meijers in Sandusky who consistently features at least one variety of wild caught fish each week. Unfortunately, they sometimes run out of their specials and that's a negative to me. Kroger's would come in second in this area and they also run out of specials. Unfortunately, there is no place in Norwalk to find reasonably priced, fresh fish. IGA is trying to improve their fish selection and they now have weekly specials on fish, but still their price is higher than stores in Sandusky. 

BEST PRODUCE DEPARTMENT:  Schild's IGA. This is an interesting category. I give it to IGA because they have a good variety of fresh produce that's reasonably priced. I'm going to tell you a story about IGA that happened to me a few years ago that may restore your faith in grocery stores. They were having a sale on Dole salad packs and I stopped there one evening to pick up a few supplies and I was in a hurry and I grabbed a salad pack off the rack without paying much attention to it. When I got to the checkout the cashier went to ring up the salad pack and she stopped and examined the pack and pointed out to me that it had some wilted leaves in the package. She asked if I would mind if she replaced it with a fresher one, and then she personally took it back to the produce area and got me a fresher one and brought it back to the register and proceeded with my checkout. Yeah...they get my vote.

BEST MEAT DEPARTMENT: Gardner's because of their quality which is excellent and good individual value pricing which is very good.  IGA, in my opinion, tends to do a lot of strange pricing in their meat department. For example, sometimes they'll put a special sale price sign beside the meat but when you look at the package, you'll see the price per pound is actually higher than the sign advertises. I've pointed this out to them in the past and they simply remove the sign and walk away. I don't trust their meat department advertising nor have I had good experiences with anyone in their meat department which is a shame because I like everything else in this store. 

BEST FUEL PERKS: IGA is really the only fuel perks program in Norwalk that works for the customers. Each time you shop at IGA, have them ring up your card and you'll be amazed at how fast the discounts mount of your next fill up. They also have an on-site gas station but pay attention to the price. Sometimes IGA puts their gasoline prices about .05 cents a galleon higher than other gas stations in the area. There is no second. Gardner's cards only work when you purchase $50.00 or more on your shopping trip or so they've told me. Gardner's use the Sunoco Station on the hill on Benedict Street and this station only has one set of pumps and you may have to wait a long time to get in to fill up not to mention that it's inconvenient to pull out of this station. They have a drive through that cuts right across the pump drive in area. This is a disaster waiting to happen. And recently, it did happen when an 88 year old man pulled out of the carryout and hit a pick-up truck parked at the gas pumps. This story ends badly, so if you do get gas at this station or use the drive-thru carryout, please be careful when pulling out across lanes at the store.   

Some Thoughts on Grocery Shopping at Wal-Mart

I want to close out this section by talking more about Wal-Mart and it's influence on other stores in the area. I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart because I don't think any company should have that much power to wield over what we purchase and where we purchase it. On the other hand I know any community the size of Norwalk is fortunate to have a large Wal-Mart in their town. But for all of Wal-Mart's positives - and there are many - it also has some negatives which affect the consumer in a variety of way. For example, the products that Wal-Mart stock and promote are those on which they make the largest profit on and/or those that they can warehouse for distribution which eliminates many local specialty products. Obviously there are grocery items that Wal-Mart doesn't stock or sell and that's just one reason why we need a diversity of grocery stores in the area. Wal-Mart's lower everyday prices on brand items (those items you can comparison shop) is a good thing on average, but their pricing on none brand items (things you can't easily comparison shop) such as meat and produce is hardly discount pricing and almost always you can find better prices on those same items in local grocery stores. Wal-Mart is simply part of the grocery shopping option in this area and everyone would all do well to keep that in mind when we go grocery shopping. Support your local stores. 

Finally then, let me touch on service and how it affects where we shop. My wife and I have a theory that nice people generally hire nice people to work for them. In other words, if you go into a store and the people that wait on you are jerks, it's a direct reflection on the person that hired them. The smaller the community the more this seems to hold true. Norwalk is a small community, Milan is even smaller. I don't know why anyone would hire an employee who would offend people but  I see it a lot. In a grocery store, often the only people you come in contact with are the persons working in the deli department, at the check out register and the person bagging your groceries. In affect, these are the people at that store that come in contact with the most customers so if a store wants good public relations with it's customers, I suggest you first take a good look at your employees that come in contact with customers.  

I've pointed out in this section that I think the people at Schild's IGA are service oriented. I don't know who does the hiring over there or trains their people, but this store has a noticeable relaxed atmosphere among it's employees and they seem to care about their customers, although I won't extend that compliment to the younger girls who work the registers at IGA who seem more interested in talking with the bag boys than paying attention to the customers. That compliment also doesn't extend to the people in the meat department, which in my opinion is the opposite of the rest of the store. Gardner's also has the same  friendly qualities in their employees. Interestingly, both of these stores have some elderly people working in the stores. Nobody is perfect and I'm not claiming these two stores are, but the service they consistently show to the customers is impressive to me when compared to some of the other stores in town.

I'm not going to shop at a store just because it has good service, but I won't shop at a store that has consistently bad service either, so for me, service is part of the formula on where I shop. There probably was a point in my life when I wouldn't have cared about a store's service because I was in and out so quickly that service wasn't even a factor. But as I've gotten older I've slowed down and now I take my time grocery shopping. I look around, I notice things - little things that I might have missed before and all of that reflects on my opinion of the store. Below is an e-mail link to send me a message if you want to disagree with me or point out something I've missed. This page is not completed. I change it whenever it becomes necessary. Sometimes I add to it each week so my opinion of a store could change if the store changes.     

Senior Moments - Keeping Your Memory

Where's The Bathroom?

Grocery Store Complaints/Suggestions

Grocery Shopping in Norwalk

Senior Citizens Humor Page One - Page Two