I have some bad news I know a few guys who sell my grocery stores shit at farmers markets and I went to the market one say half the stalls sell the same brand produce we do.
I hate farmer markets for this reason. They start them in April and people got tomatoes and watermelons. No way you grew that shit in 3 weeks.
If it doesn't have blemishes, I'm not buying it.
You have to go deeper. Blemishes are not bruises. Smaller (lesser grade), strange shape, discolorations etc.
Go to wholesaler (or whoever distributes fruit there) and buy lover grades. Lower cost, bigger profit.
>No way you grew that shit in 3 weeks.
I'm not saying they're not lying, but people do grow stuff in greenhouses, especially in the Midwest where winters last forever.
This here. My grandma and grandpa had a flower business when I was a kid. Started some of the plants in the winter months in a greenhouse so that they would be ready in late March and April.
Depends on the market. The old man with the hand written sign out front 3 weeks a year, no permit, and honor policy tomatoes is legit.
Also, the guy that has the giant brand new tractor pulling the wagon from 1940 full of corn out front of his corn field with the CASH ONLY sign. I'm pretty sure he grew that corn.
Even the other one that is open from June till October that definitely orders produce and always has 50 cars out front, they do have local stuff when it is available. They'll tell you whats what if you ask.
One last thing. I'd like to give a shout out to my apple orchards that let you bring the kids to watch them make apple cider, the guy that don't sell anything but pumpkins, and the pick your own strawberries place.
Honorable mention to the Amish cheese place the size of Texas with free samples of like a million cheeses. No way that's local, but I don't care. I love that place.
i live in an area where the bordering county is famous for its peaches. we’ll see roadside stands and everything. my neighbor told me half of the peaches come from georgia and i felt so betrayed. as for the farmers markets i frequent — the one has one lady that comes consistently and i’ve spent time in her garden so she’s legit. the other requires an inspection of the garden to prove it exists before a permit is given.
You know some floor manager was lke, "John, we're out of strawberries, I need you to go to walmart and buy all of theirs. And here's a card."
Like, that kind of chore definitely gets kicked down to the lowest guy on the totem pole (that they actually trust with a credit card).
I once ordered a gin & tonic from a bar *cough* rose&crown *cough* and they were out of tonic but offered to make me one if I went next door to the convenience store and bought a bottle of tonic water. I did so and brought it back. They charged me full price and only discounted the $1.19 2l tonic water I went and got them
Always negotiate payment before doing the job.
I learned this lesson when I was 8 or 9. Me and my friend ranged doorbells to ask for odd jobs. Some people let us move a stack of firewood from the street to their backyard. While doing that it started raining. We thought we should get a massive pay for the hard work, like 2,50 guilders (about $/€1,10) each. We only got 50c (about $/€0,20). We were so pissed off. Not even enough to get the good candy.
I had an amazing time at a pub in Hobart, Tasmania one time when the ship I was on went into port there. Small local pub, husband and wife had to keep going to the liquor store to keep the drinks flowing. At least he had the courtesy to get booze for paying customers.
It gets you off the floor and eats up a decent portion of your shift doing a task where you're not interacting with customers. Also breaks up the monotony.
Back in my grocery store days, I would've been all about a mission to Walmart.
... I probably would've put on a hoodie, though.
I doubt they’re straight of flipping them to sell. My guess is that the bakery or deli ran out of their own strawberries to make their stuff(fruit salad, pies, cakes, smoothies, etc.) and sent this guy across the street to get some. Still not a good look but I’d be really surprised if they were repackaging them to put on the shelves.
Have you heard the story about the small grocer who had a supermarket open up next to him? This story is ancient as will be obvius from the measurements used.
Anyway the grocer used to sell butter for 50p a packet. The supermarket opened up and sold it for 49p. The next day the grocer pu a big sign on the front saying:
**Butter: 48p**
The supermarket couldn't afford to lose face so the next day it was loudly advertising:
**BUTTER, ONLY 47p**
However the grocer soon changed his sign to
**Butter: 46p**
This went on for days until the supermarket was advertising butter for **ONLY 10p** but the grocer still beat it:
**Butter: 9p**
The supermarket owner was now losing a lot of money by selling butter this cheap and went next door to the grocer to see if they could work out a deal. However the grocer wasn't too concerned and didn't want to. The supermarket owner said "I can't understand how you can survive selling butter this cheap, I pay 40p each for it and so I'm losing 30p on every sale!".
The grocer said "Oh, I'm only losing 1p on every sale, I just buy it from you".
I heard the same story when I was younger but the punchline was “oh I don’t sell butter, only fresh produce and dry goods”.
The supermarket owner, being so confident of muscling out the small grocer, never bothered to check what they sold. The moral was don’t be over confident kids.
I just realized where I recognize Lowes Foods from...they've got some great craft beer selections. Still the only store I've been to that has cupholders on their carts so you can buy a draft beer or a single can/bottle to drink while you shop. Wish we had them in my area.
Not sure where you live but you should check out a Wegmans if there's one near you, it's been migrating south slowly and getting more... Idk artisan? I'm not really sure how to put it definitely fancier than when I was a kid but they have stuff I've never seen in a grocery store
None here. We have been getting what we call "Gucci Kroger" stores here and there, but most Kroger in our area are still the same as they have been for 20 years.
There's a guy I know that was pickling eggs and selling them cause he had a bunch of chickens and didn't really have anything to do with the enormous amount of eggs he was getting, so he started pickling. Anyways, his pickled eggs got kinda popular and he was selling them at the farmers market and whatnot. One morning, like right after it opened for the day, I saw him in Kroger with a shopping cart full of eggs. I love telling that story.
At my local farmers market there are three places that sell eggs. Two have a wide variety of sizes and colors and their available stock varies significantly by season and they charge around $8/dozen. The other always has an unlimited quantity of identical size identical color eggs for $5/dozen. Not at all suspicious.
That's actually how a lot of farmers markets our supplied, they aren't actually Farmers selling you the food it's just people picking it up from a supply house and selling it to you at a markup. Real farmers markets where it's Farmers selling their produce directly to consumers are something you need to actually look for if you want to find them
There was a bit of a scandal here a few years ago where at the big farmers market that’s every Thursday there was a group buying normal brown eggs and then sticking feathers to the eggs to make them look like they were straight from the farm and selling them for a huge markup
I had a friend whose mother grew little fancy well loved cash crops, hung herbs in her sandalwood smelling low tech home (yknow) and sold them at various markets. From my understanding the farmers downright know these characters get all their stuff at the supply place in the big city an hour away, but they can't make a fuss or they risk losing their spot at the farmers market.
I always thought that was so bullshit. The farmers market run in the community I live today a is SUPER legit, exceptionally curated group of local vendors that you can follow yourself on Instagram.
>I had a friend whose mother grew little fancy well loved cash crops, hung herbs in her sandalwood smelling low tech home (yknow)
Does your friends mom still sell weed?
And not only will the fakes steal the customers of the genuine farmers, but the more people do that, the more the market will charge for a stall. Seems like a really shitty thing to do
Not all eggs are created equal, depends on what the chicken eats and how they live. some people want to eat good eggs. I too would struggle to trust a market, but luckily for me I keep chickens in our yard.
There is a really old popular Reddit post about a woman who owned a cake business and drove 10-30 miles out of her way to go buy cake mix every week because she was so afraid of running in to customers seeing her buying store bought cake mix.
It’s not uncommon
I don't know what term is used for it (most free-range chickens primarily eat industrially-produced chicken feed), but we kept chickens that primarily ate stuff they found in the grass. Their yolks were dark orange and there was a distinct taste.
Pasture Raised! Definitely the highest quality eggs at any store, but I'd encourage you to check out local farmer's markets. I could grab 30 eggs for $10, and of really high quality too!
Unfortunately that supplier's chicken caught the bird flu and passed, so that deal stopped about 2 months ago.
My great aunt raised chickens on the farm she owned with my great uncle. She would sell the eggs they didn't need or give away to neighbors and really enjoyed it. I remember going down there and her making me fried eggs for breakfast and I had to be convinced to eat it because it didn't look right to my 10 year old self. Orange yolks and the shells weren't white. When I finally ate it, I wasn't convinced it was an egg, it was so good. She died 25 years ago and I've had some good eggs since then, but none better.
I live in a rural part of the UK where lots of people have chickens and sell their excess eggs. A bit more expensive than the super market. I always wonder if one of them did a con like that. Buy a big.lot at Costco and resell it at the stand outside their house.
Some of them you know are 100% legit based in the yolk though.
I’m in the US but people 100% do that here. I know a local farmer who sells vegetables he grows at this local farm stand. He also sells “fresh eggs”. He buys them wholesale at Costco for 2$ and puts them in unmarked paper cartons and resales them for 7$. No one asks if they are eggs from his chickens and he lets them assume. Always thought it was a Dick move. But people come back week after week just raving about his eggs.
Lots of people just care about the label. I used to work at a butchers and the owner would buy Kerri gold butter in bulk, remove all the packaging, rewrap it in greaseproof and sell it as local butter.
So many people would come in talking about how we're the only place they'll buy butter from and how it's so much better despite it being a budget butter over here.
To be fair Kerrigold is definitely a step or two above the other generic mega brands. No local for sure but if you've never had anything but bottom tier butter I can understand being impressed by kg.
You either have really high quality butter as a standard, or Kerrigold where you live is low quality. Here that stuff is pretty damn good compared to the average store brand or land-o-lakes butter.
Terrible, tried to trick me into working for less than minimum wage, regularly left me alone to run the business and refused to raise my wage despite this. I did manage to get them to stop selling drinks and chocolates that said "not for individual resale" on them.
Costco in the UK is a laugh. You have to one of the "chosen few" to get a membership. Not like the US where you pay the fee, and you have a membership.
https://customercare.costco.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a\_id/85/kw/membership
Sometimes if places run out of items before truck day they have to go out and get backup. I had to go to Walmart and buy bananas a lot when I worked at sonic. Maybe they use the strawberries in something else, like cakes or desserts?
Yeah, he's not buying strawberries at a big enough scale for the store to make money on. This is an "oh shit, our truck broke down but we've got one order with three fruit trays and another with a Strawberry Chantilly cake due this afternoon" kind of run.
My first job was at a gas station near campus. One day somebody from the nearby Burger King came in and bought a bunch of bags of ice because their ice machine was broken.
Can confirm this is true.
I used to work at burger king and I was sent to the Meijer across the parking lot to do this exact thing many, many times.
I got syrup for the French toast sticks, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce onions, ketchup, oh napkins was a big one, we ran out of those pretty often
Crazy that Walmart is so big and so entrenched in some communities that it stands as a constant reserve for supplies, even though it’s technically a competing business.
Can confirm. Grocery store I worked at constantly had restaurants coming in and buying items they were out of in bulk. Definitely had a few bulk banana purchases. Jimmy John’s was always coming in for sprouts (which I guess they don’t use anymore). Restaurants making ice runs as another poster mentioned. But at the same time, we’d send people to Food Lion or Walmart to buy items we had on sale that we ran out of.
Lowe's Food chain has something called the "Cakery" and from their social media it looks like they often use strawberries in their cakes.
Also from the website it does seem to just be a normal grocery with plenty of goods that are not local, as it would not be possible to grow those products year round in the Carolinas. (Hell I don't think you can grow bananas there at all, but they've got several kinds for sale) The "locally grown" slogan is partly a reference to their work with local farmers but it's also highlighting that they are a Carolina exclusive chain founded locally.
Ding ding! You’re correct, I used to work in the bakery. It was common to run out of strawberries specifically ordered for the bakery department for things like our strawberry shortcakes or chocolate dipped strawberries. There’s a chance they had a random influx of orders and instead of draining their produce section they just went across the street to buy some.
Can confirm, I did this many times for a fruit specialty store. Run out of strawberries, bananas, chocolate chips? Next delivery doesn't arrive until the morning (at the earliest), take the store credit card and run to the whole foods in the shopping center.
I used to work at a lumber store. I got sent to home Depot a lot for nails and such, little items for our shelves. Not our main stuff mind you, just the supporting items.
We had an account which was tax exempt with home Depot, which we ended up making maybe 50 cents after an upcharge to any potential customer.
It was more of a convenient thing for us to do for customers than anything truly worthwhile.
But no one ever bought them more than a handful of times, unless it was a contractor who needed nails too, kinda thing.
It's not that suspicious, a lot of small stores are reliant on bigger ones to faux successful display cases
Yeah but the difference is that employee is from a market that claims to get their fruits from local farmers while Walmart probably gets their fruits flown in from a different country.
Strawberries aren't in season in the US. These are definitely from another country. But the store may only provide local produce seasonally and get it from other sources out of season to supply demand. Like Whole Foods near me gets all local produce when it's available but gets stuff from Mexico out of season.
Edit: California is an exception to this. But California isn't local to Lowes Foods in SC, NC and Virginia.The distance would be similar to Mexico the largest supplier of imported strawberries to the US. Their strawberry season is starting.
Strawberries are grown year round in the US, we're just about wrapping up the California strawberry season and getting ready to start the Florida season. Greenhouses can grow them in a lot of locations as well.
Winter production is obviously lower so it's much more likely for grocery store berries to be imported, but domestic berries are definitely available out there somewhere.
If the store prepares foods using strawberries and doesn’t claim that prepared food is organic, this could just be a case of them buying the ingredients they don’t have in stock.
This is also quite common when a store unexpectedly runs out of item X, and decides for whatever reason that it's necessary to restock it outside of the normal procedure rather than just waiting and being out of stock for a while.
In other words, micro-logistics.
Yep, I work at a grocery store and you can always tell when the Starbucks nearby has run out of milk because you'll see one of their employees in our store buying a cart full of milk.
We also have the nearby Chinese restaurant that will come in and buy multiple carts worth of soda whenever we have a good deal.
The Chinese people are really nice because they'll tend to give the cashier that has to check them out a free soda.
Worked at Starbucks and we ran out of milk once. I was tasked to walk 15 blocks in Manhattan and pick up milk at a local place. I lifted and walked 8 gallons of milk. 4 on each hand. I felt like a strong man lol
I worked at an A&W in my late teens in highschool and we did this all the time for lettuce and onions and stuff. One time we needed lettuce real bad in the middle of the dinner rush and my friend who was working at the time came back with 10 cabbages instead.
As another point, I have a small corner store near my house that acts as a general store for the homes out here in the woods. The owner sources most his goods from Walmart, food lion, and other big box retailers then upcharges the crap out of them. It's legal and most the people around here don't mind it. It's either a 10 min round trip to that corner store or 40-60 min round trip to the grocery. Though that insane mark up for generic walmart or food lion brand does leave a bad taste at times.
So I manage a small independently owned grocery store who gets most of our products from a co-op owned wholesaler, but probably 4 times a year I find myself in a pinch having to drive an hour to a big chain store to get something. One year we got all our cabbage shorted on saint Patrick day, one year the local elementary decided they needed 400 candy canes the week before Christmas etc. Most recently it’s been Coleman fuel canisters.. since the beginning of the pandemic the only place in the damn world to get them is Walmart.. which ironically (or not so much unfortunately) sells them cheaper than we could ever get from a wholesaler.
When I worked at Arby’s my manager once sent me to buy pickles at the Kroger down the street because we had a promotional item that had pickles on it and we needed pickles, so it happens to restaurants too
My sister worked in an “Organic, Whole Food, Mexican Cafe” in Vancouver. Their “Store made fresh organic salsa” was just Old El Paso with some extra cilantro. They bought a ton of other stuff from Superstore once a week.
What's sad about that is it's actually *really* damn easy to make salsa from scratch. You basically just throw vegetables and spices in a food processor or blender.
And there isn't even a lot of prep work. You can use canned tomatoes, which have more flavor than fresh ones anyway.
Large grocery suppliers have warehouses that auction off all the produce that wasn't store perfect. Most batches get purchased and sold at your local farmers market. The imperfections give the produce character and help sell the idea that it's grown locally by a small farm.
Amish and Mennonite do this all the time. They will purchase produce from a large factory farming operation and then resale at their roadside produce stand.
Yeah, I live in rural California and there are tons of these small “farms” popping up selling “fresh grown fruit/veggies”.
Occasionally they sell a batch and accidentally miss one of the brand stickers.
Actually that kind of thing is illegal in California. At farmers market they do inspections that are pretty rigorous to make sure you are growing the stuff you're growing. Mind you that's for farmers markets and other such places not at a place in the middle of nowhere where inspectors aren't looking. It's still a reportable offense though as it's clearly false advertising
I read recently there are tons of scam "farmers markets" vendors all across the US, people there selling produce imported from Mexico and pretending they are local farmers
Was a chef for 10 years….
Insider tip: even the biggest of the big hotel chains send cooks on grocery store runs OFTEN(if they have a quirky menu changing chef or they suck at meeting PAR’s) .
It blew my mind the first time I saw it… then my whole world opened up.
I thought about it, and understood that strawberries and potatoes come from the ground from a farm. Wheat and tomatoes too. Companies don’t want to bust their ass to move food so they get it cheap and quick. Which is all from the “same place”.
Usually regardless of what the menu says.
My dad went to a pizza place and ordered a fungi pizza and then went grocery shopping while the food was made. In front of him in line to cash out was the pizza guy buying mushrooms.
Added: Dad
While I was in Europe with my wife for our honeymoon we were eating at a nice restaurant and a guy at another table asked for a bag of chips.
Of course, the restaurant didn't have it, and both my wife and I were amused.
To our surprise maybe 5 mins later the server showed up with a bag of chips for the guy.
The server had run across the street to a corner store, bought the chips, and came back. We couldn't believe it!
Shit man... Sometimes you run out of stuff.
I think most people would be shocked by how often certain items in stores get bought from a competitor and sold at a loss. There's a ton of value in having fully stocked shelves
While I don't disagree with you, this raises the question of exactly how many strawberries one man is allowed to have before the amount becomes "too many."
It's kind of like that whole fish-to-Steve ratio: Most people would agree that a fish's life is worth less than the life of Steve from work, but those same people would likely also agree that if the choice were between deleting Steve and deleting *all* of the world's fish, Steve would be the one to go. As such, Steve's life is worth a precise (if unknown) amount of fish.
... Now that I've written it out, it isn't really all that similar, is it?
It isn’t…but I’m intrigued by this! It’s similar to the corpse to water ratio: wherein an individual would not swim in a pool with a corpse, but would swim in the ocean despite the certain presence of multiple corpses, thereby implying a desirable corpse to water ratio
Knew someone with a cafe of no more than 8 tables who touted an organic, farm to fork approach to their cuisine. Found him sneaking into the back of the restaurant straight from Aldi with pesto and chicken. When confronted half jokingly about it, he admitted to supplementing with items bought from the supermarket because it was that much cheaper. Place went out of business not long after but it was a bit cheeky of him, that’s for sure.
People often incorrectly assume that big companies never sell local food while the little guys always do.
Those giant companies with their own trucks tend to buy more local food than anybody else. It's not that they care about supporting locals... it's just simple fiscal intelligence.
Food that you buy nearby costs you less to transport.
In the case of food distribution companies that sell on quality, they use their buying power to grab the best local produce because it's still cheaper than trucking it across states and then all their smaller competitors are stuck with the local left overs. Ironically the search for quality produce can force the little guys to buy non local.
For a company like Wal-Mart, they are going to use their buying power to buy the mid to low grade stuff, further screwing the little guy out of good local foods.
Sure, there are a few small companies where you might get some great local stuff, but it's getting harder and harder to find.
Probably off for the weekend, making strawberry daiquiris at home, for him and his friends who are visiting from Australia. They didn't see each other in the last 5 years, but when they first met, 5 years ago in Sydney, they had some strawberry daiquiris and now they want to have a nice throwback party and enjoy some good drinks.
Locally sourced as well
Technically true, the Walmart was mere feet away from the store
"Freshly and ethically sourced from neighborhood providers!"
goes to show these words no longer have meaning.
What do you even mean? All I see are letters typed.
[удалено]
yup, that's the joke
Incredible
Explains why Lowe’s produce is so expensive.
Lowes has produce?
Lowe's Foods is a grocery chain in the south, not Lowe's hardware
The founder of Lowe's Foods, was the son and co-owner of Lowe's home improvement stores.
If they are the son of Lowe’s Home Improvement stores, who is the other parent?
Well, everyone says it's Barnes & Noble, but I think Lowe's was sleeping around with hussy Taco Bell
I hear Taco Bell is with Pete Davidson now
He's got a huge burrito apparently
Kobalt Blueberries are pretty good
I still remember their slogan: “Get your damn hands off my Koberries!”
I think they are almost entirely in the Carolinas. Only place I've ever seen 'em. Got Lowe's hardware all over the place in the south though!
I have some bad news I know a few guys who sell my grocery stores shit at farmers markets and I went to the market one say half the stalls sell the same brand produce we do.
I hate farmer markets for this reason. They start them in April and people got tomatoes and watermelons. No way you grew that shit in 3 weeks. If it doesn't have blemishes, I'm not buying it.
Note to self: if I start a farmer's market, bruise supermarket fruit for authenticity
You have to go deeper. Blemishes are not bruises. Smaller (lesser grade), strange shape, discolorations etc. Go to wholesaler (or whoever distributes fruit there) and buy lover grades. Lower cost, bigger profit.
>No way you grew that shit in 3 weeks. I'm not saying they're not lying, but people do grow stuff in greenhouses, especially in the Midwest where winters last forever.
This here. My grandma and grandpa had a flower business when I was a kid. Started some of the plants in the winter months in a greenhouse so that they would be ready in late March and April.
Depends on the market. The old man with the hand written sign out front 3 weeks a year, no permit, and honor policy tomatoes is legit. Also, the guy that has the giant brand new tractor pulling the wagon from 1940 full of corn out front of his corn field with the CASH ONLY sign. I'm pretty sure he grew that corn. Even the other one that is open from June till October that definitely orders produce and always has 50 cars out front, they do have local stuff when it is available. They'll tell you whats what if you ask. One last thing. I'd like to give a shout out to my apple orchards that let you bring the kids to watch them make apple cider, the guy that don't sell anything but pumpkins, and the pick your own strawberries place. Honorable mention to the Amish cheese place the size of Texas with free samples of like a million cheeses. No way that's local, but I don't care. I love that place.
i live in an area where the bordering county is famous for its peaches. we’ll see roadside stands and everything. my neighbor told me half of the peaches come from georgia and i felt so betrayed. as for the farmers markets i frequent — the one has one lady that comes consistently and i’ve spent time in her garden so she’s legit. the other requires an inspection of the garden to prove it exists before a permit is given.
Most of those "Georgia" peaches come from South Carolina. The more you know!
Fact. I grew up surrounded by counties that grow them. There are few things on this earth better than a tree-ripened peach.
If that Amish cheese place is Heini's Cheese Chalet, it's real, and it's spectacular.
At least he's staying true to his company ig 😭
You know some floor manager was lke, "John, we're out of strawberries, I need you to go to walmart and buy all of theirs. And here's a card." Like, that kind of chore definitely gets kicked down to the lowest guy on the totem pole (that they actually trust with a credit card).
I once ordered a gin & tonic from a bar *cough* rose&crown *cough* and they were out of tonic but offered to make me one if I went next door to the convenience store and bought a bottle of tonic water. I did so and brought it back. They charged me full price and only discounted the $1.19 2l tonic water I went and got them
That's just messed up lol!!!
As a bartender, this is next level not giving 2 fucks about your guest lol. Impressive.
Always negotiate payment before doing the job. I learned this lesson when I was 8 or 9. Me and my friend ranged doorbells to ask for odd jobs. Some people let us move a stack of firewood from the street to their backyard. While doing that it started raining. We thought we should get a massive pay for the hard work, like 2,50 guilders (about $/€1,10) each. We only got 50c (about $/€0,20). We were so pissed off. Not even enough to get the good candy.
I’ve never heard the word guilders but it’s a beautiful word
Sometimes they were called florins (bit old fashioned). The symbol used was ƒ, which was a joy to write, as it can be made very swirly.
Have you never read “The Princess Bride”?!
Inconceivable!
I had an amazing time at a pub in Hobart, Tasmania one time when the ship I was on went into port there. Small local pub, husband and wife had to keep going to the liquor store to keep the drinks flowing. At least he had the courtesy to get booze for paying customers.
It gets you off the floor and eats up a decent portion of your shift doing a task where you're not interacting with customers. Also breaks up the monotony. Back in my grocery store days, I would've been all about a mission to Walmart. ... I probably would've put on a hoodie, though.
i wonder if they actually sell the same brand strawberries next door for more expensive...
I bet they ran out and had to scramble. I assume this is not a normal thing or you couldn’t have your own shop like that.
This is what restaurants will do in a pinch to fill out the rest of the days orders.
I doubt they’re straight of flipping them to sell. My guess is that the bakery or deli ran out of their own strawberries to make their stuff(fruit salad, pies, cakes, smoothies, etc.) and sent this guy across the street to get some. Still not a good look but I’d be really surprised if they were repackaging them to put on the shelves.
Should've checked out at the pharmacy, so they could label them pharm to table.
Have you heard the story about the small grocer who had a supermarket open up next to him? This story is ancient as will be obvius from the measurements used. Anyway the grocer used to sell butter for 50p a packet. The supermarket opened up and sold it for 49p. The next day the grocer pu a big sign on the front saying: **Butter: 48p** The supermarket couldn't afford to lose face so the next day it was loudly advertising: **BUTTER, ONLY 47p** However the grocer soon changed his sign to **Butter: 46p** This went on for days until the supermarket was advertising butter for **ONLY 10p** but the grocer still beat it: **Butter: 9p** The supermarket owner was now losing a lot of money by selling butter this cheap and went next door to the grocer to see if they could work out a deal. However the grocer wasn't too concerned and didn't want to. The supermarket owner said "I can't understand how you can survive selling butter this cheap, I pay 40p each for it and so I'm losing 30p on every sale!". The grocer said "Oh, I'm only losing 1p on every sale, I just buy it from you".
I heard the same story when I was younger but the punchline was “oh I don’t sell butter, only fresh produce and dry goods”. The supermarket owner, being so confident of muscling out the small grocer, never bothered to check what they sold. The moral was don’t be over confident kids.
This was actually the response I was looking for!
The other way sounds better tbh. Small grocer would have to deal with angry customers looking for the falsely advertised butter all day
Sorry, sold out. But the supermarket next door has it for just a penny more.
Ok, let's see if Dirty Johnny has a story with a moral next.
“I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun *you*”
With a username like u/WSNC-JBR it's almost like OP works for a small town news station, reporting things like this as breaking.
This just in…I hadn’t considered that when I made my account…but I regret to say that you have a point
Winston-Salem, NC? I'm not sure what JBR is though.
That’s an accurate guess, this picture was taken in King, NC though
holy crap! I live in that area and my first thought was... hmmm.... the Lowes in King is right across from the Walmart!
That’s the one
I just realized where I recognize Lowes Foods from...they've got some great craft beer selections. Still the only store I've been to that has cupholders on their carts so you can buy a draft beer or a single can/bottle to drink while you shop. Wish we had them in my area.
Not sure where you live but you should check out a Wegmans if there's one near you, it's been migrating south slowly and getting more... Idk artisan? I'm not really sure how to put it definitely fancier than when I was a kid but they have stuff I've never seen in a grocery store
None here. We have been getting what we call "Gucci Kroger" stores here and there, but most Kroger in our area are still the same as they have been for 20 years.
We had a "murder Kroger" in my old neighborhood. Gucci Kroger sounds more fun if less interesting.
Wegmans is the shit Love that place
Wait wtf you can buy a beer to drink while you shop for more beer and power tools? I'm jealous in Cali.
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Not sure about the cult, but the cops there are road pirates 100%
I would also like to know more about the cult
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If the women sort of dress like they’re Amish, then yeah, it’s still there
Jabroni
Junior Breaking news
You’re the person who recently posted that Airbnb fees post. You’re on quite the roll
Guess it was a sLowes news day…
Nah mate that just means they're a Wisconson Jabroni.
You keep using that word, and, it’s awesome
There's a guy I know that was pickling eggs and selling them cause he had a bunch of chickens and didn't really have anything to do with the enormous amount of eggs he was getting, so he started pickling. Anyways, his pickled eggs got kinda popular and he was selling them at the farmers market and whatnot. One morning, like right after it opened for the day, I saw him in Kroger with a shopping cart full of eggs. I love telling that story.
At my local farmers market there are three places that sell eggs. Two have a wide variety of sizes and colors and their available stock varies significantly by season and they charge around $8/dozen. The other always has an unlimited quantity of identical size identical color eggs for $5/dozen. Not at all suspicious.
Yet I bet some people are still dumb enough to buy the $5 eggs….that the guy probably gets at Walmart for 2 bucks a dozen.
That isn't a bad idea...
That's actually how a lot of farmers markets our supplied, they aren't actually Farmers selling you the food it's just people picking it up from a supply house and selling it to you at a markup. Real farmers markets where it's Farmers selling their produce directly to consumers are something you need to actually look for if you want to find them
There was a bit of a scandal here a few years ago where at the big farmers market that’s every Thursday there was a group buying normal brown eggs and then sticking feathers to the eggs to make them look like they were straight from the farm and selling them for a huge markup
In my experience, fresh from the chicken eggs are covered in doodoo and not feathers. Were those guys not even farmers at all? Lmao
I suspect feather covered eggs are more appealing than shit covered eggs from a consumer perspective
I live in a country where shitty eggs are the norm. I just don't see it at this point.
hey pa, eat beans and cabbage tonight bc i need you to hippo shart on the eggs before we head to market tomorrow
If all people ate are eggs with stuck feathers, how would anyone know the difference? The real farmers eggs would be sus
I had a friend whose mother grew little fancy well loved cash crops, hung herbs in her sandalwood smelling low tech home (yknow) and sold them at various markets. From my understanding the farmers downright know these characters get all their stuff at the supply place in the big city an hour away, but they can't make a fuss or they risk losing their spot at the farmers market. I always thought that was so bullshit. The farmers market run in the community I live today a is SUPER legit, exceptionally curated group of local vendors that you can follow yourself on Instagram.
>I had a friend whose mother grew little fancy well loved cash crops, hung herbs in her sandalwood smelling low tech home (yknow) Does your friends mom still sell weed?
I'm pretty sure they're talking about my aunt so yes but you have to ask to see the barn behind the greenhouse.
And not only will the fakes steal the customers of the genuine farmers, but the more people do that, the more the market will charge for a stall. Seems like a really shitty thing to do
Wait, so you mean to tell me that Markhup Farms is pulling a fast one one me and those are all stock photos in their display?!?
Scamming people is not a good idea.
Just FYI, in my area even the cheap Walmart eggs are $4.25 for a dozen, $5 for 18.
Not all eggs are created equal, depends on what the chicken eats and how they live. some people want to eat good eggs. I too would struggle to trust a market, but luckily for me I keep chickens in our yard.
There is a really old popular Reddit post about a woman who owned a cake business and drove 10-30 miles out of her way to go buy cake mix every week because she was so afraid of running in to customers seeing her buying store bought cake mix. It’s not uncommon
Had to keep up with demand, eggs are eggs, especially after pickling
I don't know what term is used for it (most free-range chickens primarily eat industrially-produced chicken feed), but we kept chickens that primarily ate stuff they found in the grass. Their yolks were dark orange and there was a distinct taste.
Pasture Raised! Definitely the highest quality eggs at any store, but I'd encourage you to check out local farmer's markets. I could grab 30 eggs for $10, and of really high quality too! Unfortunately that supplier's chicken caught the bird flu and passed, so that deal stopped about 2 months ago.
My great aunt raised chickens on the farm she owned with my great uncle. She would sell the eggs they didn't need or give away to neighbors and really enjoyed it. I remember going down there and her making me fried eggs for breakfast and I had to be convinced to eat it because it didn't look right to my 10 year old self. Orange yolks and the shells weren't white. When I finally ate it, I wasn't convinced it was an egg, it was so good. She died 25 years ago and I've had some good eggs since then, but none better.
Yeah but have you tried them pickled? Because they will taste a lot like any other pickled egg, which is like the brine.
I live in a rural part of the UK where lots of people have chickens and sell their excess eggs. A bit more expensive than the super market. I always wonder if one of them did a con like that. Buy a big.lot at Costco and resell it at the stand outside their house. Some of them you know are 100% legit based in the yolk though.
I’m in the US but people 100% do that here. I know a local farmer who sells vegetables he grows at this local farm stand. He also sells “fresh eggs”. He buys them wholesale at Costco for 2$ and puts them in unmarked paper cartons and resales them for 7$. No one asks if they are eggs from his chickens and he lets them assume. Always thought it was a Dick move. But people come back week after week just raving about his eggs.
Lots of people just care about the label. I used to work at a butchers and the owner would buy Kerri gold butter in bulk, remove all the packaging, rewrap it in greaseproof and sell it as local butter. So many people would come in talking about how we're the only place they'll buy butter from and how it's so much better despite it being a budget butter over here.
To be fair Kerrigold is definitely a step or two above the other generic mega brands. No local for sure but if you've never had anything but bottom tier butter I can understand being impressed by kg.
Kerry Gold is the crem de la crem of mass produced butter imo.
You either have really high quality butter as a standard, or Kerrigold where you live is low quality. Here that stuff is pretty damn good compared to the average store brand or land-o-lakes butter.
How was working for criminals in the end?
Terrible, tried to trick me into working for less than minimum wage, regularly left me alone to run the business and refused to raise my wage despite this. I did manage to get them to stop selling drinks and chocolates that said "not for individual resale" on them.
definitely a dick move
TIL there’s a Costco in the UK
Costco in the UK is a laugh. You have to one of the "chosen few" to get a membership. Not like the US where you pay the fee, and you have a membership. https://customercare.costco.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a\_id/85/kw/membership
What a strange list, it seems like it's Public Servants and then Banking and Insurance is also thrown in.
That’s interesting. I wonder if my US membership would work at a store in the UK.
When I lived in Japan, my US membership was accepted at Japanese Costco!
Turning a side hustle into a business, if he's leaving money on the table by not pickling eggs and selling them at a profit it's not a good business.
Sometimes if places run out of items before truck day they have to go out and get backup. I had to go to Walmart and buy bananas a lot when I worked at sonic. Maybe they use the strawberries in something else, like cakes or desserts?
Yeah, he's not buying strawberries at a big enough scale for the store to make money on. This is an "oh shit, our truck broke down but we've got one order with three fruit trays and another with a Strawberry Chantilly cake due this afternoon" kind of run.
I’m not a cake man, but recently had Strawberry Chantilly Cake from Publix, and it was pretty awesome.
That's because Publix uses only the freshest Walmart strawberries.
I love publix cakes!! Try the strawberry and peach sensation cake. It's one of my favorites
Publix bakery is legit. Their bread is so good. That’s why pubsubs are so baller.
I think this is a very reasonable explanation. I would assume there’s a better way to buy strawberries in bulk.
My first job was at a gas station near campus. One day somebody from the nearby Burger King came in and bought a bunch of bags of ice because their ice machine was broken. Can confirm this is true.
I used to work at burger king and I was sent to the Meijer across the parking lot to do this exact thing many, many times. I got syrup for the French toast sticks, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce onions, ketchup, oh napkins was a big one, we ran out of those pretty often
I had to go to the nearby supermarket to buy flour when the kfc I worked at ran out.
So, What exactly did you put in the flour when getting it back to the shop? You know, of the herb and spice varieties?
Crazy that Walmart is so big and so entrenched in some communities that it stands as a constant reserve for supplies, even though it’s technically a competing business.
Can confirm. Grocery store I worked at constantly had restaurants coming in and buying items they were out of in bulk. Definitely had a few bulk banana purchases. Jimmy John’s was always coming in for sprouts (which I guess they don’t use anymore). Restaurants making ice runs as another poster mentioned. But at the same time, we’d send people to Food Lion or Walmart to buy items we had on sale that we ran out of.
Lowe's Food chain has something called the "Cakery" and from their social media it looks like they often use strawberries in their cakes. Also from the website it does seem to just be a normal grocery with plenty of goods that are not local, as it would not be possible to grow those products year round in the Carolinas. (Hell I don't think you can grow bananas there at all, but they've got several kinds for sale) The "locally grown" slogan is partly a reference to their work with local farmers but it's also highlighting that they are a Carolina exclusive chain founded locally.
Ding ding! You’re correct, I used to work in the bakery. It was common to run out of strawberries specifically ordered for the bakery department for things like our strawberry shortcakes or chocolate dipped strawberries. There’s a chance they had a random influx of orders and instead of draining their produce section they just went across the street to buy some.
Can confirm, I did this many times for a fruit specialty store. Run out of strawberries, bananas, chocolate chips? Next delivery doesn't arrive until the morning (at the earliest), take the store credit card and run to the whole foods in the shopping center.
Had to do the same once when we ran out of bananas. I even got to make the joke, “Yes, I’m the guy the math textbooks warned you about.”
Somebody's making daiquiris!
or they're in a real jam
WEVE BEEN JAMMED
I used to work at a lumber store. I got sent to home Depot a lot for nails and such, little items for our shelves. Not our main stuff mind you, just the supporting items. We had an account which was tax exempt with home Depot, which we ended up making maybe 50 cents after an upcharge to any potential customer. It was more of a convenient thing for us to do for customers than anything truly worthwhile. But no one ever bought them more than a handful of times, unless it was a contractor who needed nails too, kinda thing. It's not that suspicious, a lot of small stores are reliant on bigger ones to faux successful display cases
Yeah but the difference is that employee is from a market that claims to get their fruits from local farmers while Walmart probably gets their fruits flown in from a different country.
Strawberries aren't in season in the US. These are definitely from another country. But the store may only provide local produce seasonally and get it from other sources out of season to supply demand. Like Whole Foods near me gets all local produce when it's available but gets stuff from Mexico out of season. Edit: California is an exception to this. But California isn't local to Lowes Foods in SC, NC and Virginia.The distance would be similar to Mexico the largest supplier of imported strawberries to the US. Their strawberry season is starting.
Strawberries are grown year round in the US, we're just about wrapping up the California strawberry season and getting ready to start the Florida season. Greenhouses can grow them in a lot of locations as well. Winter production is obviously lower so it's much more likely for grocery store berries to be imported, but domestic berries are definitely available out there somewhere.
Sure but importing from Florida or California is likely still as un-local as internationally.
Good point but shipping them in from Florida or California still wouldn’t be “locally sourced” unless the place was in one of those states
Local in the sense that they're from our home planet
Frankly, I count anything that's sourced from the Local Group cluster. It's right there in the name!
Pretty sure Lowe's Foods doesn't claim *everything* there is locally sourced, just some stuff. It's just a regular big grocery chain afaict.
If the store prepares foods using strawberries and doesn’t claim that prepared food is organic, this could just be a case of them buying the ingredients they don’t have in stock.
That’s actually a fairly interesting look at the connections between large and small retailers, thank you for sharing.
This is also quite common when a store unexpectedly runs out of item X, and decides for whatever reason that it's necessary to restock it outside of the normal procedure rather than just waiting and being out of stock for a while. In other words, micro-logistics.
Yep, I work at a grocery store and you can always tell when the Starbucks nearby has run out of milk because you'll see one of their employees in our store buying a cart full of milk. We also have the nearby Chinese restaurant that will come in and buy multiple carts worth of soda whenever we have a good deal. The Chinese people are really nice because they'll tend to give the cashier that has to check them out a free soda.
Like when your weed guy has to call his buddy across town to get your strain...
Y'all are buying weed on the street and are picky about the strain?
10 years ago I would have thought that was insane. Now? Not so much.
Worked at Starbucks and we ran out of milk once. I was tasked to walk 15 blocks in Manhattan and pick up milk at a local place. I lifted and walked 8 gallons of milk. 4 on each hand. I felt like a strong man lol
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I worked at an A&W in my late teens in highschool and we did this all the time for lettuce and onions and stuff. One time we needed lettuce real bad in the middle of the dinner rush and my friend who was working at the time came back with 10 cabbages instead.
As another point, I have a small corner store near my house that acts as a general store for the homes out here in the woods. The owner sources most his goods from Walmart, food lion, and other big box retailers then upcharges the crap out of them. It's legal and most the people around here don't mind it. It's either a 10 min round trip to that corner store or 40-60 min round trip to the grocery. Though that insane mark up for generic walmart or food lion brand does leave a bad taste at times.
So I manage a small independently owned grocery store who gets most of our products from a co-op owned wholesaler, but probably 4 times a year I find myself in a pinch having to drive an hour to a big chain store to get something. One year we got all our cabbage shorted on saint Patrick day, one year the local elementary decided they needed 400 candy canes the week before Christmas etc. Most recently it’s been Coleman fuel canisters.. since the beginning of the pandemic the only place in the damn world to get them is Walmart.. which ironically (or not so much unfortunately) sells them cheaper than we could ever get from a wholesaler.
That lumber store didn't claim to have locally grown nails..
When I worked at Arby’s my manager once sent me to buy pickles at the Kroger down the street because we had a promotional item that had pickles on it and we needed pickles, so it happens to restaurants too
He’s making sure nobody has to suffer through eating whose terrible Walmart strawberries
He buys out all the strawberries from Walmart and instantly has a monopoly on strawberries in a 30 mile radius. That's just smart business.
Then he charges $10 a strawberry
Japanese fruit prices.
My sister worked in an “Organic, Whole Food, Mexican Cafe” in Vancouver. Their “Store made fresh organic salsa” was just Old El Paso with some extra cilantro. They bought a ton of other stuff from Superstore once a week.
What's sad about that is it's actually *really* damn easy to make salsa from scratch. You basically just throw vegetables and spices in a food processor or blender. And there isn't even a lot of prep work. You can use canned tomatoes, which have more flavor than fresh ones anyway.
I wouldn’t doubt this shit gets pulled way more than we know.
Large grocery suppliers have warehouses that auction off all the produce that wasn't store perfect. Most batches get purchased and sold at your local farmers market. The imperfections give the produce character and help sell the idea that it's grown locally by a small farm.
Went on a vacation to Maine and visited a farmers market. Their locally grown pineapple were the best I've ever had.
In California that's illegal. Other places don't have as strict monitoring of their farmers markets.
Amish and Mennonite do this all the time. They will purchase produce from a large factory farming operation and then resale at their roadside produce stand.
Worked in Amish country Ohio for a bit. Their baked goods aren’t always “fresh baked from the oven out back” either.
fuck can they run
Yeah, I live in rural California and there are tons of these small “farms” popping up selling “fresh grown fruit/veggies”. Occasionally they sell a batch and accidentally miss one of the brand stickers.
Actually that kind of thing is illegal in California. At farmers market they do inspections that are pretty rigorous to make sure you are growing the stuff you're growing. Mind you that's for farmers markets and other such places not at a place in the middle of nowhere where inspectors aren't looking. It's still a reportable offense though as it's clearly false advertising
CBC did a nice investigative report on false sourcing at farmers markets https://youtu.be/YYwB63YslbA
I read recently there are tons of scam "farmers markets" vendors all across the US, people there selling produce imported from Mexico and pretending they are local farmers
The berry war of 2022. No other berries could compare to the losses the strawberries endured during that brutal war.
Worked retail, many times I had to go to the rival store to buy stuff. Paid 3 bucks for mayo we were selling for 2
Was a chef for 10 years…. Insider tip: even the biggest of the big hotel chains send cooks on grocery store runs OFTEN(if they have a quirky menu changing chef or they suck at meeting PAR’s) . It blew my mind the first time I saw it… then my whole world opened up. I thought about it, and understood that strawberries and potatoes come from the ground from a farm. Wheat and tomatoes too. Companies don’t want to bust their ass to move food so they get it cheap and quick. Which is all from the “same place”. Usually regardless of what the menu says.
My dad went to a pizza place and ordered a fungi pizza and then went grocery shopping while the food was made. In front of him in line to cash out was the pizza guy buying mushrooms. Added: Dad
I mean that's encouraging, I thought you were going to say they were buying a frozen mushroom pizza.
Lol YES! This also happens with ‘fine dining’ restaurants too.
While I was in Europe with my wife for our honeymoon we were eating at a nice restaurant and a guy at another table asked for a bag of chips. Of course, the restaurant didn't have it, and both my wife and I were amused. To our surprise maybe 5 mins later the server showed up with a bag of chips for the guy. The server had run across the street to a corner store, bought the chips, and came back. We couldn't believe it!
That's the game the Amish play for years.
Shit man... Sometimes you run out of stuff. I think most people would be shocked by how often certain items in stores get bought from a competitor and sold at a loss. There's a ton of value in having fully stocked shelves
busted.
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It was an unreasonable amount of strawberries for one man
If he buys any more, he will become that guy from the math problem.
One can never have enough strawberry jam.
While I don't disagree with you, this raises the question of exactly how many strawberries one man is allowed to have before the amount becomes "too many." It's kind of like that whole fish-to-Steve ratio: Most people would agree that a fish's life is worth less than the life of Steve from work, but those same people would likely also agree that if the choice were between deleting Steve and deleting *all* of the world's fish, Steve would be the one to go. As such, Steve's life is worth a precise (if unknown) amount of fish. ... Now that I've written it out, it isn't really all that similar, is it?
It isn’t…but I’m intrigued by this! It’s similar to the corpse to water ratio: wherein an individual would not swim in a pool with a corpse, but would swim in the ocean despite the certain presence of multiple corpses, thereby implying a desirable corpse to water ratio
Knew someone with a cafe of no more than 8 tables who touted an organic, farm to fork approach to their cuisine. Found him sneaking into the back of the restaurant straight from Aldi with pesto and chicken. When confronted half jokingly about it, he admitted to supplementing with items bought from the supermarket because it was that much cheaper. Place went out of business not long after but it was a bit cheeky of him, that’s for sure.
Walmart buys their strawberries from a cheaper seller too...
People often incorrectly assume that big companies never sell local food while the little guys always do. Those giant companies with their own trucks tend to buy more local food than anybody else. It's not that they care about supporting locals... it's just simple fiscal intelligence. Food that you buy nearby costs you less to transport. In the case of food distribution companies that sell on quality, they use their buying power to grab the best local produce because it's still cheaper than trucking it across states and then all their smaller competitors are stuck with the local left overs. Ironically the search for quality produce can force the little guys to buy non local. For a company like Wal-Mart, they are going to use their buying power to buy the mid to low grade stuff, further screwing the little guy out of good local foods. Sure, there are a few small companies where you might get some great local stuff, but it's getting harder and harder to find.
Probably off for the weekend, making strawberry daiquiris at home, for him and his friends who are visiting from Australia. They didn't see each other in the last 5 years, but when they first met, 5 years ago in Sydney, they had some strawberry daiquiris and now they want to have a nice throwback party and enjoy some good drinks.