Walmart Closing 269 Stores
- Thread starter Chuckinden
- Start date
I like Walmart but don't do a lot of the grocery shopping there. My family does not care about national brand product for most foods. Exceptions: mayonnaise (has to be Hellmans or Kraft), Softdrinks (has to be Coke or Ale-8), tea (has to be Lipton). Walmart usually has the best price on those items. For other foods, we go to Save-a-lot. Their canned goods, cereals, meats are as good as anyone else's. Kroger only for sale items
When Walmart picks up a product to sell, they will generally become the majority of the business for that particular manufacturer. When that happens they have the leverage to demand a lower price.
Manufacturers are then left with few options:
-Lower the price to a level that would likely result in unsustainable margins
-If it's not already, move production overseas
-Find less expensive materials/methods to manufacture the product
-Close up shop
Two of those things happen, the other two do not.
http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
http://www.demos.org/publication/not-made-america-top-10-ways-walmart-destroys-us-manufacturing-jobs
http://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-ratchets-up-pressure-on-suppliers-to-cut-prices-1427845404
http://grist.org/business-technology/2011-11-11-is-your-stuff-falling-apart-thank-walmart/
Thank you for that highly detailed grocery post.
Must be awful to spend your free time shuffling through coupons and visiting 3 different grocery stores to save $4.13. Very JonathanW like.
People like you are the worst! But I get it, at least enough to know what your trying to accomplish. Sadly you don't value your time at all.
Some people waste time playing golf, watching tv, drinking....I enjoy grocery shopping. It satiates the "hunting/gathering to provide for my family" instinct.
Don't do coupons. When my kids were little, the three hours the four of them and I spent grocery shopping a couple of Saturdays per month were the some of the best spent hours of my life. More guys should try it.
I live in a small town, we only have a Walmart, Food City, and a Sav-A-Lot. Walmart is cheaper than FC and I don't care for most of the brands that SAL has. If I don't need much I'll still go to FC because I can park closer, but I like Walmart.
Only thing that PMO, are the people on the motorized buggies that think they can block the whole aisle. GRRRR
Only thing that PMO, are the people on the motorized buggies that think they can block the whole aisle. GRRRR
Walking down the cereal aisle satisfies the "hunting/gathering" instinct? ![[laughing]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/classic/laugh.r191677.gif "Laughing [laughing]")
Walking down the cereal aisle satisfies the "hunting/gathering" instinct?
Cheerios are notoriously difficult to trap.
We'd do multiple grocery stores. Certain stores had better prices on certain items than others. We had a great time.
Worked for me. Didn't have to kill-em or skin-em.Walking down the cereal aisle satisfies the "hunting/gathering" instinct?
Not all but seems like most of those folks would be a lot better off if they'd just walk. The ones that really frost me are the ones that let their able bodied children drive a motor-buggy around.
The self-checkouts aren't asking for $15 an hour minimum wage just because they exist. They also don't have to provide medical insurance for the self-checkouts and their offspring.
Yep. And it won't be long until McD's and other m w paying employers follow suit. That's exactly what I'd do if pushed to pay unskilled employees that much.
Just flip that touchscreen around and punch in your own order. Boggles my mind why they have waited so long.
In ten years, the McD's and other similar joints that still have an interior "dining room" will be the exception rather than the rule. Go inside a fast food restaurant. If you're lucky, there will be a register manned; if not, give the girl with the attitude about 5 minutes to saunter up to the register..mumble a "can I take your order" without a hint of a smile; wait another 10 minutes for your order while they process at least 10 drive-thru orders; get your food, go to your seat only to invariably find they've made a mistake.
IMO, not only will it be a money issue, but such employers won't be able to find enough people who are 1) intelligent enough to do the job 2) willing to show up at least 2 out of every 5 assigned work days.
I get the "quality time spent with kids" part. Especially if they enjoyed the experience. But how much money in gas did you spend driving around from store to store to save the extra $$$ on products? Small town or not…it was probably close to a wash.
Just start using Walmart Savings Catcher. Would make your life a hell of a lot simpler. I try to stick with the store brand products on many things, but sometimes when I buy brand name product, somewhere else may have it on sale and I get the difference back. So say the box of Pop Tarts I get is $4 at Walmart (or whatever they charge, I can't remember what it is), but Food Lion has it for $3.50, well I get that 50 cents back. It only works based on brand though, it won't price compare the Walmart ripoff of Dr. Pepper to the Kroger ripoff of Dr. Pepper, for example
In my area, it searches the prices of over 20 local competitors, according to the app. My parents are in a much, much bigger city, and the app says it searches something like 70 local competitors. It searches grocery stores, drug stores like CVS, stores like Dollar General and Dollar tree, etc. From a purely money standpoint, there isn't any reason to shop anywhere else. Now if you like Kroger brand products better than Walmart or something else subjective like that it's a different story.
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Less than that. I live by myself so I normally end up spending under $200 a month in groceries buying mostly store brand stuff. I get a few bucks here and there but it's better than nothing, certainly cheaper and saves more time than going store to store for what little name brand stuff I buy.
Not as close as you'd think. Just on canned goods, I could save about three bucks right there. 20 years ago, that was more than enough to buy a gallon of gas.
This might or might not make sense, but I realize there are costs for lots of things. In my way of thinking, I could either spend an extra, say five bucks even on the gas (though I didn't) and spend that time being with my kids, teaching them and enjoying the experience (not to mention the fringe benefits of giving my wife three hours of quiet time
. Or I could give Mr. Kroger an extra 5 bucks for his over-priced green beans/ get the shopping over with and go home. My way of thinking was to spend the $ on what I enjoyed rather than encouraging Mr. Kroger to continue ripping me off. I guess I like choosing who rips me off...in those cases, I chose the gasoline guys.Granted, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it worked for me and my family. Good times.
I understand the "time" thing, but in my way of looking at it, if I wasn't spending grocery time with my kids, what else would I have been doing that was as constructive and , in retrospect, that would have forged the memories we have? Playing golf? Watching tv? Going out with friends? Fishing? Compared to being with my kids, THOSE things would have been a waste of time.
I'd encourage young dads to try it and see what happens.
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I think there may be something to this -- we are talking about the land of the "Wu" after all aren't we?
Also -- I think MANY of those Chinese restaurants all over our nation are ready to release biological warfare on us at a moments' notice
An army hidden in plain sight
If they coordinate that botulism attack with low-tech jihadists and Mexican drug gangs unleashing terror as well --- then you have significant destabilization across the US
Right UNDER OUR NOSES!!!
I guess it's called getting a dose of your own medicine ……?
Expect to wake up one day and see attacks from all directions - some surprise sources like the 'botulism' thing - some not so surprising……the timing has to be perfect but it's coming
I'm stocking up on extra corn and toilet paper….from Wal Mart of course
I'm stocking up on extra corn and toilet paper….from Wal Mart of course
Like I said earlier…I get the "quality time" thing. And i get teaching your kids things like "value shopping". Only thing I struggle with is the 3 hours spent grocery shopping.
And to answer your question…charity work in your community, go to the park, play basketball, throw baseball, kick soccer balls, visit a nursing home, visit the children's wing of the local hospital (have your kids make homemade cards before you go), play tag, jogging, nature hikes, canoeing, visit the local library (donate some of the kids' old books while you are there), plant trees at your crib and/or somewhere in the community, wood working projects, teaching them basic mechanic skills, church projects, fishing, riding bikes, playing dolls (yes I have played Barbie dolls & have participated in many a tea party with my daughters), etc…are all things you can do with your kids in addition to grocery shopping during a 3 hour span.
There's 10,000+ things you can do WITH your kids during that 3 hour span. All productive in their own way. Just wondering why you couldn't grocery shop for say an hour or so and then spend the other two hours on something from the other 10,000 things category. There's a ton of opportunity there to teach your kids about nature, the importance of exercise, being active in your community, helping others less fortunate and just as important…teaching them about the value of time management.
Having said all that…the essential take away from your inclusion in this entire thread is to make sure that you at least were smart enough and considerate enough to have used a good portion of that 3 hours to effectively teach each and every one of those kids the moral imperative of returning the shopping cart to the cart corral. If you effectively accomplished that task then I give you a pass. If you didn't…and you raised an entire fleet of future slags that are going to leave their shopping carts randomly and aimlessly floating around the parking lot...then you, sir, are officially dead to me…you cart corral neglecting bastiche!!!
Chuck, man. I was explaining a business venture, so technically we're talking business, which makes everything legally binding.
True that. But I believe someone is avoiding the question. Did you or did you not teach those kids proper shopping cart corral etiquette?
ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!
Yes!
Not only to put the shopping carts in the corral, but to occasionally capture a stray and put it in its proper place. Sometimes, we grabbed a parking lot wandering cart and used it for our shopping.
I am aghast, sir. Aghast.
What's not to love about a hot dog and a Coke for $1.50? A barrel of pretzels for $7? A Sunday stroll through the sample aisles that can qualify as lunch?
If you don't like Costco, then the reasonable and logical conclusion is that you hate America. Tell me, do you enjoy drop kicking baby bald eagles in the face?
But I get you on making a murderer.
"I like to send my money to China and Bentonville, Arkansas where I will never see it again, in order to save $3.95 per month."
I shop at the walmart marketplace in palomar for convenience type items because my office is about 400 feet from it. I spent $1,275 there last year and just cashed in my $13.70 in savings catcher for the year. I seriously doubt they are even giving you 10% of the actual cost comparison savings. It's literally just a ploy to get you to not think about shopping somewhere else.
