How to Buy Groceries: Supermarket Shopping 101
This is the second part of a two-part series on how to get the most of your supermarket-shopping experience.Part One discussed how supermarkets try to get you to spend more time and money than you originally wanted. This part will lead you step by step through a supermarket trip, and give you tips on how to buy (or not buy) food the right way.
Supermarkets are overwhelming and intimidating. You’re in a rush and you pop into a supermarket for some basics, and you end up spending $200 (and made some bad shopping decisions along the way). But we’ve all got to eat. How do you win at shopping at the supermarket? What sort of shopping decisions would make us healthier, wealthier, and wiser? We asked five experts who could help us break down a typical shopping trip:Bon Appétit senior food editor Dawn Perry; environmental psychologist and author of What Women Want: The Science of Female Shopping Paco Underhill; architect and supermarket designer Kevin Kelley, of the firmShook Kelley; the director of the graduate nutrition program at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, Sharon Akabas; and efficiency expert Gwynnae Byrd. They’ve agreed to help us lead you through the basics of getting the most out of your supermarket shopping, section by section, from the parking lot to checkout.
But first, don’t forget your coupons! And you made a shopping list for the week, right? Because, as supermarket designer Kelley says: “If you go in there without a game plan, you’re at their mercy!”
“The guy who goes in shopping for one meal at a time?” Akabas adds. “That’s the guy buying all the candy bars.”
Note: Don’t be the guy buying all the candy bars. Be the guy (or gal) who grocery shops smart, like this:
Produce
“In general, look for firm, perky, heavy-for-its-size vegetables,” Perry says. “This doesn’t mean buy the biggest squash you see—the bigger the thing the more likely it is to be mostly water and fibrous flavorless matter.Avoid bruised or damaged produce unless you’re making applesauce or something. Pick through those avocados, bananas, and plums—there are perfect ones hiding, though they’re probably not at the bottom. And consider the structural integrity of those piles before you pull one fruit out. (We’ve all sent the lemons tumbling, right? No? Just me? Oh.)”
If you’re trying to eat healthier, think in terms of deeper colors, Akabas suggests: “Leafy greens, kale, mustard greens, and collards are better than an iceberg lettuce.”
Remember the most important thing about shopping for produce: You’re just wasting money and not making yourself any healthier if you buy a veggie that you’re not going to eat—you’re just ensuring that you’re that much less likely to buy vegetables next time.
Indeed, in the produce section, the average shopper’s biggest problem is waste. Those rows of hearty greens, bright-red rhubarb, and juicy-looking fruits look great under the theatrical lighting of the produce section, but people often don’t give them a second look once they get them home. “One of the ironies of the American produce consumer is that 20 to 30 percent of the produce that we buy never gets consumed,” psychologist Underhill says. “One of the key aspects of better shopping is buying what you’re actually going to end up eating.”
To that point, it’s sometimes better to buy frozen than fresh—but more on that over by the freezers.
Bakery/Deli
The manned counters at the supermarket are where brushing up on your people skills really pays off. “Talk to people! Ask questions! Make friends and get special treatment!” Perry says. “This is how the world works. The people behind all of those counters work hard and very likely know more about meat/fish/cake/astronomy than you do. I had a teacher in culinary school whose father quit being an astrophysicist to sell produce (so he would have ‘more time to read’). You never know.”
At the deli, don’t be shy about asking to try something out: “Ask for samples!” Perry says.
To save time, don’t be embarrassed to let the supermarket bakery help you out. “Most supermarkets are finishing parbaked loaves in house so you still have a good chance of getting a ‘freshy’ without a trip downtown to the artisan bakery,” Perry says.
And you may be tempted to stock up on meats, but getting greedy often leads to waste. “Think about how many sammies you’ll be making that week and for how many—two to four ounces is a nice ballpark amount of cold cuts per sandwich,” Perry says. “My mom will buy deli chicken in bulk when it’s on sale (you heard me, chicken not turkey) and freeze it for later. Great for when The War comes, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Just buy what you’ll use in the next four or five days, ’cause after that it starts to get slimy and weird.”
Butcher/Seafood
Just like at the deli or bakery, there’s usually a dedicated butcher or fishmonger behind the counter to answer your questions and get you cuts or seafood that aren’t prepackaged and already on the shelves. And just like at the deli or bakery, you can only benefit by making this guy or gal your friend.
If your major concern is price and efficiency, though, then Byrd recommends you follow her lead and think about buying in bulk—if you have the freezer space for it, of course. “I’ll go to places like Costco and get a big thing of chicken breasts, bring it home, and immediately separate it out into two breasts at a time in Ziploc bags,” she says. “Then I’ll have things at the ready when I need them, saving money and time.”
(She makes sure she dates each baggie with the date in Sharpie, of course, to ensure her meat isn’t sitting in the back of the freezer for five months.)
And when it comes to fish, don’t turn your nose up at the frozen stuff, Perry says. “Where are you from? Near the sea, or other body of clean-ish water that produces things like crab, shrimp, or trout? If so, buy fresh local seafood,” she says. “Otherwise I advise to buy frozen. In the middle of the country so much is shipped frozen and defrosted you’ll have better luck doing that at home just before you’re ready to use it (most seafood defrosts fast under cold running water) than buying the stuff that who knows when it was pulled from the freezer.”
Dairy/Cheese
Remember what Paco Underhill told us? The dairy section in most supermarkets is in the back lefthand corner—farthest from the entrance—because almost everyone has to get something dairy-related when they go grocery shopping.
With that in mind, remember that the store and food manufacturers know this as well, and that they’ve probably studded the area with products that are meant to suck you in, but aren’t necessarily a wise choice for your diet or pocketbook—do you really think you’re going to save that much time by paying a premium for mediocre pre-made pudding?
When she goes to the cheese section, Perry goes straight to whatever’s being showcased. “That center cheese display is where you’ll find the good stuff—fresh mozzarella, other cheeses of the world, and cheese balls,” she says.
Canned/Dry Goods
Canned and dry goods have their place in any kitchen, and offer an easy and affordable way to keep staples at the ready at all times. “Beans, tomatoes, coconut milk are all great to have on hand,” Perry says. “Great organic cans sell for 99 cents and make for meals in a flash. Just avoid the dented and bulging ones—why risk it?”
The important thing is to try to limit your canned- and dry-goods purchases to when you really need them, and to know what your family will actually eat. “Stock up once a month,” Perry says. “You know your family—are you potatoes or rice? Brown or white? Dried beans are delicious, nutritious, and cheap as hell. Keep a couple one-pound bags on hand for big winter pots that will feed you cheaply for a week.”
And don’t turn up your nose at the generic labels, either: “I prefer to buy organic, but if it looks wack and the generic looks great, or the price is exorbitant, then I’ll go generic or other,” Perry says. “I have no problem buying generic if it meets my above criteria. Sometimes the Kroger brand really is the most delicious and almost always the best value, but this requires some research. You may have to conduct your own taste test—or we can do it—to find your favorites.”
Frozen
Frozen foods get a bad rap, but you’d be surprised how many experts embrace them. Not only do they help you keep costs down (remember Byrd’s bulk chicken) and, ironically, fresher (remember Perry’s far-from-the-ocean frozen fish), they’re often actually healthier than the fresh stuff. “In general, frozen is fine,” Akabas says. “In fact, some of the labile frozen vegetables are healthier than fresh—broccoli, green beans, Brussels sprouts—and people can save time.”
That said, there are some frozen goods that really are a waste of your time and money when you can make them better at home with little effort, Perry says. “Do not buy the frozen pie crust!” Perry says. “But I’m not opposed to having an organic frozen pizza in the freezer for real (drunk) emergencies.”
Junk Food
The soda and junk-food aisles are the Balkans of the supermarket—they’re not a terribly productive region, yet everyone seems to be fighting dirty over the space. “The center of the store is troubled,” Underhill says. “One of the things that we measure is the rate at which someone walks in the door compared to the rate at which someone walks down an aisle. From our database, we know that less than 10 percent of the people who walk in the door actually walk down the carbonated-beverage aisle, for example.”
Not surprisingly, the more conscientious the person who buys for a family is, the less likely he or she is to buy soda pop, cookies, or crackers. And men are far more likely to buy carbonated beverages than women, who are more likely to avoid that aisle altogether.
(By the way, experts who study supermarket-shopper behavior seem to agree that, on the whole, men are kind of idiots—far more likely to be distracted by flashy bells and whistles and walk home with a completely unnecessary corkscrew than women, whom supermarket designer Kelley called “shrewd” and thoughtful in comparison. “Women have an instinct,” he says. “They want to go down the beverage aisle too, but they know it’ll make their kids’ teeth fall out.”)
Of course, your relationship to certain supermarket aisles changes dramatically when you have kids, who havebuilt-in sweet tooths. Akabas doesn’t sugarcoat the experience: “Going to the supermarket with kids is deadly.”
And, as we discussed last time, food manufacturers, supermarkets, and marketers are not friends to a parent’s nerves, making sure that their brightly colored sugar bombs are strategically placed so that rugrats are inexorably drawn to them. You can try to avoid those aisles as long as you can, but sooner than you think, your wee one will be making a beeline for cartoon characters peddling corn syrup, and there’s not much you can do to avoid it. So at some point you’ll have to address it head on. “Think of it as an opportunity for a teachable moment for your family,” Akabas says. “But, of course, you’d rather do it on those shopping trips where you’ll be the least rushed.”
Check Out
The checkout lane is either the best or worst part of the supermarket experience. You’re almost free! And yet you’re never more a prisoner. And that’s why this is where the barrage of marketing for the things you really don’t need gets really intense: Polar-fresh minty gum! The latest details on that reality star’s crash wedding diet! Your last chance for a full day’s worth of salt and fat in one neon-orange dose!
“The most profitable section of the store tends to be checkout,” Underhill says. “And the person who in general does the most shopping at checkout is the third person in line.”
That’s the guy or gal who isn’t paying for groceries, or placing items on the conveyer belt, but who has nothing to do but wait and consider adding just one or two more items to his or her bill. And that includes magazines (even Bon Appétit!), which are among the supermarket’s biggest profit makers. “The margin on magazines tends to be very large,” Underhill says. “Of course, the typical magazine is handled by ten people before it ends up being purchased, which almost suggests the magazines should be sanitized.”
So remember: The checkout aisle is where you’re at your weakest, and where it’s most important for you to stick to your plan. Sure, it’s only a buck to toss that sack of generic milk-chocolate turtles onto your pile, but if you’re making impulse purchases like that every time you go to the market, it adds up.
As for whether the old-fashioned checkout line or the self-checkout is more efficient, Underhill says that—at least for now—it’s not really about how much time you save, but the sense that you’re being active. “Going through self-checkout may actually take the same amount of time as if you stood in line, but you have the perception of being moved through faster because you’re actually doing something,” he says.
And for lots of people, that’s worth something.
Things to Digest
Introducing a little variety into their meals is often one of the biggest challenges a family faces. And the tens of thousands of products on offer at your average supermarket ironically make it even harder, not easier.
“Most consumers shop on autopilot. They’re not engaged. They come in a grocery store saying, ‘What I really want is variety,’” Kelley says. “And they leave with damn near the exact same thing as the last time. The store is just too overwhelming for the average person.”
“If you go into the supermarket and get the things you actually wanted to for the first time, you’re already doing better,” Akabas says. “If you keep at it and make it every third time you shop, then you’re being more mindful and starting to be more in charge of what you buy. You’ll be doing it more consistently, coming in with a plan, knowing how the lighting, the smells, and the placement work to get you to buy things you didn’t intend to buy, and that as soon as you go in people are trying to separate you from your money. You’re finally the one at the wheel of the car.”
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