This is really a rant about choice in grocery stores – but it’s still true!!!!
News Flash
The news flash just came across – Kroger’s is buying Giant Eagle. If you live in the Midwest, you might have a pretty good idea what that means. You see, at least here in Central Ohio, there are limited alternatives to going to the super-market. You can go to Wal-Mart on Meijer’s, for a full “supermarket” experience. Of course, there’s also that Wal-Mart experience included, and I’m not so convinced that the fresh goods are always quite so fresh.
Or you could go, with thousands of your “closest friends”, to Sam’s Club or Costco, the “supermarket” warehouses. But go and try to buy a can of green beans, or a jar of Jif’s Peanut Butter, or a 12 ounce piece of salmon. That’s not what they do. You can absolutely get a case of green beans, at a lower per can cost then other places, or two giant jars of Peanut Butter, enough to last to the next lunar eclipse.
And the salmon, well, you could feed the neighborhood in almost Biblical proportions. Sam’s and Costco are great if you’ve got a lot of storage (48 rolls of toilet paper). But if, like us, it’s just two humans (and four dogs), either place seems to be overkill for a lot of things. I’ve still got two of the four bottles of Cholula Hot Sauce that we bought as a pack back in one of our first forays out during Covid days.
In then there’s Aldi’s . They run a great commercial, about a wife trying to coax her husband out of the car to shop there. She hands him his quarter to “rent” a shopping cart. You get the quarter back if you return the cart to the “corral”. And I must admit, I’m that guy. I’ve never been to Aldi’s, so I can’t speak to the experience there.
In the Day
Back in the “day”, here near Columbus you had some choices. There was Kroger’s the omnipresent grocery giant out of Cincinnati. Then, there was Big Bear, the once dominant Columbus grocery store. And then there was Giant Eagle (Eagles and Bears, neither one of which should be for sale in the store!!). What Kroger didn’t have, you could often find in one of the other two. It’s a funny thing, here in capitalist America. It’s called competition.
Of course, when I first moved to Pataskala, all of those choices were, “in town”, ten miles away in Franklin County. But even here in the “village”, we had a choice of the Village Market (first called Roseberry’s, then Gardner’s, finally Cardinal’s). And then there was that grocery right “downtown”, My Little Market. I remember in the first months living here, I went in there to buy a quart of milk. When I got back to my apartment to pour a glass, nothing came out of the carton. It was in full “curdle”. That was the last time for me at My Little Market – and it closed soon after.
In the early-1990’s, Kroger’s bought up the big field north of Broad Street where the farm implement place used to be, and soon we had our own Kroger’s. (The school didn’t send the marching band for the grand opening, but the band did play when McDonald’s opened just down the block near town). That marked the death knell for Cardinal’s, who couldn’t compete in either price or products with the massive corporation.
Food Monopoly
Over the years many citizens of Pataskala (Pataskalans, Pataskala-ites, Pat-alaskans?) have noticed that the prices at “our” Kroger are often higher than ones “in the city”. The reason is pretty clear. There is no competition for Pataskala’s Kroger’s. In fact, the nearest competitor, Aldi’s, is six miles away, a fifteen minute drive. And Aldi’s really isn’t that competitive with Kroger’s.
There’s an urban planning term called a “food desert”. That’s a community that no longer has any easily accessible grocery stores, so that folks have to leave the community to shop. Here in Pataskala, we are not in a food desert. But we are under a food “monopoly”, with Kroger able to set almost whatever price they chose. Don’t like it? Then drive out of town to get you groceries (and, by the way, fill up at our gas station on the way out!!).
And now in the Ohio’s market of “marketplaces”, Kroger just bought out their biggest competitor. There are over 100 Giant Eagles in the state, and almost 200 Kroger’s. That combined total would surpass even Wal-Mart, with 172 stores.
Of course, there’s always the Dollar Store down the street. The limited selections of beer are cold, and the potato chips are, usually, fresh.
