Interesting. All the local shops here are far and away more expensive than the chains. I want to shop local, but everything looks to be 20-30% higher. I can’t justify it.
Do you have any local shops that cater to an immigrant community, such as Asian, Hispanic, African…? These tend to be so much cheaper than what I think of as “white people grocery stores” (Safeway, Albertsons, Publix, whatever is in your region). They might not have everything you’re looking for, but they’re fantastic sources for fresh food.
P.S. To be clear, I don’t actually think that those big name stores cater exclusively to white people. I just go to a lot of Asian stores and I needed a way to easily communicate to my husband which kind of store I’m going to (he likes to ask for ice cream and frozen pizzas that they don’t have at the Asian stores), and that’s what evolved for us.
This pattern can sometimes be seen even in the same store when you look at things in other aisles vs the international aisle. Early in the pandemic, I was expecting food supply to get disrupted and decided to stock up on some spices while they were still available. A large bag of cumin (like 1kg) in the international aisle was about the same price as a 250g cumin package in the spice aisle, and both were cheaper than a plastic shaker filled with like 100g.
I’m not sure if that’s still the case though. I’m still going through that 1kg of cumin today, glad that I opted for the whole cumin seed instead of ground because the whole seeds last longer.
