Dear editor:
In reference to the article on the front page of The Humboldt Sun dated July 3 — 6, 2015; Rumors confirmed: Local supermarket closing:
This comes as no big surprise; some years ago when Walmart announced it was going to upgrade its store to a superstore, the warning went out to the local grocery stores, “Bring your prices in line or close your doors.”
Albertsons saw the handwriting on the wall and sold their local store.
Khoury’s set up shop in the old Albertsons building and appeared to have had good intentions of being a real competitor to Walmart.
Khoury’s and Raley’s have hung in there for some years, but Raley’s apparently couldn’t compete for one reason or another. That leaves Khoury’s and the Uptown Market as the only other competition left in town.
Sorry to see Raley’s leaving town. In my opinion, Uptown Market will be the only one left standing when the smoke finally clears.
More and more we find being retired on a fixed income and while living some distance out of town we do our shopping once a week, usually on Fridays or Saturdays after checking out the local sales advertisements in the paper.
As an example: on a recent shopping trip to town we stopped at Khoury’s first because they advertised a case good sale, my wife loaded up a couple carts with about a dozen cases of can goods. While she was finishing up with her shopping I pulled out my trusty pocket calculator checking the individual can prices on the case good sale as I wondered around through the aisles locating the individual can goods located on the shelf. Wonder of wonders; the shelf prices were exactly the same per unit as by the case price advertised as specials. No savings here; we put the case goods back in the stack and left the store without purchasing a thing.
Our next stop was Raley’s where I checked my note pad item for items. Raley’s prices were either a little higher or lower per unit but close enough for government work. From there we went on to Walmart where I did the same price checking finding for the most part lower prices per unit can.
Lessons learned; “Let the buyer beware!”
You can bet when the Uptown Market comes on with their case good specials we will be sure and check their unit prices against everyone’s regular everyday shelf prices. I suppose you can call me cautious and cheap.
