The Situation at Food Bazaar - Baccalà, Mussels, Rodriquez, Valentina, and Checking Out

Yesterday I made Italian-style mussels, eggplant parmesan, garlic bread (2 ways), and carrot cookies. I went to Food Bazaar for this because Key Food made me feel bad/gross/repulsive for buying mussels there and because the mussels are $3 for 2 lbs (instead of $5) and because Timmy wanted me to get him Christmas presents from there.

They have a whole table of "baccalà," but it was labeled as Alaskan pollock, not cod. I looked up cod on my iHorn seafood sustainability app, and it said cod is overfished. I didn't buy any.

The mussels were in ice and were much cheaper than Key Food. They had a label that said they came out of the ocean in Maine on Sunday. The seafood section at Food Bazaar's really busy, but that's because it's good.

That whole store was too busy. There were too many people with carts just milling about. Navigating the produce section was like a video game. Every time you come to the end of a table, someone with a cart blocks you in.


Timmy wanted me to get him some Rodriguez. It's a fudge or something. I spent forever searching the Hispanic dessert aisle and couldn't find it. Then I did. It was hiding in the next aisle over.

 Rodriquez. Lots.

 

Not Rodriguez.

I was very very pleased to find Valentina Black Label (tied with Cholula for best hot sauce) on sale. $2 for 34 oz. I got it.

The normal size doesn't last long enough.

Then I circled back around to pick up my mussels (I didn't want to tote creatures around a whole store) and went to check out. It sucked.  After the jump, I will rant. I rant about how the lines are managed. Then I rant about the people in front of me.

Food Bazaar always has insanely long lines. There are many reasons for this. They have a big parking lot, so people can drive cars there and shop once a week or even less frequently. They have lots of carts. They have a big store. All of those allow people to take a lot of groceries with them in line.

I'm getting off track. I studied operations management. That does not cause long lines.  They have long lines for 2 reasons. Anyone who runs a grocery store should be aware of these. Anyone who shops at a grocery store should remain ignorant of these because it just makes you mad.

Line management: The most efficient way to deal with lines is to have 1 long line that feeds into many cashiers. Trader Joe's understands this. This is not easy or even necessary in most grocery stores--Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are extremes. But Food Bazaar takes the opposite extreme. There are about 20 lines. This makes how quickly you get through the line highly dependent on your luck in picking the right line. Furthermore, toward the end of the lines, they run together so you can't tell to what extent everyone else believes they are in a Trader Joe's type queue or in a specific line or in a free for all. Very frustrating.

Check-out itself. There are giant lines with money just sitting around WAITING to go in Food Bazaar's pockets. All Food Bazaar has to do is scan items and take it. Yet they make the cashiers stop taking money in order to bag groceries. Scan a little bag a little scan a little bag a little. The Music Man himself couldn't have devised a worse system. They probably think the cashier has to bag because there isn't room for a bagger or they don't want to pay for a bagger. I contend that a bagger pays for himself in the busy situations because it moves people through the line. Moving people through the line is a synonym for moving money to Food Bazaar's pocket! When it's not busy, the bagger can stock shelves or something. There also is not very much room at all at the cash register after the item is scanned. They should redesign that. The store is designed to shop once a week or less (parking lot, carts) but the check out is designed for 1 basket of groceries. Scan the items and drop them directly into the bag instead of putting them on the table then bagging them. Drop the filled bags directly in a cart or on the floor. Spend 1 minute in Trader Joe's and learn how to do it.

The people in front of me: I don't know what is wrong with these people. They spent $370 at Food Bazaar. Food Bazaar is the cheapest place in the world. If they were at Giant Eagle, that would have been $500 I'm sure. I had the misfortune to pick their line (see my first point about line management) and I waited over 10 minutes. What really got me is that they paid for $300 of it in cash. WHY WOULD YOU CARRY THAT MUCH CASH? Then paid for the rest with a Bank of America credit card. If they had paid for all of it with a Chase Freedom card, they would have saved almost $20.

I hate cash.