rebeccmeister (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rebeccmeister) wrote2025-01-07 11:01 am
rebeccmeister) wrote2025-01-07 11:01 am
The Big Chop is Dead, Long Live the Big Chop [food, stuff]
One of the local grocery chains around here is called Price Chopper. The people who own Price Chopper, also own grocery stores they have rebranded as "Market32," which are supposed to be more upscale than their Price Chopper locations. But we know what they are, so we call the smaller, nearby Market32's "The Chopper," and then we have called their larger location in a strip mall on Central Ave The Big Chopper.
While we were out of town, there was a story in the paper about how a different grocery chain, Shop Rite, was closing its stores in the area. If you don't already know this, grocery stores are big business, but they often have a tricky time staying in business because profit margins are often slim. There was also something about Price Chopper taking over the Shop Rite locations, including a Shop Rite location along Central Ave, near the Big Chopper.
Anyway, the other day while we were driving around running errands, I noticed that the prior Shop Rite has been transformed into a Market 32.
This morning, I needed to visit the Big Chopper to buy some littleneck clams to add to our campus saltwater tanks. Well, when I got over there, lo and behold, the Big Chopper no longer exists. The strip mall plaza that used to contain the fun Ocean State Job Lots store, the pet food store, and the Big Chopper, is looking pretty damned empty now.
I don't yet know the bike route over to what we should henceforth call the ShopRite Chopper. Central Ave is a terrible street to try and ride a bike on, so we typically access shops using some strategic back routes.
Thankfully, on the more accessible side of things, there's one other big grocery store, Hannaford's. We just never got into the habit of shopping at the Hannaford's previously, even though it's more convenient to reach, in the same strip mall as the nearest Asian grocery store. Today was a good day to start changing that, by scrutinizing their inventory more closely.
They did have littleneck clams available, and also the salsa and cheese we tend to buy from conventional grocery stores. Altogether it actually looks like the Hannaford inventory is better than the Big Chopper's inventory.
So maybe I just won't bother trying to figure out how to get to the ShopRite Chopper. I'd only ever been to that ShopRite once, one year when we participated in a Cranksgiving event that involved going to a bunch of different grocery stores to get food for a local charity. That trip didn't give me any reasons to work on going back.
While we were out of town, there was a story in the paper about how a different grocery chain, Shop Rite, was closing its stores in the area. If you don't already know this, grocery stores are big business, but they often have a tricky time staying in business because profit margins are often slim. There was also something about Price Chopper taking over the Shop Rite locations, including a Shop Rite location along Central Ave, near the Big Chopper.
Anyway, the other day while we were driving around running errands, I noticed that the prior Shop Rite has been transformed into a Market 32.
This morning, I needed to visit the Big Chopper to buy some littleneck clams to add to our campus saltwater tanks. Well, when I got over there, lo and behold, the Big Chopper no longer exists. The strip mall plaza that used to contain the fun Ocean State Job Lots store, the pet food store, and the Big Chopper, is looking pretty damned empty now.
I don't yet know the bike route over to what we should henceforth call the ShopRite Chopper. Central Ave is a terrible street to try and ride a bike on, so we typically access shops using some strategic back routes.
Thankfully, on the more accessible side of things, there's one other big grocery store, Hannaford's. We just never got into the habit of shopping at the Hannaford's previously, even though it's more convenient to reach, in the same strip mall as the nearest Asian grocery store. Today was a good day to start changing that, by scrutinizing their inventory more closely.
They did have littleneck clams available, and also the salsa and cheese we tend to buy from conventional grocery stores. Altogether it actually looks like the Hannaford inventory is better than the Big Chopper's inventory.
So maybe I just won't bother trying to figure out how to get to the ShopRite Chopper. I'd only ever been to that ShopRite once, one year when we participated in a Cranksgiving event that involved going to a bunch of different grocery stores to get food for a local charity. That trip didn't give me any reasons to work on going back.