Another reason to shop at Kroger

I've shared before that we do a lot our grocery shopping at Kroger. We like their pharmacy and one pharmacist in particular. We like the fact that they are convenient to our home and have stores located near where we work. Kroger also has reasonable prices and pays double coupon price on coupons valued at 50 cents or less. We do shop at other grocery stores, but with the price of gas, we've had to reign in my shop three stores to get the best deal on absolutely everything routine. At $3.00+ a gallon, you've got to save a LOT of money to make it worth driving even a couple of extra miles!

Recently we've been excited that they installed a gas center. When you spend $100 in a month on groceries, you can buy gas for 10 cents below the "regular price" if you're a cardholder. Their cardholder gas price is typically comparable to Sam's Club and Costco in our area. I don't ever have a problem spending $100 in a month on groceries, so I take advantage of their low-cost gasoline on a regular basis. If we hit an odd point in the month where we don't have enough to fill up both cars, we'll hit Costco. (By the way, it is more challenging not to hit that $200 mark that would allow us each to fill up a car at the lower price. Guerilla frugality does that to you!)

The one complaint I've had about them in the past is they typically don't have good customer service. I don't mean once in a while. I don't mean at certain stores. It just seemed as if senior management of the company never figured out how to train their employees to provide good customer service! This is the primary reason many of my friends have chosen to shop at another more expensive very large store chain in town. That plus the fact that they are owned and operated by a Christian family and treat their customers like royalty!

Today I decided to write about two wonderful changes I discovered when I did my shopping this morning. The change that I noticed most readily: excellent customer service!  Wow! Two separate employees actually lead me to the particular item I asked each of them about. (A lagging economy of decreased store profits will kick up the competition a couple of notches to keep your business.) I also was pleasantly surprised to find out I received 5 cents credit for each cloth bag I brought in to pack my groceries in! This will be a regular event now. I made 30 cents for doing what I normally do anyway!

So . . . in this age of high gas prices I can now take care of just about all my errands at one time, in one place: Drop off a prescription; shop; pick up my prescription; get paid 5 cents per cloth bag; pump my gas. Pretty economical and actually pretty green! Oh, and we recently received a coupon where we can earn up to $60 in groceries ($20 each per) by transferring or filling a new prescription!)

My total savings today with coupons, 30 cent cloth bag rebate and store specials came out at my typical 31% savings. I had some good coupons and also received a bunch in a booklet from Kroger that I receive as a monthly mailing.

I might have saved a bit more, but we had signed up to provide 15 drinks and 15 fruit servings for CARITAS lunches. Our Sunday school class will be meeting to pack lunches rather than have our usual lesson this week as we'll have 28 guests (families with children) staying at our church beginning tonight. I didn't mind spending the extra for on sale juice boxes and cups of applesauce!