Free Republic

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education... Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket. No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality. Responding...

Researchers from the University of Arizona swabbed shopping cart handles in four states looking for bacterial contamination. Of the 85 carts examined, 72 percent turned out to have a marker for fecal bacteria. The researchers took a closer look at the samples from 36 carts and discovered Escherichia coli, more commonly known as E. coli, on 50 percent of them - along with a host of other types of bacteria. Shopping cart handles aren't the only thing you need to worry about when you go to the local supermarket, Gerba added. In other research, he's found that reusable shopping bags...

The typical modern American supermarket stocks 48,000 items, each battling for precious shelf space. How do they get there? Why are they arranged the way they are? Did you know that some stores use heat maps to track which aisles you walk down — and which ones you don't? Or that they put the milk at the end of the aisle so you're forced to pass a hundred other items on your way to get it? It's all done to gain an edge in a cutthroat business built on razor-thin margins. CNBC’s Tyler Mathisen goes behind the scenes for a...

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. on Tuesday announced it will close 30 of its 514 stores, and cut 120 jobs in its corporate and field support staffs as it deals with a continued weak economy. The Jacksonville-based supermarket chain wouldn't say which stores are closing until company officials can inform the employees involved, which should happen by the end of Wednesday. The stores being closed "can't operate efficiently or profitably" in this economy, CEO Peter Lynch said. "We just don't see a lot of good things down the road," he said. "These steps are being taken to position the company for another...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-first-lady-foundation-chair-announcement-conference-call Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the First Lady For Immediate Release April 01, 2010 Remarks by the First Lady, Senator Bill Frist, Mayor Cory Booker and Dr. Jim Gavin at Foundation Chair Announcement Conference Call Via telephone 11:02 A.M. EDT MRS. OBAMA: Well, good morning, everyone. This is Mrs. Obama. It’s good to have you all on the line. Thank you so much for joining us as we take another very important step forward in the work to address America’s childhood obesity crisis. This...

Proof of what can happen if a wife or girlfriend drags her husband or boyfriend along shopping This letter was actually sent by Tesco's Head Office to a customer in Oxford, UK : Dear Mrs. Murray, Whilst we would like to thank you for your valued custom and use of the Tesco Loyalty Card, the Manager of our store in Banbury is considering banning you and your family from shopping with us, unless your husband stops his antics. Below is a list of his actions over the past few months all verified by our surveillance cameras: 1. June 15: Took...

It was business as usual at the Cala Foods supermarket on Nob Hill this week. Customers lined up six deep at the cashiers and shoppers crowded the well-stocked aisles. So why is the store closing in 2010?The simple answer is money. Although Cala is making money, the profit margin for a large supermarket isn't large. Food costs are up, vendors are charging more to deliver products. Wages and insurance costs are rising. But more than that, supermarket sites are some of the last large real estate lots in the city. Eager developers are making such generous offers that store owners...

Supermarkets 'mislead with omega 3 claims' By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:13am BST 25/10/2007 Supermarkets and food companies are misleading customers by making baffling health claims about omega 3, an organisation has claimed. Omega 3 is found naturally in oily fish, such as salmon or mackerel The fatty acid has become increasingly popular in recent years after some studies suggested that it can help reduce the risk of heart disease. However, parts of the food industry have been accused by the consumer group Which?of "riding the money-making omega 3 wave". A survey of 2,405 of their members...

Mugabe has lots of food at local shop Last Updated: 2:38am BST 28/07/2007 Shoppers in the supermarkets of Harare have nothing left to buy. But in Borrowdale Brooke, where the country’s senior politicians live, everything from lobster to single malt whisky can be found — at a price The shelves in Zimbabwe's stores are bare, but in a leafy suburb of Harare it's a different story, Sebastien Berger reports Robert Mugabe's local supermarket is unlike any other shop in Zimbabwe. Elsewhere there are gaping empty shelves where bread, butter, sugar, meat and the staple maize meal should be. But at...

SCAGGSVILLE, Md — Stephanie Cerneck doesn't go through the checkout line at her supermarket anymore. Or even the self-checkout line. She uses a personal scanner offered by the Bloom grocery store near her home, scanning each item as she takes it off the shelf and bagging as she shops. When she's done, she pays at a terminal at the front of the store. "When I come up to the checkout, everything's already bagged, I go to my car, I'm done. No waiting in line," she said at the suburban store between Washington and Baltimore. The handheld scanner lets customers keep...

Supermarkets alert for mass turkey recall Chief scientist raises possibility of emptying shelves of packaged meat Rebecca Smithers, John Vidal and Paul Lewis Saturday February 10, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Sainsbury's has seen a 10% slump in poultry sales. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA The government's chief scientist said yesterday that packaged turkey meat might have to be removed from supermarket shelves in a mass product recall, as the official inquiry into a bird flu outbreak at a Suffolk farm widened. The frank admission by Sir David King came as the government's Food Standards Agency confirmed it is looking at the possibility...

Blasts at Ukrainian supermarkets By Helen Fawkes BBC News, Kiev Two blasts went off almost simultaneously Fourteen people have been injured by explosions at two supermarkets in eastern Ukraine. The stores were packed with shoppers when the blasts - which were almost simultaneous - occurred at around 12 noon local time. The two supermarkets, in the city of Kharkiv, are about a kilometre apart from each other. According to Ukraine's interior ministry the blasts appear to have been caused by homemade bombs. Motive unknown The devices were planted in the supermarkets' lockers where customers are able to leave their bags...

D'Agostino on University Place [Manhattan] is closing after two decades. Once you could find them every few blocks or so in prime neighborhoods of Manhattan, but these days the local chain supermarket seems to be heading the way of the five-and-dime. Among the latest casualties is a D'Agostino market on University Place near Union Square, which is closing after two decades in that location. FreshDirect, the online grocery service, has about 150,000 customers and takes in about $200 million a year, much of that from Manhattan. The last A.& P. in Manhattan, at 70th Street and West End Avenue, shut...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's largest retailer Tesco has sent an in-house team to the United States to consider a bid for Albertsons (ABS), the American grocery chain with 2,500 stores, the Business paper reported. Earlier this month, Albertsons said it had hired investments bankers to explore its options and would consider putting itself up for sale, with a price tag of $7.6 billion, as it grapples with intense competition from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). Tesco, which reports half-year results this week, has yet to find a vehicle to enter the lucrative U.S. market and is using the team to identify takeover...

Significant numbers of chickens on sale in UK shops are contaminated with superbugs, a scientific survey commissioned by BBC One's Real Story suggests.Of the British-grown chickens analysed, over half were contaminated with multi-drug resistant E.coli which is immune to the effects of three or more antibiotics. More than a third of the 147 samples, which included overseas and UK produced chicken, had E.coli germs resistant to the important antibiotic Trimethoprim which is used to treat bladder infections. The Health Protection Agency scientists testing the meat also found 12 chickens had antibiotic resistant Campylobacter. And VRE, or Vancomycin Resistant Enteroccci, were...

Are you one of those people who stands in the quick-check line at the grocery store and counts how many items the person in front of you has in his cart? Would you like to holler "move it" when another shopper blocks the aisle? We gave readers a chance to vent their frustrations with grocery shopping. Oh, the tales we heard!

Choose paper or plastic at a San Francisco grocery, and it could cost you extra. Tuesday, the city's Commission on the Environment will ask the mayor and board of supervisors to move a proposal ahead that would make the city the first in the nation to charge grocery shoppers 17 cents for each plastic or paper sack.

Fried Green  Cucumbers It's been a rough few months for tomatoes. They've been swirled in California floods. They've been smashed by Florida hurricanes. They've been picked at by Mexican bugs. The result has been a national tomato shortage that has sent prices climbing like a vine seeking light. With costs up and quality down, some national restaurant chains are reconsidering their marketing strategies to keep the thought of juicy, tender tomatoes off customers' minds, or switching recipes to make up for the absence of certain hard-to-find varieties. The popular Juice Joint Cafe in Northwest Washington, meanwhile, has at least...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supermarket checkout clerks are going the way of the bank teller - available if you want one, avoidable if you don't. Self-checkout machines, which let customers scan, bag and pay for their own groceries, offer shoppers a chance to avoid the lines at the checkout stands. "This is like an ATM for them. It's quicker and easier," said Jennifer Panetta, a spokeswoman for the six-state Harris Teeter chain, based in Matthews, N.C. "They are in pretty much all our stores." About one-quarter of grocery chains are trying them now, with some 34,000 machines in use in stores...

(IsraelNN.com) Some of Norway’s supermarket chains have decided to place special identification stickers on products from Israel. Other Scandinavian countries may follow suit. The Norwegians say the stickers do not constitute a "boycott" of Israel; they just want their customers, who are overwhelmingly pro Palestinian, to pay attention to where these products are produced. Norwegian labor unions have recently refused to off-load Israeli farm produce. Last year, a Norwegian "labor youth movement" organized a demonstration against Israeli singers from the Eurovision song contest. Another Norwegian group has been boycotting Israeli oranges since the early 90s. This group, "Boikott Israel l,"...