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Store Brands Lift Grocery Stores

December 20th, 2008

The New York Times ran an article the other day which I thought was interesting. Author Andrew Martin wrote about the growing amount of store branded goods for sale in the grocery stores. In the topsy turvy economy, more consumers are staying away from the expensive trips to Applebee’s and Ruby Tuesday and are focusing more on buying a small amount of groceries to last for longer periods of time. With an increased focus on getting more for less, some major grocery chains are realizing big profits with their store brand goods.

Dollar sales of store brands increased 10 percent during the 52 weeks before Nov. 1, compared with a 3 percent gain for branded products, according to the Nielsen market research company.

Store brands now account for nearly 22 percent of products sold at the grocery, up from 20 percent a year ago, Nielsen found. At Kroger, store brands account for 26 percent of grocery sales.

In this economic climate, the numbers suggest, many shoppers are willing to try the newly developed store brands. They also say it is hard to resist the low prices of store brands for staple goods like milk, sugar and cheese.

I buy some store brands. I buy Wal-Mart cheese and peanuts and they taste just as good as the more expensive name brands. I also buy Shop-Rite organic milk so I can save a dollar or so over the name brand organics. And there’s no difference between store brand canned vegetables and the name brand canned vegetables.

There can be a few hiccups with the store brands, though. We have a Wegman’s nearby and they have an entire area of the store devoted to foods that they make on-site. It’s a nice addition to the standard grocery store layout, but their foods have a tendency to have a similar taste. I’m not sure what that taste is, exactly, but I just refer to it as “this tastes like Wegman’s.” For anyone who went to Monmouth University, you know that one of the many jokes regarding the horrible Aramark food at the dining hall was that it all tasted the same. I find Wegman’s to be a much higher end version of the same phenomenon.

However, I keep buying Wegman’s sandwiches because they taste good.

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Posted in Money, Jobs, & Finances | No Comments »

Quick Shout Out - GradSpot.com

December 20th, 2008

Just putting a quick shout out to Chris and the team at GradSpot.com. A few days ago I wrote my Top 5 Ways to Spend Less During the Holidays. This post was created for the GradSpot.com website, though it was previewed on JerseySmarts.com first. Well, the other day the post made its way on to the GradSpot.com main page.

Thanks to Chris and his team for sharing the love! And I suggest that my readers take a trip over to GradSpot.com and take a read - there’s some fun stuff over there!

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Posted in Random Entries | 7 Comments »

The Big Three Automakers Make Unreliable Cars

December 19th, 2008

Over the course of the last weekend, I read a bunch of articles online that talked about some of the different views on the current automaker crisis in America. Tom Baldwin from The Times of London wrote an op-ed entitled, “For too long the Big Three have produced the type of cars Americans do not want.” Baldwin concisely talks about some of the main points regarding the auto industry crisis, mainly that the “big three automakers” are making cars that nobody wants to buy! Or in his words:

This indicates that if the Big Three go bust it is their bosses, insular and stuck in their ways, who should be held most responsible. Put simply, for too long they had built bad cars, which were inefficient, unreliable and unattractive and Americans did not want to buy them.

The man makes a point. Everyone knows that foreign cars are much more fuel efficient, definitely more reliable, and usually more stylish than their American counterparts. Let’s put it this way, Ford didn’t earn the nickname of “Found On Road Dead” out of nowhere.

A few years ago (2002) I purchased a 1999 Chevy Blazer. The price was around $15,000 - give or take a few hundred bucks. First of all, the price was way too high for a three year old automobile. Second, since I purchased this machine, I’ve probably put an additional $15,000 into it in repairs. And of those repairs, about half of that expense was to pay for labor!

But the thing is, I’m one of many drivers who have had a financially negative experience with the American automakers. On the flip side, though, I’ve been borrowing my Mother’s spare 2000 Honda Civic for a few months now and not only does it get 31 - 33 miles to the gallon where the Blazer got 18 miles to the gallon, but I’ve not had one problem with it. I drive a lot for my job and since I borrowed the Civic I’ve put about 5,000 miles on it - no problems. With the Blazer, though, traveling that much almost certainly meant that I needed to stop at the shop one weekend for minor repairs.

American made cars are poor quality, energy inefficient, and cost way too much to manufacture. Unless these core problems change, they’ll never reclaim their former dominance in the market.