I can’t believe it’s not butter! Well, it’s not. It’s flame retardant, and food researchers found it inside butter they bought from the supermarket. [More]
supermarkets
Supermarket Threatens To Fire Slowest Cashier, Destroys Brand Image
By 10.22.10
Steve and his wife were checking out at the supermarket when they noticed something odd about the cashier packing his bags. She was ramming all his groceries like she was trying to repair a levy in a flood. [More]
Frog Found In Frozen Veggies
By 10.19.10
A Michigan couple is croaking about an unusual, tiny, hitchhiker they found in their bag of frozen vegetables they bought at the Meijer supermarket. [More]
Kroger Security Guard Shoots Homeless Man's Dog
By 10.14.10
A Nashville-area Kroger security guard got into a scuffle with a homeless man he says was stealing firewood and then shot and killed the man’s dog. [More]
Walmart Realizes Buying Local Produce Can Be Good For Business
By 10.14.10
Now that Walmart has become the world’s largest grocer, it has realized there are both economic and environmental reasons to purchase and re-sell locally grown produce. As part of its latest sustainability efforts announced earlier today, the retail behemoth detailed a plan to increase the percentage of its produce that it gets from local growers. [More]
A&P Mails You Back Keys You Drunkenly Left In Cab A Month Ago
By 9.30.10
Shopper club cards might be part of an Orwellian masterplan to scrutinize your purchasing habits, but they also have another, less well-known use. Zach says that after an evening of drunken frolicking around New York, he lost his keys. A month later, this showed up in his mailbox. [More]
Thieves Suck Money From Supermarket Safes With Vacuum Cleaner
By 9.27.10
A pack of crooks has been on a four-year spree where they drill a hole in the pneumatic tube that takes money from the checkout to the cashroom and suck it right out the safe using a high-power vacuum. [More]
Saved $99.48 With Coupons, Bought 51 Items For $45.46
By 9.15.10
Consumerist reader LadySiren, married with 5 kids, is a coupon ninja by necessity. “My kids go through a box and a half of Pop-Tarts each time they eat them for breakfast,” she writes by way of explanation. Here’s how, in exhaustive detail, she bought 51 items at the supermarket this week using coupons, super double coupons, and catalinas, for only $45.56, saving $99.48. Her haul is pictured. [More]
Self-Serve Wine Tanks Coming To Supermarkets
By 9.15.10
Self-serve wine tanks could be hitting American supermarkets within a year. These 500 and 1,000 liter mechanical kegs dispense wine into whatever container the shopper brings with them. [More]
Consumer Reports Tastes Store Branded Foods, Finds Some Are Just As Good
By 9.7.10
Name brands exert a strong power over shoppers: 17% of us think name brand foods are more nutritious, even though there’s little nutritional difference between the two categories. Consumer Report performed taste tests on several food categories to determine whether name brands tasted better than store brands, and found that in some cases the store brands actually won. [More]
Giant Eagle Dispenses Antidepressants Instead Of Fertility Drugs, Now Taking It Very Seriously
By 9.1.10
The words “Clomiphene” and “Clomipramine” might look similar, but if you work in a pharmacy, you should know that they stand for very different things. Clomiphene is the generic version of the fertility drug Clomid. Clomipramine is a tricyclic antidepressant. A woman in Pittsburgh says that the pharmacy at a Giant Eagle grocery store gave her the antidepressant when she was prescribed the fertility drug. She had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in the emergency room. [More]
190 Tons Of Walmart Deli Meat Recalled Over Potential Listeria Contamination
By 8.24.10
A New York company called Zemco Industries has recalled 380,000 pounds of deli meat that it distributed to Walmart under the Marketside label, because it might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Although nobody has reported any illness and healthy people aren’t usually in danger, listeriosis can kill old people, infants, and others with weak immune systems. [More]
This Condom Warning Label Arouses Confusion
By 8.23.10
A reader bought this box of condoms from her local Safeway, and she says this sticker was underneath the outer packaging. People be freaky, but is there anyone who would want a raw chicken condom that you have to keep frozen until use? (Meh, probably.) [More]
Grocery Shrink Ray Hits Pasta Roni
By 8.9.10
Like Mothra attacking Rome, Andrew says that the dread grocery shrink ray has hit his beloved Pasta Roni. [More]
Parents Who Named Kid "Adolph Hitler" Lose Custody Battle
By 8.6.10
The child, Adolph Hitler Campbell, and his siblings, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbel and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbel, named for Schutzstaffel head Heinrich Himmler, who first came to our attention after ShopRite refused to make him a cake with Adolph’s name on it – though, according to the original news article, Walmart had no problem with the request – will remain wards of the state, an appeals court has ruled. [More]
DC Safeway Sells Truffles
By 8.3.10
Fancy people living in DC can satisfy their truffle craving by heading over to a Safeway in Georgetown, which is selling the hypogeous delicacy for $999.99/lb. [More]
10 Commandments Of Using Coupons
By 6.30.10
The world of shoppers is divided into two, sometimes rival, camps: those who coupon and those who don’t. If you are going to coupon, you have to make sure that you do it right and respect your fellow shoppers, otherwise they will hoist you (in their minds) from the nearest shopping cart return sign. So then, NJ.com proposes 10 commandments for couponers to follow so that we can all live together in harmony, couponer and non alike. [More]
How Do UPC Codes Work?
By 6.28.10
Have you ever wondered what that numbered zebra stripe on the box of every purchase really means? Yes, your fears are true. It does contain secret messages the manufacturer is trying to communicate to the bar code scanner. But we have a secret decoder ring you can use to figure them out using your brain powers. [More]
