Sure, the grocery store has pretty much all the stuff you need, but it also has plenty
of tricks.
From the way aisles are laid out to the way products are labeled, everything inside a
grocery store is deliberately designed to get the most money possible out of shoppers.
According to a report by National Geographic, quote, "We're all being manipulated by our
grocery stores."
Shoppers go in looking for one or two items and come out with a whole cartload of things
they weren't even planning to buy.
While your first instinct may be to blame yourself for your inability to resist temptation,
this is not entirely your fault.
The report goes on to say that grocery stores are masters at manipulation, noting:
"Every feature of the store... is designed to lure us in, keep us there, and seduce us
into spending money."
In many stores, once you walk through the door, you can't go back out again until you
go through the entire building and reach the exit door.
Along the way, you first come to the produce department, where you are greeted with bright
colors, fresh fruits and vegetables, and other things designed to make you hungry.
The bakery is usually next, with the wafting scent of cookies and bread to make you even
hungrier.
What's more, the things you need most, like the dairy and frozen food departments, are
usually at the back of the store, forcing you to wade through aisles and aisles of temptations
until you reach the thing you actually came for.
Even the most iron-willed customers get led astray and end up paying more than they planned.
“No fear, nothing to lose.
What can I say?
It’s like art.”
One of the ways that grocery stores keep you moving into the store is to invite you in
with the lovely smell of baked goods.
The bakery section is set up to display all of the same kinds of wonderful treats Grandma
makes, and they lead you to believe that their treats are made with love from scratch, too.
Unfortunately, the store bakers are not your grandma, and only a small portion, if any,
of the cookies, cakes, and breads are fully made in-store.
According to a baker at Costco, the large majority of items in the grocery store bakery
either come frozen or come from a mix.
According to her post on Reddit, the artisan buns, bagels, baguettes, danishes, strudels,
apple pies, croissants, cookies, tiramisu, and several other favorites are delivered
to the store in a freezer truck, already made.
They are sometimes then heated up to finish baking, and put on the counter so they make
that lovely fresh-baked smell, even if that smell is totally a lie.
Most cakes, custard pies, dinner rolls, and muffins come in a mix a lot like Betty Crocker,
but before you get too disappointed, though, there are a few things Costco bakers really
do make from scratch.
Multigrain bread, rosemary bread, garlic bread, pumpkin, cherry, pecan, and lemon meringue
pies, granola, and granola nut bread are all genuinely made in the store, making it hard
to tell just what sratch-made or frozen products other bakeries have on their shelves.
While we're not naming names, we are saying that grocery stores often put the wrong labels
on meat packages.
You might wonder if that's just an honest mistake, and we wish we could tell you it
was.
But the fact of the matter is that multiple grocery stores have been caught doing a "bait-and-switch,"
meaning that they label the weight of the meat with a higher number than the scale actually
reads.
While just plain lying about the weight is one way to do it, there are some even sneakier
ways that employees go about this.
One of them is to weigh both the meat and the package it is sitting in, causing the
whole thing to ring up at a higher price.
They may also cover the meat in ice to tack on a few extra cents, which may seem like
chump change at first, but not after you realize they are doing it to hundreds of customers
per day.
Another sneaky way that stores charge you more for meat is by packing it in a "water
solution."
The labels on the products or the big signs around the meat counter may claim that the
water solution helps to give the meat a fuller, better taste, but this is baloney.
Water is pretty much free for the grocery store, so they can put however much they want
of it into meat packages to raise the weight of said package without spending a dime.
The higher the number on the scale, the more you're going to end up paying.
Grocery stores use this same trick when it comes to produce.
While the first benefit of spraying the produce with water periodically is that it keeps it
looking fresh and inviting, the second, more important benefit is that the wetter the fruits
and vegetables are, the more they cost the consumer.
According to Taste of Home, this scam can raise the price of pay-per-pound produce by
up to 25 percent.
The same thing is often done to scallops.
An investigation carried out by the Boston Globe took a look at moisture levels in scallops
from 21 supermarkets in the state of Massachusetts and found that even so-called "pure," unprocessed
scallops, quote, "contained water levels far exceeding industry standards."
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood had this to say about the widespread practice
of swapping one fish for another:
"It's clear that seafood fraud isn't just a fluke — it's rampant across New York."
It's not just New York, either, as it's a practice that takes place all over the country.
People are scammed out of fish — much of it very expensive fish — when the distributor
swaps out one fish for another, less costly variety.
This is best explained by an example from Forbes.
According to them, it's not uncommon to walk into a store and order a high-quality white
fish, like red snapper, which they say can cost $23 or more per pound.
Since most white fish looks pretty similar after it's trimmed into filets, stores and
restaurants can sell you almost anything and call it something else, and they often do.
There's a good chance you're not getting that $23 red snapper.
Instead, it might be tilefish, tilapia, or something else.
Worse, it's likely something that only costs $2-3 per pound.
And guess who gets all the extra money earned from this underhanded transaction?
That's right, the grocery store and the fish distributors.
It's been estimated that with red snapper in particular, this bait-and-switch happens
an astonishing 90 percent of the time -- all because the customer isn't a fish expert and
can't tell one white fish from another.
The best way to combat grocery store scams is to be a savvy consumer.
You have to know how to compare prices and how to get the best deal based on the units
contained in the package you are buying, not just the number on the price tag.
Unfortunately, grocery stores are ready for this.
They make deciphering the difference between differently priced products extremely difficult
by mixing up the units of measurements on the labels.
Let's take one example: ice cream.
While some ice creams are labeled by the ounce, others are labeled per pint or per quart.
This makes it almost impossible to understand if one quart of ice cream should be cheaper,
more expensive, or the same price as one that contains a certain number of pints.
The best way to get around this is to keep being a smart customer.
It takes some time, but if you really want to avoid getting scammed, you should use that
smartphone and get a unit conversion app.
That way, you can be more informed about how much you're getting in each package.
"And we're back with Supermarket Spree and we're finally ready to get shopping.”
"Hooray!"
Have you ever bought a bag of potatoes at the store, only to get home and find that
half of them were rotten?
Or maybe you bought some tomatoes and found out later that the ones at the bottom of the
bag or box were squished or going bad?
Or that the meat you bought was a lot more fatty than it appeared under the lights of
the meat department?
This is no accident.
Although a better practice would be to donate, discount, or even just throw away those questionable
foods, there is no money to be made that way.
So, instead, grocery stores sometimes purposely arrange foods so that the flaws, blemishes,
or rotting bits are hidden among the good stuff so you don't see it until it's too late.
You can always bring the bad food back to the store for a refund, of course, but grocery
stores are counting on their shoppers being too lazy to do that.
Driving all the way back to the store and standing in line at the returns desk is too
big of a hassle, so why even bother, right?
That's the kind of thinking that lets the grocery stores take advantage of you.
Another clever way that grocery stores are able to weasel more money out of their customers
is to stick to the phrase "eye level is buy level."
This means that basically the thing you see first and easiest to reach — the thing at
eye level — is the thing you will buy.
No one wants to bend down or reach over or stretch for something, so they are subconsciously
more inclined to buy the things that are right in front of their face.
For this reason, most stores place the highest-priced items exactly where you will see them first:
eye level.
If you find what you're looking for right there, chances are you won't spend time looking
for something with a better price.
By their nature, humans look at what's right in front of them, and grocery stores use this
to their advantage.
If you want to be a savvy shopper, you have to be actively aware of your surroundings,
and the fact that the store shelves may be manipulating you.
"The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy.
It’s that I just don't care!”
Words like "organic" and "cage-free" are trending at the moment, making you feel morally obligated
to make better choices at the grocery store.
When it comes to buying eggs, your moral compass probably points you in the direction of the
"cage-free" eggs, but we're sorry to tell you that this label is often a lie.
According to the Observer, buying eggs with a label that says "cage-free" isn't helping
to protect any of our fine feathered friends.
According to them, the only requirement for chickens to be considered "cage-free" is for
there to be one square foot of space per chicken — which isn't much.
It is commendable to want to promote better living conditions for the chickens that provide
the eggs you buy, but buying bogus cage-free eggs isn't the way to do it — and it's not
worth the extra price you pay to grocery stores.
Perhaps the biggest grocery store scam of all is labeling produce and other items as
"organic."
People want organic items because they are free of pesticides and harmful chemicals,
but there's no way to tell if something is really organic or not by just looking at it
— and chances are high that it's not.
According to The Washington Post, there was evidence of falsely labeled organic soybeans
and corn found in in 2017.
According to them, a 36 million ton shipment of soybeans was suddenly labeled organic when
it arrived in the U.S., making it worth millions more — though those soybeans were actually
full of pesticides and other chemicals (so, in no way organic at all).
But the scandal doesn't stop there.
This "organic" corn and soybeans are fed to animals, who are then later sold as having
been raised "organically" as well.
So now not only is the produce not organic, but the meat isn't either.
It is extremely difficult to know whether items are really, truly organic without a
scientific examination, which kind of undermines the entire movement toward being more healthy
and environmentally friendly.
So, how can you protect yourself against this?
Be diligent about checking labels and buying items that are produced domestically, because
they are more closely monitored for quality and legitimacy.
Now you know!
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Mashed videos about grocery shopping are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.