'They were $3.99 last week,' says customer at ShopRite in Paramus

A 5-pound box of clementines from Morocco was $5.99 on Tuesday at ShopRite in Paramus, the same price H Marts in Englewood and Little Ferry were charging for clementines from Spain.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You could shop for food for decades and never figure out when and why supermarkets like ShopRite put stuff on sale.

ShopRite has Can Can Sales in summer and winter, but is that because people don't buy as much food in those months as they do the rest of the year?

At other times, ShopRite promotes its "Price Breaks," which usually last three days.

On Tuesday, the Paramus store off of Route 4 was selling 5-pound boxes of Moroccan Clementines for $5.99, but I overheard another costumer tell her friend, "They were $3.99 last week."

I bought boxes of Spanish Clementines on Saturday and Sunday at H Mart, and weren't interested in the ones in Paramus.

In fact, the only real bargain I found were 59-ounce cartons of Tree Ripe Orange Juice (not from concentrate) for $1.77 each with a ShopRite card (limit of four).

Free-range, grass-fed beef from Australia, on middle shelf, was selling at the Paramus ShopRite for $9.99 a pound side by side with the same cut of conventional U.S. beef for $12.99 a pound, top shelf. Last week, ShopRite had a sale on the same Australian beef for $6.99 a pound.

Late last month, I bought a 40-ounce jar of Victoria Vodka Sauce, which contains no heavy cream, on sale for $3.99 at the ShopRite in Paramus, below. ShopRite's own brand of Vodka Pasta Sauce, above, also is free of heavy cream, but contains xanthan gum, whey protein, and the Romano and  Parmesan cheeses in the sauce contain corn starch and cellulose. On Tuesday, Victoria Vodka Sauce was back to its regular price of $7.99.