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After a light workout in the new 24 Hour Fitness gym in Paramus this morning, I drove over to the nearby ShopRite and picked up a few things, including thin asparagus, both green and white.
The sign said they were $1.69 a pound, so I bought a bunch of each, not really knowing how much this seasonal vegetable costs.
When I looked at my register receipt, I learned the asparagus were on sale and that I had "saved $2.37" on the white and "$2.44" on the green -- that would mean the regular price is about $4 a pound.
Each bunch weighed a little over 1 pound ($1.74 for the white, $1.79 for green).
Wow! I'm impressed at the savings, but wonder whether ShopRite is exaggerating just to make the asparagus seem like a good buy.
I saw a package of less desirable thick green asparagus at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack several days ago, but don't remember the price. The package weighed more than 2 pounds.
On Tuesday, my wife bought Readington Farms antibiotic-free poultry, Lean Cuisine dinners, produce, Jello and other items at the Englewood ShopRite, spending a total of $72.53.
The register receipt listed "total savings today" as $12.69, even though my wife didn't bring any coupons with her.
The receipt listed "on sale savings," "manufacturer coupons" and "store coupons."
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Items on sale included $1 off on each Lean Cuisine dinner, 20 cents off each pound of yellow bananas, $1 off Vicks DayQuil and 4 cents off Jello.
Does ShopRite just pick these numbers out of the air? Do items go on sale every Friday, let's say, or are they randomly discounted? Does the supermarket chain and manufacturers subsidize the sales equally?
Of course, the Readington Farms chicken wasn't on sale, even though ShopRite seems to discount inferior Perdue and Tyson chicken nearly every day.
My wife also bought chocolate and caramel syrups at ShopRite, but we're returning them because the first ingredient listed is high fructose corn syrup. "Cocoa" is listed fourth.
