the sting of being stingy

There's a "specialty" grocery store near where we live. What I mean by that nomenclature is that I buy my canned beans and loaves of bread somewhere else, but when we were going through a "let's try organic yogurt for Wesley" phase, it was the superstar place to find something quality even if it wasn't necessarily cheap.

They had a huge aisle of just specialty chocolate. They had gluten-free noodles and really great produce and all sorts of fancy stuff.

And -- the store is closing. They couldn't weather the economic downturn.

I've lived here for 5 years, and I'd never shopped there -- ever -- until this summer. I got a circular in the mail! And I saw that, oh, milk was on sale. And so were ears of corn. OK, I'll check it out. That is how circulars work right? The point is to get me in the store?

I was impressed. The produce was fresh (and it didn't go bad immediately in my fridge), the people were nice, the plastic bags were the best in town. They held BBQs on Saturdays in the summer to entice shoppers to come by. They had sidewalk sales and "free milk" coupons and an Easter Egg hunt (there were even eggs left over that Wesley found!)

I didn't realize what was happening: it was a marketing blitz. They were doing everything they could possibly think of to get shoppers.

I was bummed when over the summer they switched from most-awesome-durable plastic bags to cheapo-bags. Yet another strategy to make ends meet.

And in the end, they couldn't do it.

I'm mad at myself. I say that specialty places are good and they are locally owned and they sell interesting things, but when I see a chocolate bar for $5 and I balk or I want Worcestershire sauce but I'm only willing to buy it on sale and it isn't, then I must admit this is my fault. I was one of the shoppers that was stingy with my money.

I feel bad, but at the same time, I'm having trouble reconciling it with myself. I want to take care of my family and stretch my dollar and be smart about my purchases. Can I afford to buy a bag of M&Ms from a specialty store simply because I'm there, when I know I can get that bag somewhere else for $1 cheaper? I just can't make myself do that! Is that wrong?

I suppose if I knew I needed say, green onions, and I didn't want to go to a whole separate store I would just buy the green onions there for whatever price. But generally, I'm not like that. I shop around; I usually go to at least two stores to do my weekly shopping, depending on what is on sale around town. Sometimes if I absolutely have to have something I'll buy it, but in general my motto is, "if it isn't on sale, we can wait." And specialty stores don't tend to cater to that mindset.

There is a quote in this article that I think says it best, "As people put things that they could not find anywhere else into their grocery cart and they walked out of here spending more than they wished to, they labeled us as being very, very expensive.” Yes, that is exactly right. That makes sense. The folks around here just didn't realize they were buying funky stuff, and*I* usually don't buy funky stuff, and the fact was we were lucky as a community to have a local, quality place to sell the funky stuff.

But no more. We can buy specialty chocolate online, and even the nation-wide supermarkets sell organic yogurt these days. There's Trader Joe's and Sam's Club. There is always somewhere else -- cheaper -- to get stuff.

So yeah, it's my fault. But I don't know what else to say.

A moment of silence for the Food Emporium.