What's on the perimeter in your grocery store?

My closest grocery store Nob Hill apparently got the memo about shopping the perimeter, and put all the most expensive things around the edge.

From the entrance all the way around:
Sandwich shop
Deli
Bakery
Prepackaged meat
Butcher
Dairy
Paper goods
Frozen food
Cards and balloons

Yum, I wish my supermarket had a baklava counter!

Around the perimeter of one of the grocery stores close to where I work ...

alcohol products
potato chips
the cakes and squares display ... lovely, but not quite as nice as the grocery store I mentioned above
the deli
dairy products
the butcher
the packaged and canned meals
the candy

I tend to go clockwise because the whole setup seems to be beckoning the other way and I'm contrary, but I'll work counterclockwise due to peer pressure.

In front of you as you go in, and to the right:

Flowers
Deli (with sushi kiosk and olive bar)
Bakery on the right, cheese on the left
Produce (including specialty dressings)
Packaged frozen fish
Fish and meat counters
Sausage/Lunchmeat
Juice
Eggs and Dairy
Paper goods
Baby stuff
Soap/shampoo/toothpaste
Cosmetics/perfume
Pharmacy
Random seasonal stuff including cheap clothes/expensive UT paraphernalia/dorm stuff
Books/magazines
Bank (not mine)
Customer service (returns, bill pay, check cashing, tickets)
Carpet cleaner/gas rental
Cigarettes/e-cigs
Self-service machines (water, ATM, Coinstar, lottery, etc)

Guess I'd miss coffee, canned meat (mmmm deviled ham), coffee/tea, wine, mineral water, frozen stuff, pet food, candles, office/school supplies, laundry/cleaning supplies. Plus all the cute Texan/Tex-Mex stuff you find in the dishes and BBQ/cookware section. You can also get super cheap wine and bar glasses if you look, they have them at different times. Also batteries. Those are always on endcaps for some reason.

Of course this is just the regular HEB. Central Market is a freaking maze and I practically need a map. Sprouts appears to have been laid out by people on hallucinogens and I can never find anything in the aisles.

I tend to go around the perimeter first, then go to specific aisles for what I want, and then these days I'll do another turn or two around the perimeter just to get some more walking in.

pebble4321 wrote: »

Yum, I wish my supermarket had a baklava counter!

Preach!

LokiGrrl wrote: »

I tend to go clockwise because the whole setup seems to be beckoning the other way and I'm contrary, but I'll work counterclockwise due to peer pressure.

Ahhh, the funny things I learn or realize from using MFP.

I keep seeing people mention the direction, and after reading your comment, I thought about which way I shop, and realized that I always shop counter-clockwise. Upon further reflection, I realized that I actually feel a bit uncomfortable when I think about shopping clockwise.

And then I realized why.

I'm right-handed.

When I shop counter-clockwise, I can easily reach out with my right arm for the item I'm buying. When I shop clockwise, I have to either use my weaker left arm, or reach across, or stop and move toward the item.

A personal problem, I know, and probably crazy, but this was a funny realization for me.

Carry on.

the bakery, when you first walk in. produce is between the bakery and refrigerated on the side of the 1st aisle. Then meats, lunch meats and cheese, milk, yogurt, beer, butter, eggs. All the freezers make up the first few aisles. Granted, most of the aisles I don't go down, but some are mandatory (beans, frozen veg, coffee, tuna, quinoa, brown rice, olive oil and vinegar, etc).

I shop anti-clockwise because the door is at the south east corner and the aisles go North-south and the checkouts are along the southern wall and you have to start shopping by going up an aisle, you can't start out by walking across the bottoms of all the aisles and past all the checkouts and straight up the booze aisle like a heathen. That way lies madness and anarchy.

This applies to both my local supermarkets. The one I sometimes stop at on the way into town is mirrored, and it is unsettling.

The main thing I would miss out on by shopping the perimeter of my favoured store is a selection of wonderful items which I need desperately right now despite never having considered owning anything like that before, which are seductively cheap and ALL limited time only and will be gone by next week. This is completely fatal, especially as several of these items (a steam floor cleaner, floor cleaning robot and flying gazebo sun sail thingy, to name but three) have turned out to be so fiendishly useful as to justify the phrase "life changing" or at least "how did we manage without this thing?", which makes it much harder to reason away the urge to buy.

We easily do most of our grocery shopping around the perimeter of the Walmart we visit most Saturday mornings. There are a few things we stray into the middle for, but most of what we purchase just happens to be along the outer limits anyway.

Perimeter stuff: Salad/produce, Packaged meat, eggs, cheese, milk (dairy, almond, or otherwise), yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese, nuts

Interior stuff we get: Coffee, tea, canned veggies, canned salmon/tuna, anything health&beauty, whey, dog food, cleaning products, box breakfast/lunch, protein bars, oatmeal

As kind of a footnote: vinegar and olive oil are at the end of the aisles very near to the perimeter so we usually scoop those up without going very far down any aisle.