Grocery shopping

Now that I'm living on my own, I can't delegate the grocery shopping chore to anyone. I've often said that I hate grocery shopping, which isn't really true. I actually don't mind it, but I don't enjoy it enough to want to do it. I remember that when I first left home, doing my own grocery shopping was a new experience so I really did enjoy it. But that was over ten years ago now, so the novelty has well and truly worn off.

My first choice for grocery shopping is Foodtown online. The delivery costs $10 - $12 depending on how much I buy. Given that I do a fortnight's shopping at once, it really isn't too big a deal. When you weigh that $10 against the cost of petrol getting to the supermarket, my time spent shopping, and the fact that impulse buying is completely eliminated, to me it seems like a pretty good deal.

Still, sometimes my shopping list just isn't big enough to make an online order cost effective, so in that case I have several supermarket choices. The map below shows the relative distances to the supermarkets I frequent:

Pak N Save is by far the closest. I go there when I want quick topups, or bulk purchases of common items. The problem is I'm a bit picky with what I buy, and half the time Pak N Save just doesn't have what I want. They have large quantities of the most common items, but they have a very limited range.

Foodtown is my favourite supermarket. I'll go to the Foodtown at Pakuranga if I happen to be at the plaza for something else, but it's rather small and has a fairly limited range too. My favourite is Foodtown Greenlane. It's big, bright, clean and has a huge selection. It's also open 24 hours, which is sometimes a priceless advantage. (Yes, sometimes I do my grocery shopping in the middle of the night. So sue me.)

There is now also some supermarket choices at Sylvia Park. I haven't yet been to the new shopping centre there. The second stage of shops just opened last Thursday, so I'll give things a while to settle down before I go have a look. I mean, it's just a shopping centre, I've seen them before.

Sylvia Park is marginally closer than Pakuranga Plaza, and sports three choices of supermarket: Foodtown, PakNSave and the Warehouse Extra.

I don't want to buy groceries from the Warehouse Extra. I haven't actually been there yet, so I don't even know anything about the place and I could be totally wrong about it. The idea of buying fresh food from the Warehouse just creeps me out.

You see, I used to work at the Warehouse Oriental Market. It was a dingy, dirty, grotty place. Being basically a big shed, it wasn't very well lined or sealed. The roof leaked when it rained. Pigeons got inside and shit everywhere. The bare concrete floor was uneven and constantly dirty. The shelves were bare wood and metal and were also constantly dirty. And literally every product we sold was cheap, dirty and shoddily made.

I'm sure this new Warehouse isn't like that at all, but I still don't think I could bring myself to buy food from there. The mental associations I have with the Warehouse are too strong.