November 22, 2009

Store Manager
Stop & Shop
60 Everett Street
Allston, MA 02134

Dear Sir or Madam,

I like your store for several reasons: it is the closest supermarket to my house; I like the “Scan It!” system; and you give five cents back for reused bags.

Unfortunately, these positives only go so far, since your inventory lacks many things I need. Today, I walked out of your store empty-handed when I found that you were missing so many items that it wasn’t worth my time to ring up a purchase, and I went to Shaw’s and spent $137 there instead.

You simply don’t stock some things I need; other things are usually there but missing when I go to buy them. Tonight, I knew that there were several things on my shopping list you do not stock, but I was willing to tolerate that for the sake of the advantages listed above. What propelled me out the door was the fact that you were out of something that you usually stock, and I needed to buy it this week. In particular, I found no 72-count boxes of Sabbath candles, a product which I’m pretty certain you usually stock, in your Kosher aisle.

Here are some other items I buy on a regular basis that you don’t stock but Shaw’s does (I bought all of these today at Shaw’s):

• large bottles of Smart Balance cooking oil (I’ve seen them in the store on very rare occasions, but most of the time you stock only the small bottles)
• Osem “mini mandel” soup croutons
• Kosher beef hot dogs from a brand other than Hebrew National (we are among many families in the Boston Jewish community who do not consider the Kosher status of Hebrew National to be reliable and therefore can’t purchase that brand)
• Kosher boxed macaroni & cheese (either Fould’s or Wacky Mac)

I would shop at your store more often and spend more money there if you stocked these items and did a better job of keeping things in stock.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

Annoyed by this most recent change, I decided during a recent trip to the grocery store to reevaluate our tuna buying habits rather than blindly continuing to buy StarKist, the brand we had settled upon a number of years ago for unremembered reasons.  Therefore, although I did throw a few cans of StarKist chunk light tuna in water, SKU 806730, in my cart, I also threw in a few cans of Stop & Shop’s, SKU 21120 02522, which were needless to say cheaper than the StarKist.

The next time I made tuna salad, I opened two cans of the StarKist and two cans of the Stop & Shop tuna, drained them all, visually inspected them for quality, and weighed the tuna left in the cans after draining.  The results surprised me.

• As noted above, the Stop & Shop tuna is significantly cheaper than the StarKis.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
• The StarKist cans had, on average, 3/8 ounces less tuna than the Stop & Shop cans.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
• The Stop & Shop cans had nice looking chunks of tuna in them, while the StarKist cans had what would be more accurately described as “shredded” rather than “chunk” tuna.  Advantage: Stop & Shop
• The Stop & Shop tuna tasted significantly more salty than the StarKist, and indeed, the nutrition information confirmed this (13% DV per serving vs. 8%).  Advantage: StarKist

Overall, if you can live with the extra salt (literally and figuratively), the Stop & Shop tuna is clearly a much better buy than the StarKist.

Now who said that name brands are better?