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Old 07-18-2018, 10:59 PM
 
16,349 posts, read 30,059,742 times
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OK, I will bite. I have been to literally hundreds of grocery stores in all 50 states in the US and most of the provinces in Canada.

One of the few disappointments in moving from Chicagoland to the Tucson area has been the absolute lack of great grocery stores, bakeries, ethnic markets like Super H-Mart and Mitsuwa Marketplace, and good fresh markets. And considering that I was looking at Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, that would have been an issue also.

However, in life, there are always workarounds to any problem. My wife and I travel a lot over the course of the year so when we head out of town, we take the opportunity to grocery shop when we are in areas with great stores. No, we cannot always transfer frozen and refrigerated products at the current time.

Here are our TOP TEN this year:

Frys (Kroger) - 14 or 22 miles away - most of our basic refrigerated groceries and meats
Winco Foods - 125 miles away - most of our canned goods, staples and all of our bulk food.
99 Only - 6 miles away - Specialty produce, cleaning supplies, and
Sprouts - 6 miles away - Fresh produce only
Jungle Jims - 1800 miles away - An annual trip for specialty items combined with trips home.
Food City - 21 miles away - a pretty poor example of a Mexican grocery store but their prices on fresh produce are good
Safeway - 3 miles away - Closest store but worst one. At least 20% higher than all of its competitors.
AZ International Marketplace - 125 miles away - fresh herbs, many ethnic items
Aldi - 350 miles away - Mostly staples and specialty food.
Walgreens - 3 miles away - Convenience purchases

For the record, we do NOT go out of our way to shop for groceries. We plan it so that when we are in a particular area, we stock up. Right now, I have about three grocery lists of items that we purchase when we head up to Phoenix or when we head to San Diego.

Had we relocated to Tennessee, we probably would have done a significant portion of our grocery and general merchandise purchasing in Kentucky and Ohio to avoid the 7-9% tax on food.
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Old 07-18-2018, 11:02 PM
 
16,349 posts, read 30,059,742 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shooting Stars View Post
As far as Tennessee goes, I have a relative who has asked their employer to transfer them there when they get an office for the Nashville area. They would be looking at the Franklin, TN area, which seems to have everything you want. There's no coincidence that Franklin is also in the healthiest county in Tennessee.

Franklin, TN is in Williamson Co., not Franklin Co. which is on the Alabama border.

As for Williamson Co. being the healthiest counties, no kidding. It is also the wealthiest county in Tennessee.
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Old 07-18-2018, 11:27 PM
 
12,592 posts, read 8,820,605 times
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We live in a different but similar area of Tennessee. Very limited selection of stores and product. Quality of meat and produce is minimal and often hit or miss in the stores. What's really sad is when you get into these areas with little competition, you wind up paying more, almost like paying Whole Foods prices, for lesser quality that is in the Walmarts in Franklin.


Since someone mentioned Franklin, just had to make that reference. It's a place with money coming out it's ears. But a little more down to earth than Brentwood.


To answer the OP's question, having a place so shop does take some importance, though the first thing to me is a quality job. Then look within a reasonable distance for the best location to live. It's a couple hours from where I live to Nashville, so don't get there very often for shopping.
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Old 07-19-2018, 05:20 AM
 
5,126 posts, read 7,365,593 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01 View Post

Franklin, TN is in Williamson Co., not Franklin Co. which is on the Alabama border.

As for Williamson Co. being the healthiest counties, no kidding. It is also the wealthiest county in Tennessee.
I know. And if you will go back and read, I did not say "Franklin County" ever.

I wrote: "There's no coincidence that Franklin is also in the healthiest county in Tennessee."
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Old 07-19-2018, 05:52 AM
 
Location: SE Florida
1,934 posts, read 1,059,352 times
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It depends on your situation. If you have kids, I would think that area schools would be high on the list. If you are moving for a job, I don't know that grocery stores could be a consideration. If you have no other more important reason(s) to move, then you could base your location on what grocery stores, etc. are in the area. Where we live now, there is a Winn Dixie, Publix and Penn Dutch (they are a butcher, grocer, produce, deli (featuring there own in house made products) and limited seafood store) within 2 miles from us. We also have a Restaurant Depot close by, which is a whole sale restaurant supply with a large seafood fresh section.
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Old 07-19-2018, 06:57 AM
 
5,346 posts, read 9,799,822 times
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The ability to purchase a wide variety of fresh produce is important to me. I frequently use specialty ingredients that can’t be found at your typical grocery store.

I wouldn’t consider moving to an area that didn’t have at least one or two of my favorite stores, like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Fresh Thyme, Fresh Market, or Earthfare. I have all of these, and more, where I currently live.

I also like to have a Costco within 10 miles or so.

I don’t shop at Walmart or Sam’s Club so those don’t matter to me.

For several years I lived in a city in Illinois that only had a Super Walmart, Super Kmart, Aldi’s, and a run down Kroger. It was a fresh food desert. I had to travel nearly an hour away to get a decent selection of fresh produce organic food, and specialty items.
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Old 07-19-2018, 07:01 AM
Status: "Mistress of finance and foods." (set 15 days ago)
 
Location: Coastal Georgia
49,981 posts, read 63,301,795 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blueherons View Post
I don't care.

With Amazon I can order almost anything I want.

I would be sad to live without Trader Joes.
It IS sad to live without TJs.
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Old 07-19-2018, 08:04 AM
 
24,509 posts, read 17,974,587 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01 View Post
Franklin, TN is in Williamson Co., not Franklin Co. which is on the Alabama border.

As for Williamson Co. being the healthiest counties, no kidding. It is also the wealthiest county in Tennessee.

Yep. No problem getting the Ferrari or Lamborghini serviced at the dealer. Very sparse on the ethnic grocery shopping. When my girlfriend used to live in Franklin, I'd toss things in my roll-aboard that are unobtanium in Franklin. It's more multicultural than the rest of Tennessee but it's not left coast/right coast multicultural. Plenty of affluent white collar professional grocery shopping like Whole Paycheck and Fresh Market.
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Old 07-19-2018, 01:48 PM
 
Location: equator
10,999 posts, read 6,529,542 times
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Not at all important to me. As long as the basics are covered, we don't care. We have some great outdoor markets but usually get lazy and just go to the one air-conditioned supermarket that has most everything with a couple notable exceptions that I admit, are a PIA.

No lemons
No half n half
No sour cream
Weirdo cream cheese
Not much cheese selection (dairy is not big down here)
Beef is all tough (all grass-fed, LOL)
Produce is wilted
No powdered sugar
No albacore tuna or salmon

So it's a good thing we're not "foodies", LOL. I make everything from scratch so it's kind of a fun challenge for me. You'd be amazed what you can substitute. Pork and chicken are great; hamburger is good.

We came here for the beach, not the food. The supermarket is about 8 miles away. I DO miss Trader Joe's and sometimes the big box stores, but not that much.
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Old 07-19-2018, 02:08 PM
 
Location: Bella Vista, Ark
77,772 posts, read 104,128,573 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation View Post
This may seem like a dumb thing to focus on, but here goes.

I've lived in basically three different areas in my adult life - Des Moines, Indianapolis, and my hometown in northeast TN. Iowa and Indiana are big ag states, Tennessee is not. Both of the Midwestern areas were bigger and wealthier than where I am in Tennessee.

This seems to translate over into the local grocery selection. When I lived in Des Moines, there were tons of different options - Fareway and HyVee in the mainline grocery segment, Super Target along with Walmart in the hypermarket segment, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on the upper end, and various ethnics and specialty shops to fill in gaps. There were also Costco and Sam's.

Indianapolis had even more selection. Kroger had several extremely fancy stores called "Kroger Marketplace" that are the best stores I've ever been in. There were even more offerings at the high end - Fresh Thyme, Earthfare (an Asheville based Whole Foods knockoff), and The Fresh Market. Aldi on the low end. Super Target, Meijer, and Walmart on the hypermarket end. There were two Costcos and two Sam's within 10-20 minutes of where I lived.

I moved back to TN two years ago. No Super Target within a hundred miles. For the hypermarkets, it's Walmart only. The area has several mostly rundown Krogers with a poor selection (only one is nice), Aldi (just came in the past couple of years), Sam's, and is otherwise dominated by a regional chain called Food City and Walmart. Food City and Walmart are basically your only choices in most of the smaller towns and even parts of the cities. Prices are high and selection is poor.

Our farmer's markets are downright poor compared to the ones in the Midwest I've been to, even smaller towns. Fairly routine items that grow well here, like raspberries and blackberries, are simply not available. Local meat is hard to track down. There is a good "farm store," but they just sell staples - corn, green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Strawberries, various, squash, and blueberries are occasionally available. If I can't find it here, I'm loading up the 61 qt. cooler and driving to Asheville or Knoxville.

I went to Raleigh a couple of weeks ago. I was basically in food heaven again. Harris-Teeter and Publix are both cheaper than Food City. Selection was much better. Sprouts was terrific. The Carrboro farmers market was amazing.

How important is food selection when you're looking at places?
the availability of good grocery stores and farmers markets would never be a criteria for deciding where to live. We have always be able to find something or someplace to get decent food. I am surprised to hear what you are saying about TN. Of course I don't know that part of the state you live in but when we considered Tn as a retirement possibility we took a week long trip through the state and I would often stop and pick up stores ads just for fun. I always found prices to be very well within our budget and a great selection. In fact we would see items we hadn't had since we were kids, like one store had neck bones on sale.
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