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Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

TechDebtDevin 1y ago
[flagged]
- whatamidoingyo 1y ago
  Huh? I'm guessing you didn't mean to reply to me?
  - torlok 1y ago
    It's probably a bot.
  - TechDebtDevin 1y ago
    You're talking about getting in a car and driving to a specialized grocery store to "save money". I'm saying you could also just by produce and save money.
    - whatamidoingyo 1y ago
      That was the point of my post. I'm not buying potato chips and dip; I'm buying produce, meat, and herbs. These items are way cheaper at the Asian markets I go to.
Zaheer 1y ago
I find the produce prices often to be absurdly lower. These items are cheaper to begin with but if you're making fresh food consistently then it probably adds up. The biggest difference I've observed is that the asian grocery stores buy tier 2/3 produce rather than the big supermarkets that have perfect looking produce.
- kwertyoowiyop 1y ago
  Exactly! The big supermarkets have tomatoes that look perfect, but taste like wax. The Asian groceries have lumpy odd-colored tomatoes that actually taste good.
  - tayo42 1y ago
    Like heirloom tomatoes? Those are everywhere now?
  - freedomben 1y ago
    We've had a garden and orchard for most years for quite some time now (several decades) and this is one of the most stark and interesting things I've observed as well. Garden produce is nearly always smaller, lumpy-looking, and by appearances alone looks to be quite inferior. However, they taste great compared to those "perfect" veggies and fruits in the grocery stores. In mid-winter when the home-grown produce is gone and we go back to buying from the store (or when on trips and such), it's often a big disappointment. If you're willing to spend $$$ on organic produce at mid to higher end stores, you can get close to the quality (though never on strawberries and raspberries IME), but the cost can be pretty ridiculous to the point of feeling wasteful.
    - kccqzy 1y ago
      I've recently had some of the best strawberries and it costs $1/each. Grown in the same city I live in: in fact Google Maps says the distance between the grocery store and the strawberry farm is four miles.
    - monicaaa 1y ago
      [dead]
gitremote 1y ago
> Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. ... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Whenever I see this protip, I feel bad for struggling Asians getting validated that they and their extended family already fully optimized all their opportunities.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  Asian always min maxxing their whole life, the moment you hit adulthood it hit you hard that you always been capped for life
ramon156 1y ago
In my country its called an international market. It's a beautiful place where you buy an entire bag of garlic for ~8 euros. There's also vegetables I hadn't heard of before I entered there
aeblyve 1y ago
I would love to learn more about the unit economics of groceries. How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? [0] If the latter was functioning well in a competitive market, I would expect their play to be on lower margins but higher volume. [0] Mostly I'm referring to offal TBF, which I think most firms are happy to make any money on at all.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  It is likely partly due to cost optimization (the shelf are rarely that organized in these stores) and the fact that they don't sell fresh produce.
- nine_zeros 1y ago
  > How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? Mega corporations need to increase their returns to shareholders year after year. Mom and pops don't have anyone else to please but themselves - they're often ok with retaining same returns as last year
- pjc50 1y ago
  The megacorp can provide cheap food, it just doesn't want to. In practice they adjust the margins in a data-driven way on individual goods. UK supermarkets actually provide pretty cheap fresh produce, because the market is pretty competitive. I think the most ridiculous I've seen was a 1kg bag of carrots for 20p. Many countries or locations do not have highly competitive supermarkets. Oh, and there's both volume and self-discrimination effects at work. In my supermarket shopping in the Asian food section is often cheaper as they sell big bags of rice and spices, to more cost-conscious consumers. See also: Costco.
  - K0balt 1y ago
    It’s just price gouging. There is an item I sometimes buy that is about $1.60 at supermarkets, but is consistently $.85 at nearly all rural Colmados. Same brand, same product , shelf stable , mass produced, large volume mover, imported product. Supermarkets have just collectively decided to sell it for 2x the “rational” market price because it went up with Covid and people kept buying it. Colmados don’t do data driven pricing, and just do a flat markup on the stuff the suplicadoras bring them. Data driven pricing is just selective price gouging under a different name.
anonzzzies 1y ago
I pickle, ferment and sauce a lot of things. Then I look for things that can be made in very large quantities and then preserved frozen/cooled (a lot of times just in the cellar). A lot of these things are from Asia and are great and very cheap and I'm love them for taste as well; curry's (I make 10 liters at a time; from scratch, very very cheap except my time but I like cooking), auntie dumplings (prep + freeze; just watch tv while making 100s of them) etc. Lovely food and cheaper than most things.
- dakna 1y ago
  Same here, our freezer has lots of home made dumplings in dinner size packages. Pancakes also work well for us, we usually put fresh chopped greens into them. We still eat the Bok Choy pancakes prepared months ago, usually when we just want a quick side for leftovers.
mupuff1234 1y ago
Protip #2: frozen veggies and fruit. Cheaper, supposedly healthier (flash frozen), easy to make, zero preparation, and never need to worry about it going bad.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
TuringNYC 1y ago
>> Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. Second this! Especially for things like produce and herbs. You literally get 10-20x the cilantro, etc at an Asian market for the same price (I think they are loss leaders.) And oh the aroma....you dont know fresh herbs until you step into a Patel Brothers and get truly fresh cilantro. We've gotten to a point where we know what to get where and shop accordingly.
aprilthird2021 1y ago
They make the money on the imported goods which are harder for their core audience to find and more expected to have a markup.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
The produce quality is often a bit lower. But in the last 5 years, all the grocery stores at least here in the Seattle area have had produce degrade, and they are pretty much the same as H-mart with higher prices.
- nyjah 1y ago
  Where I live, if I don’t shop at fancy grocery stores 30-40min away, it’s generous to call the produce ‘produce’. Literally never knew onions could look this bad. A lot of the citrus is like deflated in the inside, the bananas are trash, and a single bell pepper is $3. I could go on and on. Just think we enshittified the food situation and now it’s more expensive and way worse quality.
- morkalork 1y ago
  Something unique to the city I'm in is there are some stores that only sell produce. I have no idea how they make it work economically other than locations with cheap rent and being an outlet for distributors but they manage to to have better quality and prices than grocery stores.
schrectacular 1y ago
My local Asian grocer does one key thing I know of to save/make money: lots of the workers live in a local dorm that he rents and are fed with leftovers from the bakery and nealy spoiled produce.
- whatamidoingyo 1y ago
  Smart. The one in my area also has a restaurant and they also sell baked goods. I think they're definitely doing well for themselves.
mattmaroon 1y ago
I believe Asian markets are basically an inversion of the regular grocery store pricing model. Regular grocery stores sell all the stuff around the perimeter (meat, dairy, produce, baked goods, etc.) at relatively high margins and all the shelf-stable packaged stuff in the middle at relatively low margins. It makes sense, one store may have better or worse produce or meat or bakery items or deli items etc. than another, but their Heinz Ketchup can only be cheaper or more expensive. The packaged goods at Asian markets in many cases cannot be purchased anywhere other than an Asian market. No frozen pandan leaves at Costco. So I think they just mark up the packaged goods more and the produce less.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  You can get a nice deal if you alternate, yeah - generic "staples" at your local giant or whatever, Asian market for fresher or unique stuff, dry spices from an Indian grocery... It's only comfort keeping people going to the same store every time. And I guess the hassle of doing two trips a week or something.
- VoodooJuJu 1y ago
  [dead]
goshx 1y ago
Publix is expensive. Even Walmart will save you a good amount.
- devmor 1y ago
  Publix is expensive for general items but the sales are often incredible, I will stop by just to get BOGO items and return to Kroger or Lidl for everything else.
FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
Or go to Aldi...
insane_dreamer 1y ago
I don't care if it saves me money, I'm not giving my hard earned cash to Walmart/Kroger/Albertsons/OtherMegaCorp. Not to mention that what they sell at Walmart is mostly unhealthy garbage that I would be a negligent parent if I fed that to my family. I do make an exception for Costco because from everything I've read they're a pretty standout company as far as treating their employees go, and they curate well. We get some stuff there. But mostly we shop at small(er) local grocery stores when possible, especially for things like meat, eggs, milk, all of which we can get local (better quality and why ship stuff like that around the world; luckily we're in the PNW). And of course that includes local Asian stores for rice, fresh fish, etc. We don't buy "fancy" food (no wagyu steaks and the like; we eat a lot of legumes) but we do try to get the healthiest local option when possible (not fanatically so, we're not on Portlandia), and we could probably cut our monthly food bill by at least 30% if we bought the cheapest food at Walmart/Safeway. So we cut back spending in other ways - rarely eat/drink out, entertainment, etc. I'm sure we could do better. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it really costs in both time and money to eat healthy. We're lucky that we can, but it's also a matter of what we prioritize in our spending.
archagon 1y ago
Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Crazy Cheap in Chinatown: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063

TechDebtDevin 1y ago

[flagged]

whatamidoingyo 1y ago
Huh? I'm guessing you didn't mean to reply to me?
- torlok 1y ago
  It's probably a bot.
- TechDebtDevin 1y ago
  You're talking about getting in a car and driving to a specialized grocery store to "save money". I'm saying you could also just by produce and save money.
  - whatamidoingyo 1y ago
    That was the point of my post. I'm not buying potato chips and dip; I'm buying produce, meat, and herbs. These items are way cheaper at the Asian markets I go to.

Zaheer 1y ago

I find the produce prices often to be absurdly lower. These items are cheaper to begin with but if you're making fresh food consistently then it probably adds up. The biggest difference I've observed is that the asian grocery stores buy tier 2/3 produce rather than the big supermarkets that have perfect looking produce.

kwertyoowiyop 1y ago
Exactly! The big supermarkets have tomatoes that look perfect, but taste like wax. The Asian groceries have lumpy odd-colored tomatoes that actually taste good.
- tayo42 1y ago
  Like heirloom tomatoes? Those are everywhere now?
- freedomben 1y ago
  We've had a garden and orchard for most years for quite some time now (several decades) and this is one of the most stark and interesting things I've observed as well. Garden produce is nearly always smaller, lumpy-looking, and by appearances alone looks to be quite inferior. However, they taste great compared to those "perfect" veggies and fruits in the grocery stores. In mid-winter when the home-grown produce is gone and we go back to buying from the store (or when on trips and such), it's often a big disappointment. If you're willing to spend $$$ on organic produce at mid to higher end stores, you can get close to the quality (though never on strawberries and raspberries IME), but the cost can be pretty ridiculous to the point of feeling wasteful.
  - kccqzy 1y ago
    I've recently had some of the best strawberries and it costs $1/each. Grown in the same city I live in: in fact Google Maps says the distance between the grocery store and the strawberry farm is four miles.
  - monicaaa 1y ago
    [dead]

gitremote 1y ago

> Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. ... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Whenever I see this protip, I feel bad for struggling Asians getting validated that they and their extended family already fully optimized all their opportunities.

tonyhart7 1y ago
Asian always min maxxing their whole life, the moment you hit adulthood it hit you hard that you always been capped for life

ramon156 1y ago

In my country its called an international market. It's a beautiful place where you buy an entire bag of garlic for ~8 euros. There's also vegetables I hadn't heard of before I entered there

aeblyve 1y ago

I would love to learn more about the unit economics of groceries. How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? [0] If the latter was functioning well in a competitive market, I would expect their play to be on lower margins but higher volume. [0] Mostly I'm referring to offal TBF, which I think most firms are happy to make any money on at all.

tossandthrow 1y ago
It is likely partly due to cost optimization (the shelf are rarely that organized in these stores) and the fact that they don't sell fresh produce.
nine_zeros 1y ago
> How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? Mega corporations need to increase their returns to shareholders year after year. Mom and pops don't have anyone else to please but themselves - they're often ok with retaining same returns as last year
pjc50 1y ago
The megacorp can provide cheap food, it just doesn't want to. In practice they adjust the margins in a data-driven way on individual goods. UK supermarkets actually provide pretty cheap fresh produce, because the market is pretty competitive. I think the most ridiculous I've seen was a 1kg bag of carrots for 20p. Many countries or locations do not have highly competitive supermarkets. Oh, and there's both volume and self-discrimination effects at work. In my supermarket shopping in the Asian food section is often cheaper as they sell big bags of rice and spices, to more cost-conscious consumers. See also: Costco.
- K0balt 1y ago
  It’s just price gouging. There is an item I sometimes buy that is about $1.60 at supermarkets, but is consistently $.85 at nearly all rural Colmados. Same brand, same product , shelf stable , mass produced, large volume mover, imported product. Supermarkets have just collectively decided to sell it for 2x the “rational” market price because it went up with Covid and people kept buying it. Colmados don’t do data driven pricing, and just do a flat markup on the stuff the suplicadoras bring them. Data driven pricing is just selective price gouging under a different name.

anonzzzies 1y ago

I pickle, ferment and sauce a lot of things. Then I look for things that can be made in very large quantities and then preserved frozen/cooled (a lot of times just in the cellar). A lot of these things are from Asia and are great and very cheap and I'm love them for taste as well; curry's (I make 10 liters at a time; from scratch, very very cheap except my time but I like cooking), auntie dumplings (prep + freeze; just watch tv while making 100s of them) etc. Lovely food and cheaper than most things.

dakna 1y ago
Same here, our freezer has lots of home made dumplings in dinner size packages. Pancakes also work well for us, we usually put fresh chopped greens into them. We still eat the Bok Choy pancakes prepared months ago, usually when we just want a quick side for leftovers.

mupuff1234 1y ago

Protip #2: frozen veggies and fruit. Cheaper, supposedly healthier (flash frozen), easy to make, zero preparation, and never need to worry about it going bad.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

TuringNYC 1y ago

>> Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. Second this! Especially for things like produce and herbs. You literally get 10-20x the cilantro, etc at an Asian market for the same price (I think they are loss leaders.) And oh the aroma....you dont know fresh herbs until you step into a Patel Brothers and get truly fresh cilantro. We've gotten to a point where we know what to get where and shop accordingly.

aprilthird2021 1y ago

They make the money on the imported goods which are harder for their core audience to find and more expected to have a markup.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

The produce quality is often a bit lower. But in the last 5 years, all the grocery stores at least here in the Seattle area have had produce degrade, and they are pretty much the same as H-mart with higher prices.

nyjah 1y ago
Where I live, if I don’t shop at fancy grocery stores 30-40min away, it’s generous to call the produce ‘produce’. Literally never knew onions could look this bad. A lot of the citrus is like deflated in the inside, the bananas are trash, and a single bell pepper is $3. I could go on and on. Just think we enshittified the food situation and now it’s more expensive and way worse quality.
morkalork 1y ago
Something unique to the city I'm in is there are some stores that only sell produce. I have no idea how they make it work economically other than locations with cheap rent and being an outlet for distributors but they manage to to have better quality and prices than grocery stores.

schrectacular 1y ago

My local Asian grocer does one key thing I know of to save/make money: lots of the workers live in a local dorm that he rents and are fed with leftovers from the bakery and nealy spoiled produce.

whatamidoingyo 1y ago
Smart. The one in my area also has a restaurant and they also sell baked goods. I think they're definitely doing well for themselves.

mattmaroon 1y ago

I believe Asian markets are basically an inversion of the regular grocery store pricing model. Regular grocery stores sell all the stuff around the perimeter (meat, dairy, produce, baked goods, etc.) at relatively high margins and all the shelf-stable packaged stuff in the middle at relatively low margins. It makes sense, one store may have better or worse produce or meat or bakery items or deli items etc. than another, but their Heinz Ketchup can only be cheaper or more expensive. The packaged goods at Asian markets in many cases cannot be purchased anywhere other than an Asian market. No frozen pandan leaves at Costco. So I think they just mark up the packaged goods more and the produce less.

nemomarx 1y ago
You can get a nice deal if you alternate, yeah - generic "staples" at your local giant or whatever, Asian market for fresher or unique stuff, dry spices from an Indian grocery... It's only comfort keeping people going to the same store every time. And I guess the hassle of doing two trips a week or something.
VoodooJuJu 1y ago
[dead]

goshx 1y ago

Publix is expensive. Even Walmart will save you a good amount.

devmor 1y ago
Publix is expensive for general items but the sales are often incredible, I will stop by just to get BOGO items and return to Kroger or Lidl for everything else.

FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago

Or go to Aldi...

insane_dreamer 1y ago

I don't care if it saves me money, I'm not giving my hard earned cash to Walmart/Kroger/Albertsons/OtherMegaCorp. Not to mention that what they sell at Walmart is mostly unhealthy garbage that I would be a negligent parent if I fed that to my family. I do make an exception for Costco because from everything I've read they're a pretty standout company as far as treating their employees go, and they curate well. We get some stuff there. But mostly we shop at small(er) local grocery stores when possible, especially for things like meat, eggs, milk, all of which we can get local (better quality and why ship stuff like that around the world; luckily we're in the PNW). And of course that includes local Asian stores for rice, fresh fish, etc. We don't buy "fancy" food (no wagyu steaks and the like; we eat a lot of legumes) but we do try to get the healthiest local option when possible (not fanatically so, we're not on Portlandia), and we could probably cut our monthly food bill by at least 30% if we bought the cheapest food at Walmart/Safeway. So we cut back spending in other ways - rarely eat/drink out, entertainment, etc. I'm sure we could do better. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it really costs in both time and money to eat healthy. We're lucky that we can, but it's also a matter of what we prioritize in our spending.

archagon 1y ago

Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Crazy Cheap in Chinatown: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063