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| - Crazed berserker bulk shopping!
WinCo is how a person who lives alone ends up buying enough boneless, skinless chicken breasts to cater a mid-sized wedding, should anybody in my neighborhood need to have a mid-sized wedding. Otherwise, summer 2013 is now the Season of the Chicken Breast. $1.98 a pound, baby!
The bulk section is mind-boggling. It includes mini-ravioli and tortellini. It sells nuts at a price that's not nuts. It offers more varieties of interesting candy than mall stores that specialize in that sort of thing.
As you get into produce, meat, and bakery, bear in mind that this store is designed for middle-class or working-class, large-family, middle-of-the-road shopping. It's about bags of oranges and potatoes, along with blocks of cheddar, massive packs of hamburger or chicken, and eggs in mass quantities. There are "better" mainstream brands (e.g., Deli Selects, Chobani yogurt) and some exotic items like ground buffalo, but if you're looking for the kinds of cheeses found in the deli at Fry's or Safeway, or if you want custom-sliced deli meat, or if you're looking for produce of the quality that Sprouts offers on a good day, WinCo is not that store. (You can, however, buy a whole pig's foot still attached to the leg.)
The canned, boxed, and frozen food sections are seemingly endless and very well-stocked. If you're fit enough to keep pushing that heavy cart for another mile, you can score items that are hard to find. It's the only store I've ever seen to carry the full line of Jiffy muffin mix flavors, including the semi-mythical raspberry (which is probably ghastly, but I feel fulfilled for having been in its presence).
I give WinCo 5 stars because it doesn't pretend to be a chi-chi-mart (and indeed, for fresh produce, I want something nearer to home for frequent trips) and for the middle-of-the-road stock-up shopping that it's designed for, it's superlatively easy, fun, and cheap.
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