I can feel my nutrition value dip dangerously low this week with the problems with The Stomach. Yes, it deserves capitalisation with its superior beat-down this week.
Firstly, I have to make a comment that having neighbourhood supermarkets is a brilliant thing but they really need to get their acts together if they are part of large franchise like NTUC Fairprice or Cold Storage. Especially when they have promotions or press ads and then cannot deliver.
Let's take for example this week's fiasco. And I say this because it took so much out of me to do the marketing this week and I had planned well ahead. And found myself having less than 15% success rate in getting all the things I wanted which were on promotion or advertised. This is a truly bad thing and only mitigated by my foresight to purchase some items not on my list ahead of time. Pauper's intuition is not to be under-estimated, for which I am truly grateful to God.
Here is my list culled from today's updates of promotions from NTUC Fairprice's and Cold Storage's websites. I have to commend them both for being so timely this and Cold Storage really stepped up their 3-day promotion update by having it up before noon today.
NTUC Fairprice
Meiji milk @S$$4.95 for the 2l bottle (UP @S$5.25)
NZ Organic Royal Gala apples @S$4.20/1kg packet OR
South Africa Royal Gala apples@S$2.35/1kg packet
Thai Rainbow mangoes @S$3.35 for 4x
Avocadoes @S$2.94 for 3x
Minced Pork @S$0.99/100g
Cold Storage
Minced Beef @S$2.99/100g (UP@S$3.59/100g)
Cold Storage Meltique Ribeye or Sirloin @S$6.95/packet (UP @S$11.90)
Prime Laksa @S$5.15 per box (UP @S$5.20)
Pork Spare Ribs @S$1.59/100g (UP @S$2.32)
Bulk Shoulder Ham @S$4.99/pack (UP @S$6.30)
BBQ Smoked Duck @S$13.99 (UP @S$25.90)
Of course, this is the list of items I think are a good deal and I do not anticipate getting all of them! However, I usually expect to purchase at least 50-70% of the items I list as I am already quite selective.
Here's how it went down.
I went to NTUC Fairprice first as I usually find that they have more varieties of green vegetables at a more reasonable price than Cold Storage. The latter has better meats and diary and a lot of other stuff I can never find in NTUC Fairprice so I usually go there last because I always pick up little surprises or luxuries there.
So going according to the list at NTUC, the results were -
Meiji milk as usual was plentiful and in all the flavours you may want. I still have 1/3 bottle of milk left so I will pick up another bottle later in the week before the promotion is over next Thursday.
I compared the NZ organic apples versus the South African. OK, I know organic is the trend and the price certainly seems to reflect it but the organic apples looked so beat up and even felt a little squidgy so I felt fully justified in purchasing the cheaper South African counterparts. I hope they live up to the taste test.
At the mangoes counter, I gave an older lady a smile as she picked gingerly among them. Honestly, they were the saddest looking lot of mangoes I had seen in a while. They were either greener than an 18-year-old at his first day of NS or wrinkly and spotted like his grandfather. And there were so few of them that the counter was only 1/3 full. The lady and I gave each other commiserating smiles and we both concluded that they were definitely not worth the look, what more the buy. For shame, NTUC Fairprice. What do you think you are? Sheng Shiong?
I felt so let down that I did not hold much more hope for the avocadoes. Surprisingly, they were plentiful and in good shape! Usually, NTUC Fairprice's avocadoes are of the picked unripe and will take 500 years to mature into gooey mess variety. This time around, they were nicely green with a few just ripe enough to eat today or tomorrow. I promptly picked 1 for today and two to make it through the week.
And here is where they truly messed up. I think majority of NTUC Fairprice's customers are Chinese. At least I get that impression as they always seem to have a lot of pork in store. Since I am not much of a pork eater, I never give much notice to their stock. But today, I thought I would purchase some minced pork since it was a good promotion and I could make what we call half & half meatballs. Half pork and half beef.
Except, NTUC Fairprice had 2 packets of minced pork on their counter. Two! Liang ge! Duo! What? And they looked so anaemic and dry that I did not even bother to pick them up. Truly ... for shame, NTUC Fairprice.
Instead, I purchase some kuning fish and watercress to make some fish porridge this weekend.
And hustled over to Cold Storage where I thought I would have a better time of it.
Wrong.
I think NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage shared the same merchandising executive this week. Their deli counter featured some roast chicken and ribs. And where the sign for the BBQ Smoked Duck on promotion was ... was a large, shiny aluminium foil of ... nothing. No ducks. And this was at 2pm. 2 hours after they updated their website. I asked the deli man where they were and he sheepishly informed me that they had just started a new batch to cook. You do know how long ducks take to roast, don't you? This is extremely poor store management.
Over at the meat counter, they had two large packets of pork spare ribs. They were so large that it would take two weeks for me to finish and trust me, I cannot eat pork more than once a week before I throw up. And in another corner, lurked two pathetic packets of minced beef. Again, I did not pick them up as I had given up in disgust. I was so peeved that I forgot to look out their Meltique beef and Prima Laksa. I was starting to think it might be a no-meat weekend for me.
I was so annoyed that I bought nothing from Cold Storage and walked out empty-handed for the first time in a long time.
My point is that if you run a promotion, and especially a 3-day promotion that starts today, you better make sure you have enough stock for it not be taken as false advertising.
This week's supermarket run was a right failure. And the greatest shame goes to Cold Storage.
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