Quote:
Originally Posted by Tapioca
Here's the thing about Vancouver - there are places where you can buy cheap produce, but they're typically ethnic markets in neighbourhoods where rent is still cheap, like pockets of East Van, Burnaby, or in Surrey. These markets buy produce that is B-grade and sell it for 10-20% less than the major grocers. While you can save money by going to these shops, you have to know where they are, have to be comfortable picking out the few good pieces from the utter crap, and you have to be comfortable paying cash (no points for your fancy, schmancy credit cards). Unless you live in East Van or in other communities where these grocers are located, you most likely need to drive to get to them which can negate any savings (since you actually have to spend your gas and time to go to these places).
Another reason why immigrants tend to have lower foods costs than Anglo-Canadians is that immigrants eat everything from animals. Tendon, stomach linings, and other lesser cuts and body parts are a typical part of the diet of people from East Asia. Ironically, a restaurant like Wildebeast has made a killing selling to hipsters and yuppies what Asians have done for years.
To bring this tangent back to the tread... the problem I see with all these new transit oriented communities is that while they're designed to minimize the use of the car, what you end up getting is only the most expensive grocers who are able to afford the rents in new retail sites. Less square footage and more expensive stores for your daily needs. It seems like the only businesses who can afford rent in new street level retail are hair salons, dentists, or Starbucks.
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These businesses exist all over neighborhoods as well, I know of atleast 5 on the north shore alone. Including one in West van. Many of them are run by iranians, so white people might not know as much about it, but they are awesome family run businesses, they don't have the overhead of a store like superstore.
And the produce isn't B-Grade, many times it can be better than superstore if you spend an extra 10 seconds to pick nice apples instead of just blindly shoving 5 in a bag.
The people in here who say they spend 1000+ on their families (4 people) in groceries, if you are trying to be frugal, you are doing it all wrong.
Don't buy name brand shit, that will cut down 30% right away, grab the no-name brand chips instead of the lays. I actually prefer the presidents choice version of nutella over actual nutella. It also helps that it's like 3 bucks cheaper.
I'm not going to tell you what to eat because people are sensitive about that, I will say though that if you're having steaks a few times a week, then you aren't trying to save money.
This generation constantly uses the excuse that food is a requisite to live and therefore the cost doesn't matter. That's crap. There are plenty of foods that you can live off of healthy and they hardly cost anything. I had a buddy who didn't give a fuck what the cost of something was, he only cared about his gains, he ate brocolli, chicken breast and rice for lunch and dinner every day. You know how cheap his immensely clean diet was? And he wasn't trying to be cheap, he was just eating the cleanest food to aide his bulk.
If you choose organic, and "knowing where my meat comes from", then that's your choice, but that's not an average cost to bear. You made that decision, you decided "hey I rather know that my pig was allowed to frolic in the fields before it was brutally slaughtered." instead of going to the movies, or buying that new car part I wanted, or saving that extra 200 a month so I can buy my dream house 5 years sooner.