Name of Location: Bottom Dollar 533 Wallace Street. We got there around 12:10 pm by car on November 18, 2011. The weather conditions that day were sunny forecast with a high of 72 degrees.
The outside of the building is very simple with a orange and tan sign saying Bottom Dollar just like any other grocery store. When we first walked in I noticed that the check out lines are spaced out more than at Giant and Safeway. It also had a very distinct smell, almost like a warehouse kind of smell where products and items have been sitting around for a while. The theme of the store was as simple as the outside with the green brown and orange color schemes. The shelves were also spaced out more than at other stores such as Giant.
While walking around looking at the merchandise I noticed that the single most obvious item that stood out was the meat section. If I shopped here regularly I would not fail to check the expiration date on everything that I bought because the meat looked brown and dry. I noticed the chicken legs they had were enormous and this made me think about our latest topic about steroid chickens and how they are huge now. I also noticed while walking through the produce section that every single bag of grapes was open and clearly some where missing. I thought this was very odd. Their bananas were also from Costa Rica Dole.
For the customers they were typically minority and elderly. Leading me to believe that retired folks came here to shop for the low prices. Hence the name Bottom Dollar which signifies bottom prices or low prices. The cars they drove were also old and beat up from what I saw in the parking lot. Workers were your average looking store worker so there was nothing unusual or interesting there. I saw that they put a lot of bargain items toward the front of the store to try and lure in more sales because of the low prices. For the shopping patterns of the shoppers it was kind of hard to tell if there were any because there weren’t very many shoppers to begin with but from what I did see was they would enter the store, grab a cart or basket, and trail off to the right of the store and work there way around.
The biggest thing I found unusual was how they were able to price things so low with competitors like Giant and Safeway who are selling the same kind of merchandise. I personally love to bargain shop considering that I’m a college student who goes to school and doesn’t have a whole lot of cash. It is definitely my favorite place to shop for beer and snacks because the prices are so cheap. I also have a bottom dollar card for those even lower special prices. Overall it was a clean, great store beside from the sketchy looking meat and produce I would totally shop there for most of my items. The workers were friendly and customers were more than willing to say hello and smile as you walked by.
