Please help me with shopping in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina

[jkelstaten]

My family and I are missionaries and will be starting to travel to raise our budget at the beginning of the year. We are are in a different state almost every week, so I need some help knowing what the options are for shopping. We will be taking a lot of what we have stockpiled, but we will be basing our meals off the sales & available coupons to make it as cheap as possible. We eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables & will need to buy meat weekly, so help knowing where those are cheap without q's would be much appreciated.

First we will be in Georgia, then South Carolina, and then North Carolina. If you live there where do you recommend shopping? I have tried googling grocery stores, but since I don't know the zip codes where we will be, I'm somewhat limited to what the searches will find.

[eknig100]

In the upstate SC you will be able to choose from many grocery stores such as Bloom, Bilo, Ingles, Food Lion and Publix and a few Independent IGA's here and there. The Bloom stores here will triple coupons during special sales which have only happened within the last three months. Our Food Lion has had triples a few times in the last 6 months also. On an average, I stand by BiLo and Publix to give you the best deals if you are a savvy shopper. They will double your coupons on a daily basis, and often have BOGO sales. The Publix store brand is a reliable one, but as for BiLo I don't care for it as much. The Publix and Bloom stores seem to me the better for fruits and veggies if you can't find a farmers market or roadside stand this time of the year. Bloom will not keep meat too long and discounts cuts fairly quickly. We have gotten nice angus steaks and lamb kebobs very inexpensively from there.

Now if you happen to be in the Anderson, Pelzer, Greenville area, there is a store called Bargain Foods on Highway 8 in West Pelzer. This location is a few miles off of Highway 25. It's like a scratch and dent grocery store where you can find some pretty good deals too if you spend the time checking out the products available. The produce is not that great, but then again its all in what you are looking for. Make sure to check expiration dates and packaging. I find that this is the best place to buy day old bread. (i.e. $1.09 for Pepperidge farms).

Hope this helps you in your journey.

[PirateQueen]

In central GA (Atlanta and surrounding counties), usually you will have Krogers, Publix, Ingles, Super Walmart, Aldi's and STarget. There are also some Food Lions, Quality Foods (don't go there though), Piggly Wiggly and I've seen IGA in smaller towns. Not sure if there are any Winn Dixies, Cub Foods or Bi-Lo still in GA (none by me anymore). A tip on finding zip codes if you know the city name, is just to google the city name plus the words zip code and it will usually give you the largest zip code for that city. I do this all the time when using the store locators that only show stores up to a certain distance.

[jkelstaten]

In central GA (Atlanta and surrounding counties), usually you will have Krogers, Publix, Ingles, Super Walmart, Aldi's and STarget. There are also some Food Lions, Quality Foods (don't go there though), Piggly Wiggly and I've seen IGA in smaller towns. Not sure if there are any Winn Dixies, Cub Foods or Bi-Lo still in GA (none by me anymore). A tip on finding zip codes if you know the city name, is just to google the city name plus the words zip code and it will usually give you the largest zip code for that city. I do this all the time when using the store locators that only show stores up to a certain distance.

Thanks for the help. I do know how to find the zip codes (I always do it when we're going on a trip), but I don't know exactly which cities we'll be in yet...that's the big problem. We won't know where we'll be going until right before we get there.

Thanks for helping out with the store names. Now I can watch the sales thru HCW!