Publix: Perhaps not such bad grocery store after all...

One of the few (very few) things I miss about New Jersey is my local grocery store, Wegman's. Generally I despise grocery shopping (which you would think I would enjoy being that it's one of the few forms of shopping I can engage in as a recovering shopaholic) but Wegman's was such a great grocery store that I almost enjoyed it. Wegman's managed to turn the once dreaded necessary task into something I looked forward to. It was just a great atmosphere with great food and great prices. I never realized how much I would miss it when I moved to Florida. That's when Publix came into my life.

My first experience with Publix was during one of my vacations in Miami proir to moving here. David and I had to get something (don't remember what) so we went to the Publix on South Beach. It was a small chaotic grocery store with terrible merchandising. Nothing made sense and everything was so crammed together that you could barely walk by the aisles. It reminded me of C-Town (aka a crappy little local supermarket chain you find in NYC). At first I didn't think much of it, I mean surely Miami had several other supermarket options. Little did I know that South Florida has only 2 choices when it comes to supermarket chains; Publix or the more expensive Winn-Dixie (I know, Whole Foods is an option too but I refuse to give into the organic food craze). I found this strange because in NJ there were a lot of supermarket chains so if you didn't love Wegman's you could always go to Shop Rite or Pathmark or Genuardis or...you get the picture. Anyway, I went to two Pubix supermarkets on Biscayne and a one in Aventura but didn't really like any of them. The atmosphere just wasn't as nice as Wegman's and they didn't have a nice cafeteria or coffee bar. The task that I had grown to enjoy had once again become something I dreaded and this upset me. I even e-mailed Wegman's to see if they were looking to expand to the area but they said no. This meant that every other week I had to drag myself to Publix against my will. After visiting 4 locations I figured all Publix supermarkets were the same.

Tonight, however, I was in the Hollywood area so I decided to go to the Publix there. At first when I walked in it seemed the same but once I started walking through the aisles I realized that this Publix was actually pretty nice. It was clean and wel stocked. While shopping, an associate who I think was the manager asked me if I needed help finding anything which totally caught me off guard. I don't expect good customer service when I'm at the supermarket. Then when I was at the checkout counter the cashier was super friendly as well as the guy bagging my groceries. Everyone was just really nice and welcoming despite the fact that it was 10:30 pm and they were closing in less than an hour. On my way out I realized that maybe Publix isn't such a bad place after all. I think I'll go back to this one. Who knows, maybe I'll even start enjoying grocery shopping once again.