$160 in FOF -- But A & P has met their freshness standards!

It seems frightening to me that A & P is reporting they've met their freshness standards and are ending the Fresh or Free program effective September 4, 2008.

Let's see what was not fresh yesterday:
It was a $38 spiral-sliced honey ham that was not fresh which I replaced with this bone-in ham shoulder. I'm seeing lots of soups this fall :) And ham and fried cabbage. The puddings were a replacement for refrigerated strawberry shortcake cups. For crying out loud, the egg beaters expired in July! More axe deodorant. My son will never stink!

Juice, fruit salads and a chicken salad, english muffins, So good tetra (the out of date ones were from 2007!! They apparently just reshelve the darned things. They keep re-appearing.) Caramel dairy things. I like the chocolate but the chocolate was all out of date. The steaks were a replacement for a $20 box of chicken wings from the deli. (ewwwwww.) I was going to buy the steaks anyway as they're a pretty good deal and nice quality. Oh, that's right, I did buy some more!


The milk was a replacement for a 4L bag of Goat's milk which expired August 1. The yogurt tub was a replacement for a small Astro 4-pack of plain yogurts. I'd rather have the small ones but all of them were out of date. I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream all the time. In my cooking the small ones work perfectly so I can pop them in the freezer and pull them out as needed. More juice, Silk soy milk, Bertolli olive oil. Woohoo. I wish I'd subbed an extra virgin olive oil but there were fresh replacements of the same kind. Orange juice. There were three varieties of this juice out of date. We're not much for juice in this house, but with the heat I don't mind the kids getting a bit of vitamins with their hydration. Also, Roy works 12-hour shifts out in the elements. He needs all the hydration and nutrition he can get.

Speaking of Roy he had a nice little lunch today with the FOFed fruit salad, FOFed juice, and some of that lovely road-side jam we purchased this weekend during out fruit stand tour. I'll tell you later how to know if a fruit stand is worth stopping at or not.

So, A & P, now that you've met your freshness standard, how do you explain the $160 FOF above? Not to mention all the expires we left in the store! I see a hiring wave of stock persons and intensive stock rotation training for them. Hopefully along the way they figure out how to remove expired items from the shelves and have them NOT turn back up on the shelves!

A & P won't have any more of my business after September 4. Not only are their prices exorbitant, but their staff are surly and inhospitable most of the time. Even when I haven't FOFed, the staff are less than pleasant at best. That makes a difference for me.

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113.80 in Free Groceries

You really can't get a better deal than that. Coupons can't save me $113 in one trip. Besides, most of the coupons out there are for items I wouldn't buy (prepared foods, detergents, high-end shampoos or cosmetics, name brands that even with a coupon cost more than store brands.)

What's $113 of free groceries look like?



You just want to know how I got all this free stuff, don't you?

If you're lucky enough to live in Ontario, you can take advantage of A & P's Fresh or Free policy. A & P, Dominion, and Ultra Food & Drug in Ontario maintain that if you find any item in their store that is not fresh, then you may receive a free fresh replacement for that item.

I strongly suspect that this policy is A & P's way of employing fewer stockpeople. Instead, with this policy they get a few diligent shoppers to do their stock rotation at a fraction of the cost of a few full-time employees. As a great sideline they can promote their stores as having the freshest stuff around. As you can see from my pictures above -- a lot of their stuff is not fresh.

You would think there just isn't that much expired stuff in a store. That's what I said before I ever went fresh or freeing. When I buy groceries in any other store, I check the expiration dates on the items I'm purchasing and I rarely find anything expired. Not so at A & P. I find A LOT of things expired. So much so that it is worth the higher price one pays at A & P because of all the free stuff one can get.

As you can see above, I have 4 packages of cookies, 2 packs of snack cakes, a 6-pack of pop (all of these items my husband will use for work), 3 packages of lunchmeat, 3 packages of meat substitutes, 3 salad dressings, 2 cheeses, 2 bags of chips (oh the kids are happy tonight), 3 soy milks, Axe deodorant (yes, it does expire), fruit snacks (which made a soon-to-be four-year-old boy very very happy), squeeze mayo, Kool-Aid, fresh pasta sauce, Omelet/Pizza veggies, and broccoli slaw. There was much more I could have gotten in free fresh replacements but I did not want to spend anymore than I already had. There were coffees, teas and hot chocolates available, along with many more vegetarian meat replacements. I happen to have a 6-month supply of free coffee in my cupboard and enough tea to last at least that long as well!

Just to clarify: you do not get to keep the out-of-date items for free. You get to keep a fresh replacement for the out-of-date items. You do have to purchase an equal amount of groceries to match your free stuff...but that's okay. It's like having a 50% off coupon on your total grocery bill. I purchase my meats at A & P because they are good quality and they tend to mark them down dramatically several days before they're set to expire. They go right in my deep freeze and I've never had any problems. I also shop their sales. Add in coupons and their higher prices aren't so bad.

Odd thing is, free food tastes so good!

You can read up on the Fresh or Free policy here.

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