likely unpopular but true: Wally world cheap food

[Dinamight]

I agree about KTA. It's got a lot of interesting items but I cannot bear the smell. You would think with the amount of people that shop there they could clean the store up, or do a full remodel. I only go to Safeway for crab legs on sale, but now you can get them at Makuu market at a good price, I won't have to go there. I think we buy about 1/3 of our groceries from Walmart because the prices are a lot cheaper, there is high turnover - things like condiments, cereal, and milk.

Re: catfood - your cats can actually tell the difference of where the same canned catfood comes from?

[mdd7000]

We don't like the smell either!
We shop sale prices between Wal-Mart, KTA, Foodland, Safeway and Cost-U-Less. The one thing I like about Wal-Mart is that they don't change prices daily like the local stores do.
As to the price changes, Malama Market in Pahoa is the worst. Just pay attention to the Fuji apple price on that front table. Every day it is different.

[Shekelpal]

I love the scent in KTA. It is real food. Fish and seafood have a wonderful smell. It is good. It smells good to me. I just wonder what smell the last three posters are speaking of? KTA does a great deal to bring in local produce, milk without antibiotics, kalua pork, local grass fed beef, and other local produce and eggs. Yes, everything can be triple packaged and not smell at all on the shelf and KTA has a lot of that too, but it does have the above as well. I give them a lot of credit for that.

[Lin W]

I also love the smell of KTA - reminds me of the wharf in San Francisco, or Chinatown. Yum!

[Dinamight]

I can tell the difference between the smell of fresh seafood and old impossible to wash floors, and KTA smells of the latter. The charm of local outdoor markets on the street is one thing, but an old rundown grocery store is another, and in my view is not one to be enjoyed. The Keaau supermarket was like that but no more, it's all nice and clean now!

[kani-lehua]

i bought a bottle of craft glue from ben franklin at just over three bucks. had to go to wally world for other things and found the same glue at more than $2 cheaper.



"a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

w. james

[missydog1]

I asked my son (who has worked in many restaurants) what the smell is like, and he said like stuff is festering under the linoleum (along the same lines as Dinamight). It reminds me of a walk-in refrigerator that's not cold enough, to where all the stuff that should be too chilled to smell is putting off an odor. If their fish is being chilled properly, it shouldn't smell, and really fresh fish doesn't smell fishy. (Although I believe they do carry very fresh fish.) Maybe it's the floors, and the walls are permeated too. It's a gross smell. I do have a sensitive nose, but my son is a smoker and he can't stand to go in there.

This coming from a chef who has had to stand in a kitchen and prep calamari for hours at a time ... no stranger to dealing with fresh fish smell.

Dinamight, of course my cats can't tell what store their food comes from, but they can and do reject food that tastes "off"or spoiled -- and that's what they do with Walmart Sheba and Fancy Feast. They take one sniff and bolt out the door to make their point crystal clear. They won't even take an exploratory bite. My feral-sired calico is not picky, likes most cat food, so I know it's bad if she won't eat it. This was food that had a date code good a year from now. On the other topic, we speculated that possibly it gets really hot sitting in containers outside waiting to be unloaded.

[oink]

I went in that store almost every evening when I was last there. It smelled like any fish house I've ever been in. It doesn't bother me. It just smells like a lot of fish goes through there.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[Hazen]

Gotta agree, the smell in KTA is one of seafood at volume. Not pleasant, but better than wally world, that place smells like evil. Artificial processed evil. Try some real fish markets mainland, they can knock you over. KTA consistently supports, buys from, and represents the local farmer and fisherman. Puna Fresh Foods always had local fish. I'm willing to bet that the KTA store was based on a mainland design, here high humidity levels undoubtably contribute to a higher bacterial count, and thus their waste smell. We don't so much smell fish or vegetables as bacteria. I would happily eat fish from a local market that is in and out of the store in the same day, over that which is farmed, frozen, thawed, and laid out for three days on display any day. That shiny display may not smell so much cause it's bleached every night, but you can bet there's more harmeful bacteria in their fish than on KTA's.

[missydog1]

yes, but KTA isn't a fish market. It's a grocery store. I do shopping runs that last an hour. 9 times out of 10 I'm not even buying fish. So why would I want to smell fish at that level the whole time? I don't. My husband used to go there for fish only runs. Sorry the smell is too much for me.

I understand the concept of support, but a store needs to give me, the shopper, an experience that I enjoy, and that is something I will support.
On a tangential note, the new Island Naturals is all big and clean and bright but I DON'T enjoy it. The old one smelled and felt homey to me. It all feels too sterile and impersonal to me now. I guess I'm a contradiction there. I don't have a philosophy that governs what I like. My emotions and senses and the employee vibe figures into whether I patronize a business.

As for Walmart, I only go there when I need something I can't easily find somewhere else, like my koi food.