Kroger — Attraction in Nacogdoches

Used to be my primary store.

Short review, they lost my business because they have so many sales schemes going at the same time. Makes shopping twice as complicated as it needs to be for half the discounts they appear to give.

Disclaimer: Before you read my long rant, you should know that I realize some people just buy what they want and don’t look at the price. This review will be no good to you. Even when I don’t have to be so tight with my budget, I can’t help myself, I have to do the math. This review is for people who do the math, are on a budget, or who don’t appreciate paying more than others just because they are tired and didn’t see the fine print.

Overly long rant: I love math and actually enjoy math games, but Kroger marketing strategies drove me away. Went to Kroger tonight for the first time in several months. I was so mad at the waste of time spent in the store and fighting the app to download coupons that never would load. So many different “sales” scams. They conveniently have more and more items ringing up at a slightly higher price than what the tag said, so it’s a bother to keep having to ask for the price to be corrected. They have the usual ‘“new lower price” scam, like we haven’t noticed that they just jacked the price way up so they could “lower” it. Tonight I even saw an old price of 2.49 still on the shelf, next to 3.29 but that has a “lower price” of 2.79 printed on the same tag. Kroger also likes to keep switching the number of items you have to buy to get a special discount, to keep customers confused. Some sales are listed as if it’s a big savings, for example 3. 39 each or buy 3 for 10.00. Wow, a whole .06 savings each. That makes me mistrust them and now I have to do the math for EVERY sale or bend down to look for fine print. I’m pretty sure Kroger loves to confuse customers with slightly different sale price rules. For example: sale price with card; sale price with card and in fine print -digital coupon; sale price with digital coupon (limited to…).

I have to divide my cart into sections to keep the different scams (aka sales) straight. Hopefully this is not intentional but even when my phone signal is really good, I always have problems with the app while I’m in the store. Other apps work fine. These are all common marketing scams used by other companies but Kroger uses them all at the SAME time! Let’s not forget shrinkflation and packaging sorcery! Shopping for food is more painful than ever. Prices are up everywhere, I know it’s not just Kroger. In the past, I felt they used more marketing decoys than other food chains but they used to have good sales at least. The store is clean, organized and I feel they do have better quality in some departments. However, I now feel the sale prices are not that great AND it is twice the effort to shop there! Maybe the marketing department thinks all these schemes go un-noticed by customers and that they boost sales. Maybe no one will see this review, but I just want it to be said that I HATE all the games, as do many others. Marketing games are part of business sadly, but Kroger uses so many that it burdens the customer. I know I have made plenty of grammatical errors (I am a math person after all), but I am smart enough to feel insulted by these marketing gimmicks. I like a good sale, it encourages me to buy one product over another. However, making me jump through hoops and juggle every item I buy is just tiring. It feels like Kroger makes it difficult because they want the appearance of good deals without having to give them. Feels dishonest. I know a lot of people who are tired of the hassle and who are looking forward to switching to a company that doesn’t play games, just gives their best price. The ease of that sounds so...

We went inside Kroger & asked if they could do a Strawberry cake🍓 And we were told YES! So we placed our order. A few days later I recieved a call from the Kroger Bakery stating they don't do Strawberry cakes & we were misinformed. WOW. Stop with the sugar coating. Just say we were LIED to!!! But seriously, how to you offer Carrot cake, but not Strawberry?!?!? So I said, never mind, we'd go somewhere else. Then my daughter (who the cake is for) said to go ahead & get the cake from Kroger, because she had her heart set on Harley Quinn & we had already bought the candles to match. So I called Kroger back. We kept everything the same, except we asked for a vanilla cake since we couldn't do Strawberry. (Not sure why the "yellow" box is marked instead of the "white" box) Harley's hair is supposed to be blue and RED!! But the red does not show up!!! The plastic cover to the cake has strands of hair and dust particles all over it!!! The Joker's face is wrinkled up and completely SQUISHED!!! I obviously covered my daughters name for her privacy, but it looks like a kid learning how to do cursive writing did it. There are imperfections all over the cake. Icing spots. Dents. Finger smears. Where the cake is white, it just looks filthy and dirty. I certainly didn't want to pay $75 for this TRASH!!!! But I also didn't want to disappoint my daughter & her birthday is tomorrow!!! I don't have time to wait on another cake to be made!!! Before leaving, I asked the lady could she fix the cake & her reply was "We're not cake decorators, we're just employees" Like WHAT!!!! Then why are you standing behind the bakery counter???? I'm soooooo upset, I should have never left the store with this trash!!!!! Luckily my daughter took it upon herself to "fix" her own cake. Crazy how a child can do better than a paid employee. But this meant having to spend EVEN MORE money to fix what they couldn't do right!!! But I want my $75 back!!! And this cake BETTER NOT be yellow after we cut into it!!! I want a Manager to contact me IMMEDIATELY!!! Because shame on your bakery department!!!...

It doesn't look like much from the outside. And having the drive-through Lane at the pharmacy right by the entrance makes getting in a little dangerous. However once we were in the store we were so happy. We actually live in Lufkin, and are finding that we can't find name brand Niche items that we use all the time here in East Texas. They have an amazing supply of sauces, BBQ products, marinades, dressings Etc. They had lots of organic options, and not the typical to brands of yogurt that were finding here in Lufkin. In my opinion it's well worth the trip 25 miles and to Nacogdoches to shop there. Their prices were good, and they had a lot of nice things on sale that we just don't see here. Having moved from Southwest of Houston, to a very small town we've been missing some of the little things. Kroger has both the big things and their produce was very fresh. If you want some variety, and healthier options, this...