Erskine Plaza — Attraction in South Bend

TLDR: Building supplies from Menards, along with unexpected finds, fanboy power tools elsewhere.

I'm in here constantly. Service is almost always friendly. If you are looking for lumber, and building supplies along those lines, you will find better prices, a better selection, and a much larger inventory than at Lowe's or Home Depot. They also have entire categories of things the aforementioned places lack, like a substantial grocery section, pet supplies, clothing, etc. The biggest thing that they are lacking is a few of the bigger names in power tools. They do carry Bosch, which is a largely high-quality product, and some Metabo HPT (formerly Hitachi), which is also high quality. They have their own brand of tools, "Masterforce", which probably fits into the "pro-sumer" category. I have used a few of these tools & had positive experiences. They don't have Milwaukee, Dewalt, Makita, Hilti, etc. If they could add one or two of these brands, they could probably dominate the area. I tend to turn to Home Depot for my power tools, as I'm a DeWaukee guy. I doubt I'm the only person with this buying pattern. Menards does have some niche hand tools, like Knipex always on hand though (get one, you'll never go back). Sign up for their email list for sure; some crazy low prices on very...

Kroger's to grab a few staples / groceries... Higher priced than some of the other Kroger's in the area...and also the cashier that was working the 3rd shift commented out loud to no one inpaticular..stating. " I gotta go work another place or shift . All the " something not nice" come out at night and they always come here ...which might be right in some cases but my Son and I were offended as I was there buying him food groceries at that hour due to the fact Im from out of town and was leaving out...

It's not too bad as far as strip malls go. The parking lot is a little tough to navigate in my opinion with a lot of curbs that you have to drive in and around. The whole thing is set back from the street behind other buildings so you have to go down a drive on either side to get to it. However each both main street entrance/exits have traffic lights which is handy. There is a good selection of shops and restaurants with a major hardware store at one end and a major grocery store...