East County Thriftway — Local services in Elma

This store is simply too expensive. I realize that shopping here helps my community but many items are 3, even 4 times the price that they are in other communities. It's the same with purchasing fuel in this town. It's more reasonably priced everywhere else. Until the price gouging in Elma stops, I have to shop and fuel up anywhere but here. Update 01/04/2024. Purchased a 5# bag of Mahatma brand Thai Jasmine Rice for $12.99 at Elma Theftway. I had accidentally purchased brown rice previously and so even though I knew it would be more expensive going to Thriftway, I didn't think it would be almost twice the price for a larger sized bag of rice. I should have known... Well, now that it's 2024, I'm only allowing myself 1 trip to East County Thriftway for the year. Last year was 4 times... I sure am looking forward to a little competition from that Grocery Outlet. In the meantime, Thriftway will keep on gouging as much as it can. SMH.

Update 4/23/2025 Today was my 2025 trip of the year to East County Theftway. One thing. Baby food. $2.19 for a 2 pack of baby food. Not bad, right? $1.34 at Walmart.

While looking for the baby food aisle I saw a display of S'mores fixings, 6 packs of full size Hershey bars, graham crackers, marshmallow. I saw one of the tags was $9.99. I thought what on earth could be 9.99 on this S'mores display? It was the 6 pack of full size Hershey bars. I scanned the barcode using the Walmart app. $4.97. Theftway is over twice the price on the same 6 pack of Hershey bars as Walmart.

What's even worse is that you look at it and since its priced using a yellow tag you think Oh, this is a good deal! Think again. If you buy the single bars at the check stand lane display, they're $1.48 each. Same full size bar as what's in the 6 pack. Those are also yellow tag prices.

Simple math leads one to determine that 6 single bars purchased for $1.48 each at the check out lane comes to $8.88. That's $1.11 less than purchasing the 6 pack.

What is Theftway thinking? Ah, yes. That there are a lot of people in this town and surrounding area that won't bother doing just a little due diligence to try and save themselves a little bread money.

Elma and East County folks pockets are chick full and waiting to get picked. And Theftway is absolutely...

Prices are high like any store not owned by the big three. Products are for the most part are great. If you're looking for great food and money isn't an obstacle, this might be your store.

One thing that's interesting is that the Elma Thriftway store and the one in Montesano are entirely different. The Montesano store is huge and has a ton of products the Elma Thriftway doesn't have.

Edit** I attempted to buy a bag of potatoes, a couple heads of garlic, a bottle of oil, some pine nuts and some cheese. I have a decent harvest of purple. I just set my cart near the exit and walked out when I saw the price of a 10lb bag of russet potatoes grown in my own state. They wanted $10 for a 10 lb bag of potatoes. The tiny bag of pinenuts was $8 and the oil was on sale for $15. The cheese was actually on sale for a reasonable price of $3.50 but really not much else on my list was actually worth the price. I figured if I just drove to town it would cost me $10 but I could get better prices on what i wanted and get more deals on top of my immediate shopping list.

So I ended up with a bottle of olive oil for $10, potatoes were $3.50 and the cheese was $23 but I got 10 times the amount and it's fresh grated parmesan instead of old stale dried out mark downs. I also bought a 10lb box of grass fed burger patties raised in oregon for $35 and a huge commercial pack of 24 buns for about the same price of a small pack of 8 at Thriftway. I just can't see the value in shopping here anymore. If Thriftway can't sell a bag of potatoes grown right here in Washington for less than $10 they are in the...

This is my hometown store I live very close by it like within a half a block buy it and when I go there most of the people are friendly I just lost my second child and every single one of them service when I finally went back to the store started hugging me and crying with me and they actually some of them actually went to my daughter's grave site they're not families as a friend so I'm surprised they did that they didn't have to and they do that but there were grateful help and I'd love the majority of the workers there and they're very nice and they will go beyond their means they will help you carry up stuff that I have to go find stuff they were running kind of errands you need in the store if you lose something to help you look unlike other stores where they just stand there and watch you they will actually help you look if they can most of time the great the managers I love them they are awesome one of them's a family friend and she's great and Michael the other manager he's awesome to...