Grocery Shopping in Merida, Government Style

Hola loyal reader. Well, with the Minnesota visitors back shivering on the tundra, Bruce and Mary’s life has returned to a routine that, frankly, even though they live in Paradise, is pretty routine-like. Part of that routine is weekly shopping at their Isstey grocery store. Merida has several of these gov’t owned grocery stores throughout Merida, Bruce and Mary’s is on Calle 60, a 1/2 block south of Calle 47 in Centro. Please join them on a tour of this grocery store which is an important part of Meridanos’ lives, particularly gov’t workers including teachers. And, as usual, for those of you who prefer to read these posts at the blog-site, please click here.

This is the main entrance, fronting Calle 60 – the main drag of Merida, of our Isstey grocery store.

This is the canned goods part of the store. Prices here are very competitive, usually lower than the big box grocery stores. The only problem is they only carry one brand of sardinas, and they are cheap, but….really bad, even a sardine worshiper like myself cannot stand them so I pay the extra at Walmart for my Guayamex brand. Gee I wish they’d bring back my Guayamex in Chipotle sauce again, but I digress.

This is the dry goods area of the store. In the background you can see a “Verificador” sign pointing at an in-store scanner, if you’re unsure of the price of an item. A curious thing about Issteys grocery stores is that they don’t carry produce.

The cajas, check-out lines. Issteys makes use of the most modern electronic check-out equipment. But they are prone to human error on rare occasion and subject to perhaps not up to speed training. Once we had a caja muchacha who was going a little too fast and she added a zero to our total when running our credit card. Oh my, that created quite the kerfluffle among store management as they huddled to try to figure out a fix. Evidently no one knew how to back the transaction out, so they gave us change, about 3000P worth. I checked the transaction online and because of a most favorable exchange rate on our Capital One credit card (the only one that I am aware of that does not charge a 3% international transaction fee) we got a pocket full of cash for far less than any of the casas de cambio, change houses. I wish I could have them overcharge our credit card every time we need cash! And on another note, we try to avoid gov’t pay day as the place fills up with gov’t workers and teachers using their vouchers for groceries. The wait in the check-out lines has been up to an hour for us.

Natalia, our favorite checker and Mary. What grocery store checker in America will give you a hug and a kiss at check-out?

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce appreciates feedback of any kind and promises to acknowledge comments in what they used to call “real time” in his old life. Hasta proxima Domingo!