Smart & Final Extra!

Description

I've been shopping at Smith's across the street for over a year and had not idea this place was even here. There's nothing to draw you into this parking lot, and "Smart and Final" didn't sound like a supermarket to me.

Approaching the store, it seemed like it might be some sort of restaurant specialty store.

But inside, it's just a big supermarket.

No rapiini, but they do have living herbs. You can plant these and keep they alive to months or longer; much more economical that just buying a pack whenever you're making a dish and throwing out 90% of it.

If you like freshly ground coffee, it's $2 cheaper here than at Sprout's

Many items here are the same stuff at the same price point as everywhere else. They're private brand is First Street.

They have huge bags of flour if you're planning on opening a pizzeria or are making bread for your community center.

This is not the place if you like a wide variety of pasta and sauces. They do have some pretty good prices if you like the brands they do have.

Hard to find fresh chicken sausage. Tyson sells this but nobody carries it.

They don't lock up the Tide here.

They have a lot of cold beer.

Also a lot of low-end wines. I didn't find anything here I'd consider buying.

This is what we drank when I was a teenager many moons ago. They're still making the strawberry wine.

Not everything is cheaper here. $8.99 for a rotisserie chicken. Much smaller than the Costco $4.99 chickens.

A big negative is no self checkout, and they only had 1 line open at 2:50PM.

And the checkout people here are SLOW MOVERS. On another visit they had 2 lines open and they couldn't have moved slower. The checkout people were just not interested. Express checkouts seem to be a thing of the past, so this alone is a reason not to come here; even if you can save a dollar or 2.