Angry Letters, part III: My beef with your angus

I prefer to buy groceries that do not suck.

The third entry to my series of angry letters was sparked by incredibly disappointing purchases made at Jewels, an overpriced supermarket chain in the Midwest.  After two meals were ruined, I was seething with anger and decided to write about my experiences.

This message was emailed to Craig Herkert, Chief Operating Officers of SuperValu, the parent company that owns Jewels.  As always, in the unlikely event that Mr. Herkert responds, I will post his response. 

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Dear Mr. Herkert,

Recent commercial for your stores uses the cheeky slogan “We Speak Beef” to suggest the expertise of Jewels butchers.  I am glad to learn that you speak beef; this letter is about beef I have with Jewels. 

When I was growing up, my mother always preferred to shop at Jewels.  Higher prices and cleaner stores led me to believe that Jewels offered higher quality products than smaller, independent grocery stores.  Unfortunately, that naïve childhood delusion was recently shattered due to repeated disappointments after shopping at the chain.

Last week, my girlfriend, boqueen and I spent several days visiting my mother’s house.  I decided to prepare my signature culinary creation, steak sandwiches.

My mother and I traveled to Jewels at 3940 E. 106th Street in Chicago to purchase the necessary ingredients.  In the interest of protecting this cherished recipe, I will not divulge the components of the concoction other than to disclose that the sandwiches are made with skirt steak.

I was stunned when I found skirt steak priced at $6.49 per pound.  Weeks earlier, I had paid only $2.99 per pound at a small grocery store.  I scanned through the selection of meats in hope of finding a lower priced option but, alas, there was none to be found.

I gazed at the package of meat and cursed at it, as if it were still a sentient being.  My mind searched for justification for paying such an absurd amount of money for the steak.

I briefly considered the fact that the packaged was labeled “angus,” suggesting a higher-caliber cut of meat.  Quickly, I remembered that the word “angus” is used rather liberally to the point of becoming trite.  After all, “angus” is not an impressive benchmark for quality when both Burger King and McDonalds are slapping the word on their gruesome offerings.

My concentration was broken when my mother politely requested that I refrain from cussing in public, especially to a package of meat.  I obliged and we purchased nearly two pounds of grossly overpriced skirt steak.

Upon returning to my mother’s house, I prepared the marinade.  As I removed the steaks from their package in order to begin bathing them in a glorious bounty of delicious flavors, I was shocked at the amount of fat on the cuts of meat.  The butcher had cleverly hidden the thick layer of fat on the underside of the meat, making it completely undetectable without opening the package.

I attempted to cut the fat from the steak.  My endeavor quickly proved to be futile.  I was unable to remove the fat without shredding the steak into tiny pieces.  Sadly, my recipe calls for thin skirt steak rather than shredded beef.  Against my best judgment, I decided to prepare the recipe using the flabby meat; despite my objections, it seemed quite wasteful to discard nearly $13 worth of meat.

The resulting sandwiches were absolutely disgusting.  While the savory flavor of the marinade had permeated the steak, the fat had rendered the meat chewy and greasy.  One’s sandwich eating experiencing is much less enjoyable when a great deal of time must be dedicated to plucking chunks of fat out of one’s mouth.

I was particularly disappointed with the meal.  For months, I had boasted about the delicious sandwiches to my mother and boqueen.  While they both claimed that they thoroughly enjoyed the meal, the large piles of discarded fat on their plates told a different story.

The leftovers – nearly one pound of meat – eventually found a new home in the dumpster behind my apartment building.  While I had hopes that a nighttime scavenger would make a meal of the steak, the food has not moved for several days.  It appears that the meat is far too fatty for even a raccoon’s discerning palate.

Against my better judgment, I returned to a different Jewels location days later.  This time, I needed lettuce for boqueen to make salads. 

I was unable to find romaine lettuce at the store located at 3124 North Lewis Avenue in Waukegan, Illinois, so I settled on green leaf lettuce.  As I stored through the bags, I noticed that many contained lettuce that had already turned brown on the outside and near the top.  I was careful to select the greenest bag in the bunch.

When I returned home and began preparing dinner. As I opened the bag, I realized that my attempts to select fresh lettuce had failed.  A great portion of the head of lettuce had already turned brown.  Preparing a salad required the patience of a surgeon as I carefully pruned the spoiled portions using kitchen shears.

Needless to say, I am incredibly dissatisfied with my recent purchases from your stores.  After years of perceiving Jewels as a premium grocery chain, the fact that I had two disappointing experiences over the course of three days – at stores located 50 miles apart from one another – is completely stunning. 

Furthermore, the prices at Jewels are entirely obscene.  If one is willing to pay a premium for shopping at the chain, he or she should enjoy premium quality food.  Sadly, as my two examples illustrate, this is not the case.

Fortunately, there are other options.  Today, I visited a local, independent grocery store to buy a few items that I needed to prepare dinner: mushrooms, a tomato and two ears of sweet corn.  Later in the day, I ventured into Jewels to pick up a case of beer.  As I passed through the produce section, I noted the prices of the items that I picked up earlier in the day.  Had I shopped at Jewel, my grocery bill would have been more than 60% larger.

For example, the independent grocery store was selling ears of sweet corn for 10 cents each.  Jewels, on the other hand, priced corn at $2 for four ears, or 50 cents apiece.  The corn at Jewels costs five times as much as a store located less than two miles away.

There is no reasonable way to justify a 400% premium on an ear of corn from Jewels, unless the ear of corn is five times larger, or if it possesses magical healing powers to reduce the size of malignant tumors.

I fail to understand how a grocery chain could charge such excessive prices in light of current economic conditions.  Perhaps your customers are uninformed, foolish or simply wasteful.

Fortunately, there are other options.  While I have been a loyal customer for several years, I will refrain from shopping for food at Jewels in favor of less pricy stores of equal or greater quality.  I believe that this decision will eliminate fatty steak sandwiches and brown salads from my diet and will provide me with more discretionary income. 

However, I regret to admit that I will be unable to abstain from shopping at Jewels altogether.  Inexplicably, beer prices at Jewel are astonishing low.  Earlier this evening, I paid $12 for a case of Miller Lite.  The same purchase would have cost me $15 at my local liquor store.

Keep up the good work.

Warmest regards,

bokeen

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