Shopping for Grandchildren at Harris Teeter

As the sun rises over my local Harris Teeter Amelia Island, I am up to shop for kids cuisine. Why? My granddaughter and my two adopted grandchildren will be here with the rest of the family for a Memorial weekend celebration. When you live at the beach you have plenty of company.

 

I digress…I am determined to have something special for the younger set and my DIL told me her two love frozen kids meals. So off I go at 7AM. I head out so early because it’s Friday (I want to beat the weekend crowd) and it’s triple coupon week (I want to beat the coupon shoppers). I thought sunrise shopping would accomplish both.

I drag my cart pusher/bag toter/car driver hubby out of bed with the promise of breakfast after the excursion. He is not a morning person!!!

As an artist I notice stacks of colorful outdoor chairs at the door. Impulse buy…I need big turquoise one and a little turquoise one for my granddaughter and me. Right? The door opens to a nice display of flowers and wine. Behind this is the beautiful produce section manned by Earl. He creates such an artistic display of the fresh fruits and veggies. Beautiful. I will share later in this post!!!

I am on a mission however to find the kids frozen food section…so I head over to the far side of the store. The frozen food aisle is a little crowded with bargain and last chance items. It took me three or four trips up and down the aisle to find the frozen kids meals. No wonder…they were on the bottom shelf (good for small ones to see) and there were only 5 choices. See them below!!!

The Kids Cuisine boxes are colorful and cheerful and the price was right – 5 for $10. You can’t beat that! They look pretty interesting too. Two kinds of chicken nuggets, spaghetti, Shreck mac and cheese, pizza, corn and brownies. No wonder the kids love these. YUMMM!!!

 

I chose the spaghetti for a taste test. After all, I would not feed my kids something I would not eat!!! I had it for lunch and it was pretty tasty. I will buy more of these before the kids arrive. I checked out the Kids Cuisine website and it has some fun ideas for you to create special time with your children and grandchildren.

There were corn dogs, hot pockets, enchiladas, and breakfast stuff for the older kids.

I found it interesting, and very gratifying, that there were way more choices of Kids Yogurt than kids frozen meals. We must have healthier kids who live on and visit Amelia Island.

So I swing back around to the other side of the store and find this Oops display of cheese and managers specials. That was a great price.

The bakery section is clean and had wonderful bread baking smells coming from it. I caught my husband at the free kids cookie dinosaur helping himself to a cookie for breakfast.

The aisles are wide and clean. The shelves seemed pretty full considering this was triple coupon week.

Look at those shiny floors…Chris, of the floor team, was there shining the floors when we arrived. Great job Chris!!

Back to that produce section…my fave. It is almost a farmer’s market. The displays are beautiful…

There is plenty of eye candy and assorted beach items too!!!

Kendra, our uniformed cashier, was ever helpful and friendly. She even managed to get a chuckle out of the hubs so early in the morning. She kept him busy as I took the photos.

Our Harris Teeter even has a large cigar humidor and the New York Times.

Overall the experience was a good one after I was able to convince a very reticent manager that I was writing a blog post and that bloggers are very helpful to brands. It took a while for him to agree to allow me to take photographs… like 15 minutes. And he kept me waiting at Customer Service for over 12 minutes after the CS agent paged him…he was only 10 feet away. A little annoying for sure!!!

It took a while to find the kids meals as they were way down at the bottom and there were only 5 choices. I found the frozen food aisle a little crowded with sale merchandise.

Overall the experience was enjoyable…I took plenty of photos of produce for future blog posts. I shop at Harris Teeter a few times a month. It is a little further away than the other grocery stores, located on the south end of the island. I especially love the produce they have at this store. It is always beautifully displayed and fresh, I also like the bakery!!!

 

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias.  All opinions are my own, however.