Our first trip to Winco

Yesterday we made our first trip to Winco.
Before leaving Jared asked me if it was even worth driving 25min? I told him that from everything I had heard it was in fact really worth it. So we packed up the munchkins and our $150 spending limit, and headed to the Puyallup Winco, which was Jareds pick.

I'll get this out first. I don't know if this is one of their older stores or what but it seemed a little old and forgotten I guess you could say. It almost has that dirty feel but is not at all. It was actually quite clean. We might try the Lacey store next time just to compare(and compare the drive too).

So things I loved. The produce was AWESOME! I did not see 1 fruit fly, nor did I see an beyond purchasable item. I am always finding not good fruit/veggies in the commissary and Safeway. The Honey Crisp apples were how ever quite a bit more expensive, and they are my favorite. I loved their selection of vegetarian things but it could be improved, I was just surprised they had anything!
Jared and I noticed something that is quite possibly our favorite part of Winco. Fresh Almond Butter, Peanut Butter, Clover Honey, Blackberry Honey and Orange honey. You grab a tub and fill it up to how much you wish.
We chose Almond Butter and Orange Honey. Our only complaint is lack of directions. We were not quite sure what to do. Its all price per pound but you don't know how much the 1 size container holds. There are scales just behind you for measuring the contents of the self serve candies and such, but I was worried about cross contamination with the almonds. Jared took the leap and weighed each container. The good side though is that you cant beat $4.12 for a little over a pound of fresh almond butter!
Moving on, we stumble upon this area with things in bins and dispensers on the wall. Its my heaven. Chocolate chips; dark, semi sweet, butter scotch and melting chocolates. All in a row ready to be dispensed!! I look down and there are bins with hunks of chocolate in them! We move down to see sugar, pure cane sugar, and brown sugar! Flour, cake mix, butter milk pancake mix, biscuit mix and so much more!! There were even recipe cards for making biscuits and things with the products right there!
We unfortunately skipped getting any of this because our screaming 10 month old was getting some looks(or should I say we were!).
Next was the Meat and dairy. Jared concluded that the meat was comparable if not more expensive than the commissary, everything was of good quality though. We will have to do a little more comparison though next time just to make sure.
We did however get an AMAZING deal on our turkey. The deal for their turkey was that if you purchase $50 worth of stuff the price of the turkey will drop to .26 per lb.
We knew we would easily buy $50 worth of stuff so why not! We have only had 3 Thanksgivings together so we aren't really particular with turkey brands. Its just going to be us so we only needed a smaller one, we did how ever want enough for some left overs. So our turkey was 13.66lbs at .26 came to a total of $3.55. How can you beat that!
As we wandered threw the rest of the store we saw so many great deals. This wasn't a stalk the shelves kind of trip for us so some of the isles we didn't need anything in.
We did how ever find things we didn't know we needed or had not planned on getting this shopping trip. Like Ammonia, Hair dye, special french toast bread(a treat) and a new tooth brush because of the prices!
Im not going to list everything this time mostly because some of the names on the receipt are confusing and its just long! So I will just high light a few things.

Items bought- 76
Total spent- $113.01

Orange Honey 1.07lbs @ $3.51/lbs- $3.76
Almond Butter .98lb @ $.20/lbs - $4.12
Turkey 13.66lb @.26/lbs - $$3.55
Wheat bread 2 @ .86/loaf - $1.72
Kraft Mac n Cheese 4 @ .68/box - $2.72

Average amt spent per item at Winco- $1.49
Average at Safeway(using last weeks 35 items and $81.80 total)- $2.34


What Ive learned
*Have a list!! We were overwhelmed at first, lost direction and ended up back tracking threw the store once we got in the mode!
*DONT go when everyone else is off work/out of church/up for the day. Next time we will go early in the morning(if a weekend) or I will go while Jared(and the rest of the world) is at work!
*If at all possible leave the kids at home. Both Rylan and Gabe got restless because it was taking so long. We were making sure we were getting good deals so it was quite a process.
*Learn how to bag quick! You do have to bag your own stuff which is fine with me but that also plays into the previous advice.