Hello, lately I’ve been shopping again at my local Ritchies supermarket,
as this is where the community benefits from us all that go shopping there.

Each time you spend money there you get awarded points from a small percentage of your spend and it goes to your nominated local community charity.

So at first glance a few things that I noticed was that when compared to their competitors ie Woolworths over the road.
They do come in a little bit dearer with most of the items  that are available on their shelf’s ,
one reason that I thought the cause  of this situation was because they are stuck just in too small a retail area to have a serious competitive trade with there limited shelf space for their products to  be displayed on.

So there’s not as much verity at the store , so this situation reduces most product competition from brand name competitors.
Therefore most of their products are generally a bit more expensive.

Now the store shop was a pleasant trolly push around neat and tidy store with helpful friendly young staff,

So they do say never to go shopping while you are hungry and accidentally I made that simple mistake and my trolly was chock a block full of items I intended to eat as soon as I got to the car .

So I then lined up at the cash register as I noticed that there are no  self serve card and cash / card only machines in sight in Ritchies .

Just good old cash register people operated the checkouts everywhere.

I got served by the nicest friendly young man who I struck up a conversation with him and I asked him a few questions .
He was halfway through scanning my groceries when I noticed behind me a man holding just two items there waiting , so I asked the young man if he could stop serving me and use the other register next to him put though the other man’s two items ,
He smiled it me and said sure.

We talked about his car project that he was doing up before getting his licence and he proudly told me he had just scored a super charger unit for an Alloytec hi output v6 , we chatted about that while he scanned goods , and he is going to run it on standard boost for a start .
i forgot to tell him that those engines tend to chew up timing chain sets  as they are single row but I’ll tell him next time .

I also had noticed that Richie’s had started once again using plastic bags and paper bags for your shopping or you can simply bring along bags and use your own .

When the young man returned to serving me I asked him all. About the bags
Are they biodegradable?
Yes
Are they free?
No they and paper bags are both the same price and 25 cents per bag .

I asked him if the paper bags were recycled ?
He wasn’t sure  but I asked him if he thought that Ritchies shouldn’t sell the paper  bags even if they are from recycled paper as this will leave our trees standing for longer in our state forests and in timber plantations all over the country.

I asked him if Ritchies were  a good company to work for ,
Yes he answered yes that they were excellent , 

Our parting remarks were for the Richie’s store to be more competitive in the future they would need a much bigger store built for that purpose somewhere close by , and then the man renting out the old Richie’s premises should offer it to a long term lease agreement the chemist warehouse mob , because I have heard on the grapevine that they brought out the existing Wonthaggi Amal  chemist next door to Richie’s but the premises is way too small , for them to open a franchise store , but if the right opportunity arises I’m sure that they would consider their options.

That means more jobs for local youth like a supermarket super charger for the town .

Richie’s supermarket current sight isn’t a bad spot at all it’s just too small .

See what the future  holds for
Wonthaggi’s Main Street

So now upon inspection I am a bit disappointed with the plastic compostable green bags, as they are actually cleverly designed right here in Australia , but they made in China and we import them imported , so probably none of our recyclable plastic is in the bags , in fact it’s in our landfill .
What the hell is wrong with us ?

Cheers xxx
Curlyg