Ain't it great to have a personal relationship with those folks? I try to encourage folk to form one. Sometime, used to be when I was shopping with someone, I'd introduce them to the green grocer and meat grocer that happens to be there.
During my time in fine dining training I got off at 3pm and was home way early. So I shopped every single day on the way home and got to meet all those guys.
My poor 3rd ex wife gained 40 pounds when I was doing that.
Nothing to do from 4 until 7 except make 4 course fine dining meals for #3 and her daughter as 'practice'.
Ex says I ruined the daughter for regular food, since she always got a 3 or 4 course sit down meal every night of the week. ;)
/johnny
My Dad in Chicago had a terrific backyard garden, a real oasis. He also shopped every day and did nearly all of the cooking. The new manager at the local store after awhile thought Dad was a covert food inspector. He was always pointing out expired food that was sitting out to be sold, and pointing out bad looking produce. This went on for many years until the manager found out Dad was not a food inspector and they wound up becoming good friends and having coffee in the store nearly every morning. He was a younger guy than Dad and even came to Dad's funeral, he was really broken up.
True story, once Dad saw some hydroponic heads of lettuce out for sale. They were getting old. He had never seen hydroponic veggies before but he saw roots. Probably the rest of the neighborhood didn't know what they were because they did not sell. He called the produce clerk over and said - these look really bad, you can't sell these. Then he talked the clerk into marking 4 cents apiece on them. Dad bought them all about a dozen heads. He took them home sliced off the tops and planted them. They all grew fresh heads. Dad was very proud. I tried it once myself and it worked.