Shopping at Jewel

I have a love/hate relationship with Jewel. On the one hand, their produce is EXTREMELY overpriced, but they seem to have the best weekly deals of any local grocery store.

(If you're not a local reader, Jewel is Albertsons and generally will have the same or similar sales)

It is my experience that they have the most Catalinas (CATs) of any local grocery store. The computer generates CATs based on the products that you purchased. For example, I bought Progresso Microwave soup bowls today and they triggered a CAT for $1.50/2 CAMPBELLS microwave soup bowls. A lot of the time, you'll trigger coupons for different brands than you are purchasing, but they are for similar products.

They also tend to have good Catalina promotions for different brands. In the summer there was a "Spend $25 on Kraft products and get a $20 mail-in-rebate (MIR) and a $5 CAT off your next purchase". Sometimes the CAT deals are advertised in the circular, and other times they are not. If the CAT promo isn't advertised, sometimes there will be little flags next to the products alerting customers to the deal.

The best part of Jewel is that their computers record you hitting the required dollar amount based on the sale price (the price that it scans before the computer deducts the preferred card savings). In many cases, the difference in price is quite large, so you can qualify for a CAT by spending less money than you thought!

Let me break it down for you with the deal scenario that I did today at Jewel.
Currently they are running a General Mills (GM) catalina promotion-- Spend $25 and get a $10 CAT!

I bought:
5 Pillsbury Simply Cookies
Sale Price $3.95 each $19.75 total
Preferred Price $2.50 each $12.50 total

3 Pillsbury Cinnamon rolls
Sale Price $3.17 each $9.50 total
Preffered price $1.66 each $5.00 total

$19.75 + $9.50 = $29.25 Sale Price
$12.50 + $5.00 = $17.50 Sale Price
Now for the coupons!
(you'll notice that I was $4.25 over the $25.00 threshhold, I could have bought one less
cinnamon roll.)

I used 5 $1.25/1 Simply Cookies (printables)
I used 1 $1.00/3 Pilsbury dough (blinkie)

$17.50 - $6.25 - $1.00 = $10.25 (before tax)
$10.68 after tax!

I got my $10 CAT!
There was a reason that I did this the way that I did. There was an OVERLAPPING CAT deal.
Buy 3 Pillsbury doughs, get a $2.00 CAT
Buy 4 Pillsbury doughs, get a $3.00 CAT
Buy 6 Pilsbury doughs, get a $4.00 CAT!

So I also got a $4 CAT!

So 10.69 Out of Pocket (OOP) translated into $14 in CATs! an overage of $3.31!

I've since run this deal (with different products) and rolled the CATs into more CATs, and pay with pocket change!

Today I got:
9 Simply cookies
3 Cinnamon Rolls
2 Grands Biscuits
5 Microwave Progress Soup
6 Fruit by the foot/fruit roll-ups
(there is another overlapping CAT: buy 6 get a $3.50 CAT)
3 Yopliat Yo Plus multi-packs
2 Chili Master Chilli
1 Saltine crackers
(Chilli was BOGO @ $3.99 and I had $2/1 and $1/1 and a free saltines when you buy 2 Chilli) $.99 for 2 Chillimaster Chillis and a box of saltines!

Total OOP cost $12.72 and I STILL Have $13.50 in CATs!

This is a pretty sweet week at Jewel. It isn't always this good, but I enjoy it while I can. You may be asking, "What in the world are you going to do with all those cookies?" Well, I plan on baking some and bringing them to my boss for Bosses day, today October 16th. I'm going to bake some for my boyfriend for sweetest day, Tomorrow October 17th, and I share my deal bonanzo with my friends and family (two college aged brothers... enough said!)