So, when I travel, I'm kinda strange. I prefer to pick up local produce and/or eat at grocery store salad / sushi bars. (Restaurants are tasty, but much more expensive!)
On the East Coast, I'm pretty familiar with most chains - at the higher end, there is Wegman's and Harris Teeter, somewhere in the middle is Giant and Safeway, and at the low wend would be Bloom and/or Fud Lion. (And no, that is not a mispelling. Food Lion doesn't deserve two vowels) I can pretty well sort out how decent the quality of the food is going to be by knowing things like:
whether or not there would be a fresh bakery
whether or not they sell 1% milk (It's amazing how hard it is to find anything other than whole or skim in cities!)
whether or not they sell sushi :) or have certain "bars."
The problem, of course, is when I travel. When I was commuting to Florida, I began to understand Publix, and in Austin, I eventually found a grocery store I liked - but I'm wondering if someone has already done these kinds of comparisons for me? At very least, a list of what the chains in given US cities are would be nice - but for extra credit said site should begin to sort these stores into the value end and the quality end of the spectrum.
Obviously, given the name of a chain, I can look up their websites, but is there a comparison type list that isn't so biased? (I'm sure Food Lion thinks they're low price and high quality!)
Does such a non-vendor produced website list exist, so that when I go to a new area, I can already have a sense of the correct grocery chains to try out?
