What are best practices, tips for grocery shopping in 2026?

What are best practices, tips for grocery shopping in 2026?

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  • The Naples Daily News and The News-Press are launching a new feature called the Southwest Florida Grocery Shopping Chronicles.
  • The feature will serve as a platform for readers to share their grocery shopping tips, experiences, and challenges.
  • Readers can participate by emailing their stories, photos, or videos to mbickel@gannett.com.
  • The goal is to create a community resource to help others save money and improve their shopping experiences.

Welcome to the Southwest Florida Grocery Shopping Chronicles.

The Naples Daily News and The News-Press are kicking off 2026 with a new feature that will be a grocery shopping sounding board for our audience.

Our mission is to chronicle your grocery shopping experiences. To be more specific, we’d love it if you’d share your tips, tricks, habits, best practices and hard-earned lessons from shopping for your food in Southwest Florida.

We know grocery shopping can be challenging these days and is a hot topic for all consumers − college students, retirees and families.

Everyone has a grocery shopping “hack.” What’s yours?

What food item shocks you most at today’s prices and gives you a “cart attack.” How do you save money? What do you like or dislike about the grocery shopping experience and what are you doing to make it better? It’s all things grocery shopping.

We will feature your experiences the SWFL Grocery Shopping Chronicles, hoping what you do and what you have learned will help others in our community.

Here’s is our first Grocery Shopping Chronicle of 2026:

Name: Steve Zihala

Lives: East Naples

Grocery shops: Publix at Berkshire Commons

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: For me, shopping is an entertaining experience that I look forward to a couple of times a week … It is an enjoyable experience for me to visit this Publix store. The store is also in my immediate neighborhood, so that’s also a plus … Sometimes an added unadvertised deal is on the store receipt, resulting in a lower receipt number … Sometimes the item was marked on the shelf for one price, and I overpaid for it on the receipt. You’d be surprised how many times this happens … Although we don’t eat it that often, the price of bacon has dramatically increased. What used to be $8.99 is now up to $12.99 for a pound of Oscar Mayer … When it comes to shopping, and I do it a few times a week, I always have a note pad and pen. The price of each item that I purchase is placed on the paper and added to the sum. When I get to the checkout, the receipt amount (before tax) better match my number on the pad. If it doesn’t, someone is obviously wrong. Receipt in hand, I then check it against my note pad.

Grocery Shopping Chronicles: How to participate

It’s simple. Just send an email to mbickel@gannett.com with your thoughts (good and bad) about your grocery shopping experience. Try to keep it to about 250 words and if you are inclined, please include a photo (head shot).

Please put: Grocery Shopping in the subject line of your email

A short video is also an option, and actually preferred. The video can also be emailed to mbickel@gannett.com and we can help you get the video delivered if needed.

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