Kroger, my wife loves you. Specifically the Marketplace store. She’ll drive past you just 2 miles from our home to shop at your West Chester Marketplace store off 129 at Cin-Day road. That’s a $4 gas surcharge while driving the Suburban, and she’ll do it anyway. No matter how much I try to explain this. I love you, too, Kroger. Why? Lots of reasons. You’re local. I could shop at W**-M*** or even bigg’s, but why when my friends work for you and my neighbors work for you. In fact, if you opened a store within my township I’d shop there to keep as much of the tax revenue as local as I could. And recently, you wow’d me with your handling of the yogurt recall. [...]

Okay, I guess the question begs the other question, “do I really think I’m so self-important that it really matters where I’ve been?” Hopefully I’m not. I certainly don’t want to come across that way. Last night Kishore asked me where I’ve been in so many words, so I wanted to get it out here to clear some of the air. I have so much content in my head that I’ve fallen into paralysis analysis. So with this post I’m going to forget where I’ve been and start over going forward. [...]

When Kroger released its loyalty program a number of years ago, I signed up with a fake name and personal information. I liked the idea of saving money but didn’t want to allow big brother access to some of my personal habits. And, no, I wasn’t hanging out by the pharmacy counter on a regular basis. [...]