When I was growing up, I could always count on seeing Mom at the kitchen table once a week, scissors in hand, clipping coupons from newspapers and magazines before going out to shop. She had a special case that held all those coupons, which ranged anywhere from 10 cents up to maybe 75 cents off a product. That container was full and also weathered; it got used every single week.
Mom would plan her shopping list partly based on what coupons she had. If one was going to expire soon, she’d likely plan a meal that would involve that item as an ingredient. The grocery store Dad worked at, Randall Foods, had weekly coupons in the paper as well. If something was on sale and necessitated a coupon for the special price, you could bet that Mom would use it, even if she didn’t need that product right away.
When I worked at the Randall Foods in Winona, Tuesday was Double Coupon Day - remember stores that did that? We were busy those days for sure! All the people like my mom would hoard into the store, trying to take advantage of the extra savings. I recall that the store where I was working only took coupons up to 50 cents for doubling.
While ordering for the store, we also got to know which items would have coupons published in the next week. We always ordered a little extra of those products since we were likely to see a rise in the amount purchased compared to a typical week.
I learned a lot from my mother and from the regular customers I saw while working. To this day, I will clip a coupon that I might use.
Except there aren’t many anymore. That’s right - paper coupons are becoming extinct.
Oh sure, there are still some small inserts in a Sunday paper. Most of those are for makeup and drugs. I’ll find some Chobani yogurt ones at times or maybe the occasional cereal coupon. But we’re far from the days when I always had enough cereal coupons, no matter which brand I wanted to purchase.
Most of the coupons I use now are in my Hy-Vee app. I go in each week, prior to shopping, just like my mom, and tap buttons for which coupons to load to my account. When I’m in the store, I usually have the app open to remind myself what I have coupons for. But it’s nothing like the nice container I used to use.
I went through a few of those from college up until now. I panicked one week when I got home from Owatonna and realized I didn’t have the coupon holder! It was chock full of coupons! That was a lot of money flushed away! Luckily, I called the store and someone had found it left in my cart.
Michelle would sometimes claim that I might not have bought something except that I had a coupon, so maybe I wasn’t saving as much as I thought. Still, if it was a new product, we could try it at a discount. After all, that’s what companies would try to do in order to get you interested, in hopes you’d continue buying their product at full price after the initial trial.
Hy-Vee used to send home a catalog for the month which included coupons, some for the whole month and others for specific weeks. Then they stopped doing that for a while. You could still find the coupons in the app, but I’m guessing some old-school coupon clippers complained since we now get it in the mail again.
But it seems only a matter of time before all the coupons are digital. It works pretty slick, and I can do that with my Target Circle app, too. Plug my account in while checking out and all the coupons are taken off automatically. Sometimes that’s a really good thing; it seems like any time I try to use a coupon at Walmart, a manager has to come over and tell the system it’s okay.
I don’t even bring my container anymore when shopping. One day I opened it up and saw one coupon nestled in its section. Since I didn’t plan on buying Ragu spaghetti sauce that week, I just left it behind.
Like so many other things that are changing, I’ve gotten used to this new paradigm. What I really want is one app from which I can upload the coupons I need and then use it at any location. When someone invents that, I’ll be front and center to download it on my phone. When that day comes, I can retire my scissors for good.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is delibate, which means to take a small amount of something, to taste or sip, as in, “The customer was allowed to delibate the new type of cheese and then encouraged to take a coupon to lower the price.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!