I Visited Grocery Outlet to See Why the Chain Is Expanding

Located in a shopping mall in Beltsville, Maryland, this store opened in July 2024.

This sign outside the main entrance highlighted some of Grocery Outlet’s deals, including salted caramel cookies, cheese balls, and ribeye steaks.

Although Grocery Outlet says it’s “opportunistic” with its buying, the chain’s stores stock many of the same types of products, like produce, that you’ll find at traditional grocery stores. This sign reminded me of that as I walked in.

Grocery Outlet stores generally take up between 15,000 and 20,00 square feet, according to the company’s latest annual filing. Aldi stores, by comparison, are generally about 22,000 square feet.

Both grocery chains are much smaller than the format used by traditional supermarkets, which can take up twice as much space at around 40,000 square feet.

As I walked through the front of the store, I found ceramic pots, gardening tools, and this selection of potted plants.

Grocery Outlet often touts that many of its products are name brands. That was true with these boxes of canned La Croix seltzer.

I’ve written about and followed many food and beverage brands over the years, but I wasn’t familiar with Good Sport, a dairy-based sports drink.

Grocery Outlet makes some of its own products under the SimplyGo name, such as these tortilla chips.

The chain aims to stock store-branded goods and those from name brands “as evenly as possible,” Kasha told Business Insider.

Most of Grocery Outlet’s private-label items are “everyday grocery basics” such as butter, eggs, and paper towels, she said. “We source those traditionally to ensure our shoppers can find them each time they come to the store,” she said.

Many of the name-brand goods, meanwhile, are meant to create a “treasure hunt shopping experience,” Kasha said. Think about “a holiday-themed cereal, or a fun soda flavor that you’ve never heard of,” she said.

These Hooters-branded crab cakes piqued my interest, given my reporting on the chain’s bankruptcy earlier this year.

I bought a box and tried them at home. They were unremarkable.

In the back of the store, I found the produce section, which had many of the basic types of fruit and vegetables that other stores have, from eggplant to lemons.

I bought some red, seedless grapes and was happy with the quality.

These grapes were $1.99 a pound at Grocery Outlet. The tag said that they would cost $3.99 a pound “elsewhere,” which seems plausible to me, though I had no clue which other stores they were talking about.

Besides jars of salsa and tortillas, there was a range of spices often used in Mexican cooking. I picked up some dried chiles for my next homemade salsa rosa.

I’d never seen sausages flavored with Old Bay, which I wanted to try but opted not to because I had a long drive home.

This frozen personal DiGiorno “breakfast croissant” was $2.49, so I picked one up.

The breakfast croissant was good, though I probably won’t be rushing back for more.

I almost bought the last bottle of juice squeezed from noni, a fruit native to Southeast Asia and common in parts of the Pacific such as Hawaii.

Curious, I did a quick Google search and found that this same bottle was selling for over $40 online, as the price tag said.

Many of the products that Grocery Outlet sold at the location I visited were a little outside what you’d expect in a normal grocery store.

Oreo truffle mix? A breakfast croissant with cheese and ham? It felt like I had asked the beta version of an AI model to generate pictures of normal groceries.

These cans of diced tomatoes were from a brand I’ve never heard of — California Healthy Harvest. At 50 cents each, I bought two, since I haven’t seen canned tomatoes so cheap elsewhere in the DC area where I live.

Given Grocery Outlet’s model, I was curious to see what kinds of groceries ended up in the clearance section.

The answer: Huge tins of soda crackers for $1.17 each and six-pound cans of salsa verde for $2.57 each.

There was a selection of candy-themed blankets, such as this orange Reese’s throw.

Jim Read started what would become Grocery Outlet in 1946 by selling surplus military supplies, according to the company.

These packs of Peeps came individually wrapped to make them easier to hide in Easter eggs.

It’s a great idea, but given that I was shopping at Grocery Outlet in September, I could see why they were so heavily discounted.

The product selection was eclectic, and that’s no accident. Grocery Outlet’s “treasure hunt” strategy means that customers have to stop by regularly to see what’s new.

That could make it a hard place to shop if you tend to buy the same groceries every week or have dietary requirements.

On the other hand, many shoppers are looking to save money after years of inflation.

There are also signs that buying food from big, recognizable brands isn’t as important for shoppers as it used to be, from Aldi’s success with its store brands to Kraft Heinz’s decision to split into two companies.

The strategy seems to be yielding results for Grocery Outlet. The retailer’s quarterly sales have grown to over $1 billion in the last several earnings reports. And while its latest quarterly revenue came in below analysts’ expectations, the company raised its earnings per share guidance for 2025.

Grocery Outlet keeps opening new stores, including another in Pennsylvania in August.

If the chain keeps expanding — especially on the East Coast — I bet I’ll be back at some point.