How to Grocery Shop, Part 1: The Plan

Grab your tote, we're going shopping.

Admittedly, I love January. I’m not one for making formal resolutions or vision boards. I do appreciate the palpable sense of resolve as everyone vows to better themselves. In my roles on the corporate teams at Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table and World Market, this time of year always meant Pantry Season. Drawer organization, pantry clean-outs, spice jar rehauls.

Aspirational organization aside, this is a good a time to discuss how we’re organizing our food lives. As a professionally-train cook and voracious home cook, I’ve spent a lot of time and money at the grocery store. In my NYC years, I shopped everywhere for food, from corner bodegas in Queens, to mega markets like Fairway. For a time in between private chef and culinary producer jobs, I side hustled as a food stylist’s shopper for New York Times Cooking.

In this multi-part series, I’ll be breaking down the steps of food procurement into 3 parts: The Plan, The List and The Shop. This guide is for folks who like to cook, or want to cook more, and value eating fresh food that, as my friend

Annie (Garcia) Lucey

says, tastes like the season we’re in!

For context, I live in a two-person household in the SF Bay Area with a car. I have access to stores like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Safeway and local markets like Berkeley Bowl. The majority of our meals are cooked at home (but sometimes taken on-the-go). Our farmers markets are top-notch, but in this guide, we’re sticking within the four walls of the grocery store.