AAFES were always great in the 90’s. The commissary on (IIRC) Wolfgang Kaserne was better than shopping on the economy, especially not knowing how to cook German food.
On Fort Hood, though, the commissary still kind of sucked. I seem to recall that all meat was frozen, for example, service was slow, and there were weird rules that I can’t remember me but influenced me to do my shopping off post at the regular stores.
The biggest loser in the Elmendorf commissary in Anchorage was the produce. It was uniformly nasty. In Africa, I liked being able to shop from the AAFES catalog (being retired military). I bought my first Nikons there.
It’s not actually the tipping cost that bugs me, it’s the principal of the thing. I bought these items, and am perfectly capable of moving them out to my car without talking to some teenager for 5 minutes about the weather so he can load them for me. Just increase the price a couple of cents instead of holding my groceries hostage.
Love seeing that phrase, I still use it now and then, and no one understands it.
I was that kid back in 1974, at 14 it was the only way I could make money except babysitting. It was pretty physical work with no guarantee of pay, nothing like hauling a packed double cart across a snowy parking lot, while some colonels wife bitched at you about the weather, and then gave you a .05 tip.
When I was in the Air Force (circa 1990 +/-), the commissary had name brand cigarettes for $4/carton. Off base I think they were about $15/carton.
So when there’s such a huge spread between the on-base cost vs the off-base cost for something like liquor or cigarettes, I assume some are tempted to buy stuff for informal resale. So is this accepted or strictly forbidden?
Liquor and tobacco are rationed in most places. And yes, it’s forbidden as black market selling.
One of the other reasons I like shopping at the exchange and the commissary.
Another benefit (for some – YMMV): Until a few years ago liquor stores in CT weren’t permitted to open on Sundays. The NEX mini-mart in Housing had to operate that way, but the main package store was on base, inside the boundary fence where civilians couldn’t get to it, so it was always open on Sundays.
Homeported and stationed at SUBASE, PH, from 1982-1990. Maybe I had been brainwashed, but neither I, nor any of my shipmates/coworkers ever set foot into a Stah Mocket. Or needed to, to obtain any groceries we might want (if I had taken it into my head that I wanted to teach myself how to make laulau, I could have gotten taro leaves there).
It was probably less expensive. I still needed to work a PT job as a busboy at a seafood restaurant to make ends meet.
I was an Army brat growing up, and served in the Navy myself. I therefore utilized military commissaries exclusively for grocery shopping for over 20 years before I separated from the military.
I always had good experiences with them. For what it’s worth, Consumer Reports actually included military commissaries in their latest ratings of grocery stores and supermarkets this month, and they came out near the top. They scored an 85 (out of 100 possible points), and tied for 6th place out of 62 stores.
Interesting. What specific features did CR rate them highly on?
Ah, yes, most of Ft. Hood was located in a dry county. The local PX would always have the good stuff, though.
When I was a kid, the PX had a spinner rack of comic books way back in the back, and no one cared if I stood there and read them all while waiting for my mother to finish her hair appointment.
People are not smart about money and time if they think they’re saving a dime on a dozen eggs (or a few pennies per gallon of gas). First, they apply no value to the time, and then they don’t think of the total savings. Going appreciably out of one’s way to save 5 cents per gallon of gas nets you a whopping 75 cents on a 15-gallon fill-up. And unless you can save a good $20-$30+ off the supermarket 10 minutes away, driving 40 minutes is not a good allocation of resources. They would probably be better off watching the local sales and only buying when discounted.
But that’s being entirely rational, and we are not a rational species.
Lastly, the only time I shopped at a BX was during my USAF days when there wasn’t another option. Selection was poorer than a supermarket and far fewer sales, but I didn’t have a car and there were no large markets in walking distance.
This is a valid point, but in my experience, the savings at commissaries and exchanges (aka NEX, PX, BX, etc.) was substantial. A big part of this was the lack of state sales tax.
Depending on where we lived at the time, my mom sometimes used to drive 20-30 minutes or so to get to the commissary when I was growing up (for the time we lived off base, or to get to a larger commissary with a better selection). However, she was also feeding a family of 6, and bought a month’s worth of food per trip.
As has been mentioned several times in this thread, a BX is a retail store, not a supermarket. The military version of a supermarket is the commissary.
Correction, the rankings were actually based on CR survey results. The surveys were scientific research surveys conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.
No surprise, the highest rating was for “competitive prices.” Military commissaries were also highly rated for “store cleanliness,” “store-prepared food,” “meats/poultry quality,” “store brand quality,” “selection of healthy options,” and “prices of organic options.”
They were down-ranked for “local produce quantity.”
I had a similar experience. When I was a kid, the base exchange had a whole rack of comic books, comic book digests, and MAD magazines. There was also a candy counter that sold candy by the pound (like chocolate-covered peanuts). This was basically heaven for me. From ages 9-12, I would routinely spend hours there. I had enough money to buy some candy, and maybe one or two comic books, but that was it. The rest I would just read at the counter. No one ever bothered me.
There was one slight problem that first year, though. I was just 9 years old, and this particular exchange required a military ID card to be presented to get into the store (but thankfully not for purchases). You couldn’t get an ID card until you were 10 years old, though. So I would ride my bike down to the exchange, and wait at the entrance for the clerk’s attention to be diverted, then I would dart in. 
There are certain items or categories of items that are pretty darn cheap at the commissary around here… meat, produce and ‘essentials’ (sugar, salt, spices, etc) are really inexpensive. And when they do close out sales, that stuff is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. In general I really miss having easy access to shopping on base.