That would be my guess. When i was but a tot I sure hoped he was bringing me a pony. Then I discovered his love of Horse racing. I assumed he meant he was going to see his bookie.
Not sure how to spell it but I believe I’ve heard my sister say “Goin’ to the growsh.” Groce?
Because “grocery store” takes sooo long to say. :dubious:
I use “going shopping” to mean going to buy groceries. I consider groceries the default. If I’m shopping for something else, I would say the particular name of the store, or possibly “going to the mall”.
Normally, it would be “I’m going to the store.”
But, since the grocery store is named Ralphs (oddly, no apostrophe), when I’m in the mood I will say “I’m gonna Ralph!”.
Yes, yes, it would be incorrect to say Ralph, as the proper name IS Ralphs, just like Kroger or Meijer or Farmer Jack. But then as counterpoint there is Trader Joe’s or Smith’s or Gelson’s. But then Vons and Albertsons comes in with their non-apostrophe “s” and you are right back where you started!
What did she do with all the time she saved truncating that word? Get a medical degree? Sail around the world? Paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling? 
Each family is entitled to create its own [del]idiots[/del] idioms. 
My mom said “I’m going to the store” for the weekly grocery run. If she just had to pop in and pick up some random item, it was, “I’m going to run to the store.”
As a native Michigander, I’ve been told my whole life that we add an “s” to our business names so often that I think I’ve gone the opposite direction and I absolutely, positively never do it. I may have said “Meijers” or “Kmart’s” at one time, but it’s been at least 30 years since I’ve done it.
Now we just say "Going to “Meijer/Aldi/Costco,” or my wife will say “Gonna do our shopping.”
Where I grew up we’d say “Going to the shop.” if we meant the local shop or “Going up the town.” or “Going shopping.” for, well, shopping in town. After I moved it was “Going TO town.” but the destination stated to the bus driver is “City.” because it is one 
The only time anyone says “Stores” round here it’s pronounced “Stoo-ers” and refers to the Co-op (Coopterative stores) and that’s only really old people now. When it comes to Supermarkets we usually say "Going to name/nickname. It’s the same with malls/shopping centres. The nickname for the local one, Meadowhall is “Meadowhell”
Going to the store, or going to Albertsons or sometimes Buttery(defunct) or even more rarely Safeway the couple of times they managed to actually get a store up and running in this town.
Shopping was what you did at JC Pennys/Bon Marche/Sears/Grand Central(defunct)/Fred Meyer/car dealerships/the mall and usually entailed a lot of walking around downtown from store to store until the mall came along. Grocery shopping was what you did when it was part of a larger list of errands
My grandmother, raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, used the term “marketing” to mean “shopping for groceries”.
I think she believed that saying “marketing” was more sophisticated, somehow, than saying “grocery shopping”.
Usually “I’m going grocery shopping, need anything?”
We practice “just in time” grocery shopping, so we often need something. Although we also keep a list on the fridge.
Because there are a couple of grocery stores in the area, sometimes we’ll say
North Eastern US.
Yeah, that’s what it means to me, too. That’s what we said when I was a kid and went backpacking. There was no “toilet” or “bathroom” to go to. So we went to see a man about a horse, or went to find a bush, or went to commune with nature. but if we were in a room together, and you told me you needed to see a man about a horse, I would assume you were going to the toilet.
Funny story:
If y’all listen to WAIT WAIT DON’T TELL ME, you’ll hear at the end that it “is a production of NPR and WBEZ Chicago in association with Urgent Haircut Productions. Doug Berman, Benevolent Overlord.” Doug Berman was also associated with the late great CAR TALK. One day on that show, one of the brothers (Tom or Ray, don’t remember which) told about a car trip their family had taken when the kids were little. One of the boys had to pee really bad. It was a semi-rural area, and over by a tree was a hand-lettered display sign that said “HAIRCUTS.” So the boy who was in distress ran over to the tree and took care of bidness. Thereafter, in the Magliozzi family, “needing a haircut” became a euphemism for needing to pee. When I first heard “Doug Berman, Urgent Haircut Productions,” I knew it had to have come from that story. If someone else remembers this, by all means, correct me if I’ve gotten something wrong.
We call it “Netflix and chill”.
We said “I’m going to the A&P for mother.” Apparently in my mother’s day, that phrase, ending with “pee for mother” was considered a hoot. She passed it on to us.
My family would say “doing the shopping” or “the big shop”, for getting in essential supplies. If it was a case of needing to buy something one had forgotten while “doing the shopping”, it would be “I’ll just nip to the shops”.
But “going shopping” in the sense of browsing around in case anything in particular attracts, whether it be for clothes or books or (in our case quite often) just old junk shops - that’s a fairly recent development, to my ears. We’d probably say something like “Having a look round the shops”.
Going to the store = groceries. It’s the default and where we spend the most money. There is also
Going to the beer store
Going to the depot
Going to the place
That’s not too far off, Thelma Lou. The story actually starts with a Puzzler that we called “A Haircut in Horsetown.” As you may remember, the guys loved to obfuscate the riddle central to the puzzler by embellishing a story. So this story started with a guy driving on a highway in Nevada, when he suddenly found himself in urgent need of a haircut. Tom replied, “What? He’s driving along, and suddenly he says to himself, ‘Wow, I really gotta take a haircut!?’” That was followed by quite a bit of laughter. That’s how it started. I adopted Urgent Haircut as the name of my production company as an homage to my friends Tom and Ray, and that very funny moment, and also because I frequently find myself in urgent need of a haircut. An actual haircut. I think you can still find the puzzler on this collection: https://shamelesscommerce.com/products/car-talk-the-puzzlers-greatest-hits
You can find a cleaned up written version of it here: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/haircut-horsetown But it’s about 15 times funnier when you listen to Tom and Ray making it up as they go along. I’d write more, but I gotta take a haircut.
I’m single now, so I don’t really verbalize it, but I tend to just think “I need to go get some food in this place”.
WHOA!
Doug?? OMG. Talk about getting it right from the horse’s mouth…
I love WAIT! WAIT! You’re doing God’s work there. 
The grocery store was Meijer so it was ‘going to Meijer’