TOUR: Sharp Shopper Grocery Outlet - Ephrata, PA

Sharp Shopper Grocery Outlet
Owner: Mike and Darren Sharp

Opened: 2000

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: none

Location: 1041 Sharp Ave, Ephrata, PA

Photographed: August 20, 2019

Welcome to Sharp Shopper Grocery Outlet, a discount/salvage grocery store in Ephrata, PA. This is our first stop in Ephrata, a slightly larger town than some we've been seeing with a population of 13,000. Sharp Shopper is a nine-store chain in the Lancaster County, PA area and also a few locations to the south in Virginia.

I got the impression (from the single store I visited, so maybe I need to visit more salvage grocery stores around here to be sure) that Sharp Shopper is a step up from some of the other similar salvage grocery stores in this area of PA. The store struck me as cleaner and better organized, and the products seemed to be a little better quality. I believe Sharp Shopper is also the largest salvage grocery store chain in this area.

The aisles run front to back, with dairy and produce in the back and frozen foods in the last aisle.

As we can see, you might not be able to find everything on your list but they have a lot to choose from, and the prices were excellent.

It's also one of the larger salvage grocery stores. I can't quite pin down a size because I'm not entirely clear on how much of this building is dedicated to the supermarket, but it looks from Google Maps like the supermarket takes up a solid 80,000+square feet.

Here in the back we have produce and dairy. Again, these items seemed to be slightly higher quality and with a larger selection than some other stores. There's a competitor on the other side of town that I was not impressed with, which we'll be seeing in a few days.

Notice that this store does have certain merchandising, such as the tortilla and Little Debbie displays here, something we don't see in a lot of hard-discount supermarkets.

There's a large produce area in the back (for a salvage store, of course). Better looking produce than a lot of salvage stores, too.

I believe that this building was specifically constructed for Sharp Shopper, especially since their headquarters are next door to the east and their warehouse is next door to the west.

Notice the bulk items too, such as the large blocks of cheese.

Here we're looking out over the store from the produce department in the back. Certainly larger than a store like BB's -- and a store like Save-Mor doesn't even sell produce.

Frozen foods in the last aisle. It's possible that these fixtures were brought in secondhand from elsewhere when the store opened, but it looks like this store got a lot new when it opened.

But as we might expect in a salvage store, there's an eclectic mix of storebrands. Here's a couple jars of White Rose applesauce over some Meijer pie crusts.

That's about all for Sharp Shopper, which was a very pleasant change from my expectations about salvage grocery stores. It's a very nice store and very good at what they do.

Sharp Shopper competes with a large independent supermarket less than half a mile down the road, which is where we're headed tomorrow on The Independent Edition!