My mother has sung the praises of outlet groceries for years, but I'd never actually gone to one myself. That changed last week when I decided to drive an hour to try one out. So after dropping the kids off at the bus stop, Brady and I headed out on our drive to Sharp Shopper. My husband was less than enthused. He assured me that the place was sure to be dirty, with little selection. I told him I wanted to give it a try. Boy, am I glad I did. When we arrived, this is what we saw.

I had a good feeling that I had made the right choice when the parking lot and exterior of the store looked nice and clean. Besides, my girlfriends had raved about the place. I don't think they'd steer me wrong. So we headed inside to be greeted with this.

Aisle after wide, clean aisle of groceries to choose from. There were ten aisles total. Seemed like a lot of variety to me. Turns out that there were lots of items to choose from. In fact, we ended up spending nearly two hours perusing the store by the time we left with our cart overflowing!

I was pleased to find that Sharp Shopper carried brand names. I chose these for hubby, original flavor because it's his favorite.

I believe they were $1.29 a bag. Another fabulous deal I found was the Edward's frozen key lime pie my family loved for $1.99. Today's lunch was pizza - Health Choice individual supreme French bread pizza that cost only .99! There were so many great deals there. Another favorite of mine was the case of 24 Propel flavored water for $7.99. This is something I wouldn't usually indulge in. They kids were ecstatic.

The baker in me was thrilled to see the aisle full of bulk goods. Check it out. There were chocolate baking chips, sprinkles and  all kinds of flours. There were also bulk candy, dried fruit and more.

When it was all said and done, I ended up with a cart overflowing on top and bottom, with a few items in my hands. All of which came to a grand total of $195 and change! Amazing. I will definitely be going back to Sharp Shopper. It was worth the drive for me and my family.

Do you have an outlet grocery store near you? How far would you drive to find one?