Which is the best supermarket for an olah on a budget? This is a topic on which I have, through extensive and occasionally traumatic experimentation, become something of an expert.\n<\/p>\n
Throughout my time here I\u2019ve cycled through Shufersal (online and in person), AM:PM, Rami Levy (online and in person), Carrefour, Osher Ad, Super Moshava, Super HaEmek, and several extended phases of \u201cI don\u2019t go to the supermarket unless it is an absolute emergency.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
My husband and I have currently settled into a system that feels responsible but may just be unnecessarily complicated: giant Osher Ad trips every month or two for protein, pantry staples, and cleaning supplies; whatever\u2019s closest for weekly milk and yogurt; and the Tuesday farmers market at First Station for produce, because I am somewhat insufferable about my fruits and vegetables and insist on choosing them myself. This system is intended to be both economical and convenient. Whether it succeeds at either goal remains an open question.\n<\/p>\n
But anyway. Here is my highly subjective guide.\n<\/p>\n
AM:PM\n<\/p>\n
AM:PM was my supermarket when I was a single college student in Herzliya, and the only reason it worked was because I lived directly above one. Shopping at AM:PM is like ordering food at an airport; everyone involved knows it\u2019s overpriced, and the shelves somehow always have seven kinds of kombucha but are missing something basic like eggs.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
For the stage of life where my weekly shop was yogurt, bananas, oat milk, pita, and maybe cheese, it was fine. I loved the cashiers, they knew my routine, we had banter and spent time together in the miklat under the building on various occasions. One of them asked me out. Financially: terrible. Emotionally: great.\n<\/p>\n
Shufersal\n<\/p>\n
My go-to right after getting married, and generally pretty serviceable. You sit on your couch, click buttons, groceries appear at your door, produce arrives looking surprisingly decent. The catch is that online grocery shopping is somehow a two-person job in our household. My husband cannot independently generate an order that results in complete meals. I cannot navigate a Hebrew grocery website without opening Google Translate, taking three hours, and still having an internal meltdown. Together, however, we become one functioning grocery shopper. The bigger issue is that every Shufersal order contains a moment where I see the final total and wonder whether we accidentally ordered for ourselves and another family. Convenient? Yes. A little expensive? Also yes.\n<\/p>\n
Rami Levy\n<\/p>\n
All I can say about Rami Levy is that it is cheap. When we shop there, we genuinely spend less money. The problem is that at some point you have to ask yourself whether your sanity has monetary value.\n<\/p>\n
You place your order and think: wow, I saved 150 shekel. Then the phone calls begin. Every five minutes someone calls to tell you something is unavailable, proposes a substitute, retracts the substitute. By the end, so many items have evaporated that you\u2019re essentially paying for potatoes and cocoa powder. Then they call to say they don\u2019t have the cocoa powder. Then your 5pm delivery shows up at 9pm, at the wrong building, and you find yourself wandering the neighborhood in pajamas trying to locate your potatoes before someone else claims them. You get home. The potatoes are partially spoiled.\n<\/p>\n
I understand this is the price of saving money. I simply choose not to pay it (though I have massive respect for those who do.)\n<\/p>\n
Super Mosheva<\/p>\n
Super Moshava is not a supermarket. It is a drug for olim.\n<\/p>\n
You walk in and everything feels familiar. The aisles are pleasantly cold and organized. The products are what you grew up with. The checkout lady speaks English and she doesn\u2019t sigh at you aggressively while you put stuff on the conveyor belt. You think: this may be heaven in Israel.\n<\/p>\n
Then you look at the receipt. In your bag (they bagged everything for you) are blackberries, imported smoked salmon, American cereal, artisanal ice cream, and some snack you haven\u2019t seen since middle school. You have spent enough to finance a startup and have nothing to make dinner with. You forgot onions.\n<\/p>\n
Super Moshava is where I go when I miss America, which is exactly how they get you, and they know it.\n<\/p>\n
Osher Ad<\/p>\n
I approach Osher Ad as an obstacle course.\n<\/p>\n
The first challenge is finding everything. The second challenge is fitting everything into your cart. The third challenge is surviving checkout. The final hurdle is getting everything home.\n<\/p>\n
The checkout alone is a character-building exercise. You either stand in a line probably visible from outer space, or you attempt the self-checkout machines. If you choose option two, you scan your items. You weigh the cart. The machine beeps. The machine beeps more angrily. An employee appears. You try to explain the situation despite not fully understanding it yourself. Eventually you pay, and experience a brief cardiac moment at the total, and then remember you\u2019ve just purchased enough chicken, rice, paper towels, and frozen vegetables to survive until next season. It evens out.\n<\/p>\n
Osher Ad success truly feels like an accomplishment. And if you bring a husband to carry everything home and remind you that losing an argument with a self-checkout machine isn\u2019t a personal failure, it can even be fun.\n<\/p>\n
So which supermarket is best for an olah on a budget? Honestly, maybe none of them. AM:PM is friendly but expensive. Shufersal is easy but expensive. Super Moshava is an oasis that will drain your bank account. Rami Levy is cheap in ways that cost you elsewhere. Osher Ad is the most economical option if you can survive the checkout process, which, with the right support system, you can.\n<\/p>\n
The real answer is that you\u2019ll probably cycle through all of them, develop biased opinions, and end up at some hybrid arrangement that is definitely not as efficient as you think it is.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tGabriella Jacobs moved from New York to Israel in 2023. She is a multimedia journalist at The Times of Israel, a BA student at Tel Aviv University, double-majoring in Middle Eastern Studies and Philosophy, and also works as a teaching assistant for the Tikvah Fund\u2019s gap-year program. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Which is the best supermarket for an olah on a budget? This is a topic on which I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[5859,9581,16149,37],"class_list":["post-164336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-aliyah","tag-american-jewry","tag-hebrew-language","tag-israel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116764925145157811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}