A significant winter storm - referred to as Winter Storm Cora - is anticipated to bring heavy mixed…read moreprecipitation to the Roanoke, Virginia area, with a Winter Storm Warning in effect until Monday, January 26, 2016. We are to expect 4 to 8 inches of combined snow and sleet, ice accumulation, and dangerous travel conditions with wind gusts up to 35 - 40 mph.
After receiving the above information from the weathercasters of Channel 10 local news, I decided to go shopping for food, water, and essentials to weather the storm. Asking around, on the day before the storm would reach us, I was told that Walmart's shelves were almost all cleared out, and not to bother going there. My friends advised me to go to either Food Lion or Kroger. I decided to go to the Vinton Kroger, knowing by experience how well managed this Kroger is and how they do an excellent job of keeping their shelves stocked.
When I arrived, their parking lot was pretty full, but still had some parking spaces available to park. As I parked and approached the entrance, their American flag flew high above under a beautiful blue sky with white clouds.
Inside, I was able to walk around with my shopping cart and find all the essentials I needed to weather the storm. From frozen ready-made foods, easy to prepare, to bread and cold cuts, to even milk and water, that oftentimes are the first things to run out in supermarkets during inclement weather. I asked one of the employees for directions of where to find the little glass bottles of Starbucks Coffee and she immediately gave me the aile number. Another employee helped me reach the toilet paper that I wanted that was on a shelf too high for me to reach. They even had the cereal that I like that oftentimes even in good weather the other supermarkets run out.
The clerk at the cashier's counter was very efficient checking out all my merchandise, and the bag packing attendant in quickly packaging all my item and nicely placing them back into my cart. In Vinton, they also don't charge you for the bags, which they do in Roanoke. As I was taking my groceries to my Lexus, cars stopped to allow me to cross over to the parking lot. I quickly placed all my items in the trunk of my Lexus and pushed the cart back to one of those cart stations in the middle of the parking lot. As I was leaving the parking lot I saw behind me how another car was paking in the parking space I had just left. I thought to myself how grateful I was to the management and staff of this Kroger in particular for being so efficient that allowed me to shop, like if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
