Bottom feeders by the hundreds storm new Bottom Dollar Food in Exeter in quest of (not-so-cheap) eats
Friday, December 10, 2010 at 12:36PM 
Blame it on the turmoil in the economy.
Hundreds of bargain hunters armed with WIC cards, electric scooters and an extra slather of Polident swooped into the Bottom Dollar Food market in Exeter Township this morning, jamming the registers 15 deep, turning the parking lot into a maze of gridlock and depriving other holiday shoppers of the opportunity to hit Boscov's for the latest Kate Gosselin Armani Code Pour Femme fragrances and chic "seconds" blouses from Indonesia.
Black Friday indeed!
Of course, your fearless blogger braved the madhouse to see what insane bargains he might scoop up. A cheap newsprint flyer delivered to my door by a government agent (the mailman) promised a mix-and-match sale of 20 items for $10, and an insert in the local newspaper included a clip-it coupon for "$5 in FREE groceries when you spend $25 or more."
The fine print first. The $5 FREE coupon says "Limit one per purchase of specified product." The specified product, of course, is not specified and may involve jugs of of surplus corn syrup. As for the 20 for $10 loss-leader, the items included tiny house brand pizza pies that wouldn't fill a toddler's tummy and assorted frozen "entrees" that usually cost 89 cents at Redner's.
Otherwise, the prices looked nowhere near as cut-rate as at Aldi's, the Neiman Marcus of Depression 2010 food stores. Those little bags of pasta mixed with chemicals, which cost about a dollar everywhere, were a mere 98 cents at Bottom Dollar. And one of my Twitter followers already warned me (and the world), never buy the meat.
In contrast, a soup kitchen never looked so lovely. And the crowds, though maybe not the portions, are smaller.