Only El Paso Grocery Stores Have These

I haven't been to every grocery store in the world but I've been to a bunch and this is not only something I've only seen in El Paso, only one grocery store chain here does it.

Grocery stores are pretty predictable and, mostly, laid out the same ... milk and eggs in the back, impulse candies and magazines by the registers, etc ... but this is different.

I'm not sure this is even hygienic to be honest. At least when it comes to certain spills and day to day oopsies throughout the store.

Food King grocery stores, sometimes listed under the heading "Shur Save", are found in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado with the great majority of them located in Texas and most of those being here in the El Paso area.

What's so different about them?  Well, a couple of things, one being that they don't follow corporate price guidelines. According to them, they charge you what they paid for an item plus 10%. Period.

The other big difference with Food King is right underneath their customers feet. Food King has the only, fully carpeted, grocery stores I myself have ever seen.

Not sure if this is a thing elsewhere or not but I doubt it. I've been in and out of grocery stores in 13 states and 2 countries and have only seen this here in El Chuco.

Weird huh?  It's kinda cool, gives the stores a bit of hominess I guess and eases and/or eliminates that annoying click and echo of shopping cart wheels and hard shoes on tile.

I know they get vacuumed regularly but, how do they deal with messy spills? Especially dairy. Seems like spoiled milk, and its lovely smell, would be tough to get out of carpet fibers.

Maybe it's just to soothe us a bit and take our minds off the irritating things about grocery shopping like:

Self Checkouts. Which, thankfully, they ... like these New Mexico Walmart's ... DON'T have and let's not forget shopping cart wheels. At least one of which, by law I'm pretty sure, must not work properly.

Another weird thing I've only seen in Food King stores is insurance salesman.

Where else can you grab cheap groceries, on nice comfy carpet, and make your car insurance payment in the same place??