Checking out the “new” Piggly Wiggly

Recently, the Wisted’s grocery store in my town switched over from being a Centrella to a Piggly Wiggly. I was a little bummed about this as I enjoyed Centrella’s sales from time to time. But today, I ventured over to the Huntley Piggly Wiggly for the first time since the switch.

Like the east coast Piggly Wiggly stores, my “new” Piggly Wiggly has a loyalty card. This allows you to rack up Pig Points, which can be used to earn free and discounted products in the store. Piggly Wiggly is also unique in that it’s currently the only supermarket chain that participates in Ibotta ecoupons without having to take a photo of the receipt!

Once I had my card, I simply opened up Ibotta on my phone, snapped a photo of the loyalty card, and Ibotta linked my loyalty card to their system. Now, Ibotta will work similar to SavingStar — the ecoupons I load will automatically be applied to my Ibotta account after my purchase. I used the ecoupon for .75 off any brand of orange juice on a $2.49 carton of Florida’s Natural today.

Using Ibotta with a loyalty card is a little different though in that you have to click “Offers,” then touch the products you wish to redeem in store. After selecting each one, click “Redeem” to add it to the Piggly Wiggly shopping list before your card is scanned at the register. Ibotta does not give you the option to redeem a Pig receipt after the fact.

Also, the keytag version of the Pig Card is pretty funny:

Yes, your keyring goes through the, um, hole in the pig’s bottom. My cashier said that the older demographic who lives in our Del Webb community is not too fond of this loyalty card… ha!

Anyway, their ad has a bunch of good coupons to use with a minimum $10 purchase, which got me in the store today:

Another welcome change? The Huntley store is finally accepting internet printable coupons! They will only accept printable coupons with a “Veri-Fi” logo on them (Coupons.com) but it’s a start!

I don’t plan to blog Piggly Wiggly matchups weekly at this time – currently, there are only seven Pig stores in Illinois. However, I heard that Piggly Wiggly may be looking at buying some of the shuttered Dominick’s locations, which could be interesting for Chicagoland shoppers…