Reconsidering Commissaries

What is the point of domestic commissaries?  Their customers and employees alike seem to be primarily composed of retirees or their family members.  Between Wal-mart and supermarket mega-chains like H-E-B, isn't the demand for groceries already being met?

Over the last several years I've began to question the need for domestic commissaries.  Having been to several across the the continental United States, I have been consistently disappointed with the lack of savings and inconvenience of their use.  I will admit that I have never been to a commissary in Hawaii or Alaska.  I could easily imagine that commissaries may offset the cost of living in areas like those, much like commissaries abroad.  Realizing this, my qualm is specific to commissaries in CONUS.

I've always had a negative view of commissaries, so naturally I've always used public grocery stores instead. It wasn't until I aged a little and began viewing problems analytically that I noticed the problem of the commissary could be fixed.  A few weeks ago this article, "Plan to shut military supermarkets shows difficulty of cutting defense spending" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran re-awoke my opposition to using the commissary.  Then conveniently the U.S. government shut down and suddenly there were no commissaries.

Well, the government did shutdown and congress is still arguing about the budget and Affordable Care Act, but the commissaries have managed to re-open.  In Chandrasekaran's article it was suggested that Wal-mart could offer discounts to military personnel, allowing the government to close commissaries in CONUS.  As the commissaries closed for a few days last week, Sam's Club and Costco both stepped up to offer temporary memberships to military personnel as long as commissaries remained closed.  Sure both stores probably saw an influx in sales and benefitted, but it was a great opportunity to show that using privatized grocery stores is a realistic solution the the problem of the commissary.

I don't normally shop at Wal-mart, Sam's Club, Costco, or the commissary, but if it came down to it I would be much more likely to shop at Wal-mart than the commissary.  Maybe it's time that we actually take action in areas we've identified financially inefficient rather than simply talking about them.

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W&P