Compare Foods

Well, after reading all these glorious reviews I couldn’t wait to shop at Compare Foods. When we first walked in I thought that maybe we were in the wrong place. It’s rather filthy. I’m sure no one has mopped the floor since the day they opened. However, the shelves, and produce were quite orderly, more so than any other place I’ve seen. So my first advise is to wear blinders. Their produce is beautiful and worth putting in the effort to keep your eyes up and concentrate on anything but the floor. As far as prices for produce, fish, and meat it’s pretty fair, and the variety is what will keep me going, but be wary of anything else. I bought a bottle of Aussie shampoo there, and then we had to go to another grocer’s for what Compare didn’t have, and I found the same shampoo for $ 1.00 less. That’s a huge difference in price so I was a bit disappointed about that. The bakery area, again not the cleanest, is chock full of amazingly delicious pastries. Here again you have to overcome the filth factor and keep your eye on the prize because not only is it fresh baked, but the prices are very low, and you’ll feel like you won the treat. We do want to go back and try the hot food they serve, but again, we have to prepare ourselves accordingly and wear blinders.

While Compare Foods is quite the drive for us it’s definitely worth going, especially if you’re going to be near the area! Right off 85 in a no-​frills shopping center, Compare sells pretty much anything you need if you want to be making Mexican, Central American or South American cuisine, with smatterings of ingredients and packaged foods found in Africa, the Caribbean and even more! From masa to nopales, tamales to Jamaican demerara sugar, Compare is like a little food-​based vacation. The produce selection is very nice, and prices are quite affordable — if you’re looking for sweet limes, sour oranges, or big stacks of dried peppers at varying levels of heat, this is the place for you. There is a small deli counter with hot prepared foods and a corner of the store almost entirely devoted to tortillas, plus Compare also carries a wide range of typical grocery goods like washing detergent, sodas, crackers, spices, herbs, and so forth.
Compare also houses a beauty salon, and a small bakery which offers both breads and a wide variety of sweets from elaborate confections to simple cookies and pastries along with some of the best flan I’ve had in Durham. Whether it’s a quick bike ride from home or a planned journey, Compare Foods is worth your time and a great value for your money!

I love coming to this store because I feel like I have just been transported to another place. I love listening to bachata while shopping and have found so many foods and ingredients from Latin America and the Caribbean. The produce section is amazing with so many fresh items and the prices are so reasonable. I found coffee from the Dominican Republic and am very happy with this import.

Love this Compare Foods location, it’s more than a regular supermarket it’s like a marketplace.
They have a beauty salon, a jewelry store, a little shop that sells everything you need for a quinceanera, a bakery, and more.
My favorite part is the hot food section they have behind the produce, by the deli. They sell warm cooked dishes, mainly Mexican and Dominican. I am particularly excited about the Dominican food given the dearth of our cuisine in his area. I was especially surprised one day I was craving yuca and chicharrones and they actually had some here. They also serve things like pernil, arroz con habichuelas, guineitos, carne y pollo guisado, empanadas, maduros. You can get a pretty sizeable plate of food including rice, beans, plantains, and meat for $ 5. I haven’t been able to find that anywhere else since moving here from NYC. I’ve also had their tamales which are good and only about $ 1.25. They have seating there if you want to enjoy the ambience of facing the meat or the produce section.
As far as groceries I agree with the other reviewers as far as variety and prices. I feel like I can’t go wrong here.

I love Compare Foods and specifically Super Compare Foods. Super Compare is two to three tiems the size and the regular Compare which, in my opinion, make it about a zillion times more fun! I go to CF for the produce and sometimes to get specific spices or chili peppers. I do not do most of my grocery shopping there.
I am big into juicing, and if you are too I highly recommend CF for getting your produce. Cucumbers there are .79 (and .50 if you can get them on sale). They are larger and generally of better quality than what you will find at other grocers. I know the Harris Teeter by my house charges about 1.19 for cucumbers. I recently got red leaf lettuce at CF for a little over a dollar and saw the same thing at Harris Teeter for 2.49!
The produce can be a bit hit or miss at CF. The cucumbers seem to always be on the mark, but sometimes I end up having to go elsewhere to get the remainder of my produce. There are weeks when everything at CF looks spectacular and weeks when a lot it is simply not available or not of good quality.
However, it is worth the trip. If you hit the jackpot on produce — which is more likely than not — you will be glad you took the time to go.

Compare has become my first stop on my weekly grocery store run, but there’s usually a second stop somewhere else as Compare doesn’t quite have everything I need. The four things I like most about Compare are the produce, the bakery, the meat department and the focus on Latin American staples.
The produce, which is primarily conventionally grown, has a lot of turnover, which means I’m not stuck purchasing wilted and bruised vegetables. The prices on produce are fantastic — staple items for the American kitchen and especially the produce commonly found in Latin American cooking are often half the price of the average supermarket. There’s almost always at least on excellent special on fruit — last night I found gorgeous apples for $ 0.99/lb. The selection is great, too. Fresh herbs, plantains, cactus, avocados, ginger, greens, a wide variety of fruit, peppers, etc. — you name it, they probably have it and the probably have a lot of it. The only items which you may struggle finding are the less common Asian produce items such as Thai basil, han shimeji mushrooms and galangal.
The bakery in Compare is located in a space leased out to a smaller vendor. This also seems to be the case with the kitchen/​restaurant, the barber and the tax accountant. For the bakery, you grab a plastic tray and tongs and select from around two dozen different pastries, most of which are Latin American. They have plain rolls, cookies, pastries stuffed with anything from cream to fruit jellies and my favorite, churros. Pay for the baked goods at the bakery counter. As much as I like the bakery at Compare, do note that across the shopping center parking lot from Compare is an even better bakery, so if you aren’t in a hurry, consider stopping there first.
The meat department is huge. They have a very large selection of pork, beef, and chicken with excellent weekly specials. Like the produce, they appear to have rapid turnover, and I’ve never had a problem finding fresh meat and poultry. I especially appreciate that they sell cuts of meat and scraps which can be used for stock at a very inexpensive price. Chicken backs, cheap pork necks, beef bones, etc. allow you to throw on a huge pot of stock on a Sunday morning and freeze gallons of homemade stock for much less than if you purchased canned stock or if you purchased the ingredients you needed for the stock at another supermarket. You’ll also find the exotic cuts of meat that you’d only find in an ethnic grocery — oxtail, stomach, intestine, feet, etc. What you won’t find is prime, aged beef — this isn’t a high-​end butcher.
For Latin American ingredients, you’d be hard-​pressed to find anything you needed that Compare doesn’t stock. Spices, dried chilies, hominy, crema, cheeses, candy and soda — Compare has it all.
The store isn’t fancy. They aren’t spending any money to give you anything other than a bare-​bones grocery store experience. There isn’t an olive bar or hardwood floors or the sushi «chef», rather it reminds me of a Kroger 25 years ago — function over form.
The employees are very helpful, and though many may not be native English speakers, their English language skills are more than enough to offer you a friendly and quick check-​out as well as answer any questions you might have. If you are having any problems communicating, look for a high-​school student to help you. The younger employees have excellent English and Spanish skills and although they might not be able to explain how you might cook an exotic ingredient you are curious about, they can reach out to an older employee and translate on your behalf. The staff is generally more helpful and friendly than other competing grocery stores, but you do get the occasional grumpy clerk or the newcomer that doesn’t have any codes memorized or can’t tell cilantro apart from parsley.
Give Compare a try if you haven’t shopped there before. Allow for some extra time to explore — you are likely to find a lot of things you’ve never seen if you, like me, are a native North Carolinian who is embracing the boom of Latin immigrants we’ve seen over the past fifteen years.

Excellent produce selection with unbeatable prices. If you need cheap hispanic foodstuffs, this is the place to go. There’s also a fair amount of Caribbean and African products. I usually leave with a few pounds of jalapenos, several pounds of loose beets (‘dirt’ cheap), and various dried chiles that are great for homemade sauces. Word up!

My neighborhood listserve periodically complains about the lack of «real» grocery store in our immediate vicinity.
Because people are just too snobby to shop at Compare.
You won’t buy all your groceries here.
But you will be happy about the super-​cheap produce, extra-​fresh meats, and the in-​store bakery specializing in Mexican pastry.

You can find me almost every Sunday at Compare foods. I go here for produce as well as «ethnic» foods. The quality of produce is some of the best around, and the prices are just ridiculous. .69/​lb for jalapenos, 10 limes for .99, cilantro for .33…you just can’t beat it. You can usually find some great deals on proteins, but sometimes they can look a little off.
I can end up leaving with about 8 bags of groceries for under $ 30. However, if you are looking for more American frozen and prepackaged items you might want to stop at Food Lion or Kroger. The prices on those items tend to be higher than usual.

The other reviewers have already hit on the great points of this place, so I guess I’m just «fourthing» all the great praise!
Some friends told us about it maybe 6 months ago, but we kept putting off going as we were comfortable going to the usual Kroger and Whole Foods. That will never be the case again. This place is amazing! On a mission to find good magoes and pineapple, I was more than impressed by the wide selection, cheap prices, and quality of the produce. Needless to say, we walked out with more than we planned. Most notable was a trip over to the bakery section where we found huge, cheap, and delicious pastries. I had no idea what most of them were, but the one we got (a sphere cut in half with sugar on the outside and pineapple sandwiched between) was the perfect amount of sweetness. I even liked that it was drier than typical pastries. The several mile run I will be taking later today will become more necessary as trips to Compare Foods continue…
The next time I go, I’ll be sure to bring a pen and pad to write down the names of interesting produce so I can find fun, new recipes that use such unusual ingredients!

Where else can I get Jalapeño peppers for $ 0.495/lb around the area? In Creedmoor you pay $ 2-​$ 3/​lb.
I had never been here before this past weekend. My bride and I were so on the same wavelenght Saturday afternoon when we started talking about making a run to Durham for some peppers and a few other items. My babydoll guided me there while I drove — easy access right off the highway and a quick turn into the parking area.
Okay, it’s a grocery store and from the outside it doesn’t seem to be much. Like Sue said, the place is indeed clean. With that said, it’s not the ambiance or product presentation that makes me a fan, there’s nothing there that reminds me of home that would keep me coming back for things from upstate or western NY (It’s not Wegmans by any stretch of the imagination). It’s the prices and the selection of items that I like to cook with. Try to get fresh latin style ingredients in Creedmoor? Not a chance! A twenty minute drive to Durham (or a minute out of my way if I’m going home from work) and I’m in Jalapeño and hot sauce heaven.
As much as I love to roast peppers, I could keep this place’s produce section in business pretty regularly.

This is the grocery store I visit when I need all the Latin products other supermarkets chains in NC don’t carry. We’re talking sugar cane, salchichon, queso para freir, tamales, chorizos, fruit pulp, etc.
Some folks might find it interesting (or gag like my husband) if they see their meat department. Not because it’s filthy, actually Compare Foods is very clean. Along with the usual chicken, beef parts they also sell parts of the animal you otherwise wouldn’t see at a Harris Teeter /​Kroger meat section. Take for example turkey necks, tripe (mondongo), molleja (gizzard), cow tongue, and ox tail to name a few.
They also sell many of the items you would see in regular supermarket shelves just a little cheaper.
I used to live in Miami and many products that I used for cooking are not sold at Food Lion or the like. Compare Foods is worth the drive when I need the necessary ingredients to make an authentic Latin home cooked meal.

We like this supermarket a lot!
+‘s:
It has a large produce section.
It has a larger international/​latin product section.
A discount aisle.
It is nice and clean
Usually busy.
Inexpensive.
It has hard to find things such as: castor sugar (superfine sugar), passion fruit pulp, and frozen tamales, etc.
-‘s:
A little bit further away from us.
All in all, a good market we like a lot.