Bargain hunters pounce on outlet.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

Penny Burtraw doesn't go grocery shopping. Instead, she goes grocery shopping!

She takes time to Explore the Store! Make Bodacious Buys! Find Treasures Galore!

As the signs throughout the store suggest, the emphasis is on the exclamation point at the Grocery Outlet on River Road in Santa Clara. Not that Burtraw needs much encouragement.

"They laugh at me and say, `Here she comes again,' ' says Burtraw, who visits the store several times a week. "I know I have to divorce myself from this place, but I can't stay away. There's always a new thing."

Once disparaged as a chain of "Grody Outlets," the stores have shaken off their image as no-frills warehouses offering rows of dented canned foods unceremoniously stacked on pallets.

Now, they've taken on an almost garage sale-style chic among young families, out-of-town shoppers and more middle-class consumers who choose to spend their free time hunting for bargains.

You still may find a great buy on cans of creamed corn or boxes of macaroni and cheese. But you're just as likely to stumble onto an outrageously low-priced camping tent or picnic table or woman's bicycle or, on sale this week, Janero leather jackets (`$29.99, elsewhere $168.00').

"We just had some little electric scooters, about 100 of them, for $39," says Roy Baker, who operates the River Road store with his wife, Joyce. "I know our freezer guy bought one. We sold them all."

The eight-state, 118-store company got its start in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1940s and was known as Cannery Sales. The store bought warehouse overstocks and sold them at discount prices.

It now bills itself as the largest "extreme-value" grocer in the country, with sales topping $500 million in 2002. The Berkeley, Calif.-based firm does business with more than 2,500 manufacturers, taking advantage of factory overruns, inventory imbalances and closeouts.

The trend of new shoppers doesn't surprise Jon Wylie, vice president of marketing for Grocery Outlet. While perhaps 70 percent of shoppers at the stores are people on fixed or low incomes "who really need to economize," the other 30 percent are "dedicated bargain hunters who just like to find good deals" - no matter what their own economic status, Wylie says.

At the River Road store, a Mercedes and a Jaguar show up regularly, Baker says, pointing to the parking lot. "They look at our wine selection ... well, they love that wine selection."

Most of the outlets are independently operated by local families and retain a homey feel. It's true for the 23,000-square-foot Grocery Outlet in downtown Springfield run by Jim and Debra Hoffman, as well as for the 13,000-square-foot store that the Bakers manage.

Shannon Cole of Eugene recently shopped the personal products aisle at the River Road store with her mother and 4-year-old daughter - instructing the latter on how one brand of bath bubbles was actually a better buy than another.

"I think people have become better shoppers - with this economy, you have to," says Cole, who introduced both her mother and a sister to the store.

JoAnn King is among the regulars who tend to pop in on Wednesdays - because they know that's when new loads of products hit the shelves.

"I'm what you call a flexible shopper - I have a list, but it's flexible," King says. "You have to be here when the good things show up because they go fast."

King, a super-thrifty shopper who offers free advice on the Internet about budget shopping and meal preparation, isn't afraid to pounce.

When she found an ounce of pure vanilla extract on the shelf for 89 cents, she knew what to do.

"I bought two cases," she says. "That solved that problem."

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Penny Burtraw buys items at the Grocery Outlet on River Road, where she shops several times a week.