After we arrived here, we were told of the main 3 grocery stores to be found in Punta del Este. In descending order, they are Tienda Inglesa, Devoto, and Disco. Tienda Inglesa goes to a lot of trouble to make their store very appealing to the more well-off summertime visitors to Punta del Este. But, what is done for rich summer tourists, is also available to the rest of us full-timers through the off-season. :)

Devoto kind of gave me a Whole Foods vibe when we first went inside. It's different from Tienda Inglesa in that TI gives you more of a feeling that you're being watched. There are department guards sprinkled throughout the store that keep an eye on everything. Devoto is more laid back. Tienda Inglesa always has plenty of checkers waiting at the registers. Devoto usually has lines because they keep fewer lanes open. I won't comment so much on Disco. It's the cheapest of the three options. Tienda Inglesa and Devoto do a lot of importing and have food items from Europe as well as North America, which is nice.

Here is the outside of our local Tienda Inglesa lit up at night. They picked a good location because it's part of the only mall in Punta del Este. With TI being part of the mall, it makes a trip to the mall one stop shopping!   

This is the meat counter inside Tienda Inglesa. Here is another tip about Tienda Inglesa. They have the best beef. All of the beef cattle raised in Uruguay are graded with the best quality beef being reserved for export. Don't get me wrong, it's all great beef! But generally the lower graded beef is what you'll find in butcher shops and grocery stores. Tienda Inglesa is different. They own their own cattle herds so the best beef is still sold through their chain of stores and not exported for a higher price. That is why everyone raves about the beef at Tienda Inglesa. If you can see in the picture, there are beef halves hanging back behind the counter. I love it that stores here still do their own processing. They don't just get the meat shipped in from a packing plant somewhere.

And here is the other difference between Tienda Inglesa and Devoto. Behold! The majestic PUNTOS card! I read about the different points cards offered on Wally and Denise's great blog, Retired In Uruguay. I knew I wanted to hit the ground running and get a points card as soon as I could. Thankfully, shortly after we arrived, Lucas went with us to the store and helped me apply for my Tienda Inglesa card. I think we only shopped there 3 times before I had a card. You apply for it at the customer service counter, then it takes 7-10 days before it arrives and you go back to pick it up.

Devoto has a card, too, the Hipercard. I have one of those, as well, but I appreciate my Puntos card more. In the year we have been here (since I took these pictures) we have gained about 800 Tienda Inglesa points on our card. When you pay, you hand them your Puntos card and they add points to it based on how much you spend. On Tuesdays and Fridays you get double points!

Different things in the store have tags with the price at the top and the number of points it takes to purchase the item as well. The items you can buy with points changes with the store promotions. They recently did a camping promotion where all the camping equipment had the prices in points as well as pesos. For Father's Day, it was many of the things in the electronics department. For Mother's Day it was linens, bedding, and kitchenwares.

In Devoto, you gain points the same way, but you cannot directly trade in your points for items in the store. They run promotions for things like pots and pans or grilling tools. The promotion tells you how many points are required for each item, but it also requires stickers (which you gain with your points when you check out using your Hipercard), and some amount of money. To me that's not as good of a deal as Tienda Inglesa offers. At Devoto, though, you can gather up the stickers and trade in a ridiculous number of them for trips out of the country. Right now our landlady has been saving Devoto stickers for 5 years and thinks this year she will have enough for a trip to Paris.

So that's the low-down on the points cards for Tienda Inglesa and Devoto.