Most of us venture out to supermarkets on a weekly basis with a shopping list in hand, scouring the aisles to restock our fridges with household staples and our favorite foods. Some of us shop for bargains and what's on sale, while others are loyal to a specific grocery retailer. Which grocery stores are known for their vast product array? Which one has the friendliest cashiers? Who has the best value? Curious about where your supermarket is ranked? Check out this list of the best supermarkets to find out!

Piggly Wiggly was founded in 1916 and often is cited as the first supermarket to offer self service. Previously, customers would give a store clerk a list of items they needed and the clerk would fetch them. The Piggly Wiggly invited customers to browse items themselves, which accounted for lower prices. It also is the first store to have checkouts as we know them today. These days there are more than 600 Piggly Wiggly stores across 17 states.

There are more than 200 Sprouts stores across America. They put special emphasis on fruit, vegetables, and vitamins. In terms of size, they usually are smaller stores. But that doesn't affect selection: Sprouts stores have more than 1,800 of their own branded products. They mostly serve the South, including such states as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Arizona.

The next few supermarkets were included on previous year's surveys and remain popular throughout the country. Rouses is one such supermarket and it is native to Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. It began in 1923 as the City Produce Company in Thibodaux, Louisiana. The store boasts 54 locations in the South and more than 5,000 employees.

Another supermarket that was previously listed is Seabra Foods. This supermarket was founded in 1967 and is mainly found in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Florida. It's a leading ethnic food retailer along the East Coast. Some of the food delights it offers are home-made sausage, fruit purees, and a room full of salted cod.

HMart is an American/Korean chain of supermarkets whose headquarters are  based in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. It first began springing up around the Northeast, before it began expanding to the West coast and middle of the country during the '80s and '90s. It boasts a wealth of Korean food from seafood to sauces. The "H" in HMart stands for Han Ah Reum, which means "one arm full of groceries" in Korean.

Seafood city offers affordable Filipino cuisine and is located mostly along the West coat. Locations include Nevada, California, Hawaii, Chicago, and Washington. The food on offer is flavorful and diverse. Such delicious offerings as crispy garlic rice with pancit noodles and special sauces make Seafood City a great food destination for seafood lovers.

Another great ethnic supermarket, Mitsua Marketplace is a favorite with fans of Japanese cuisine. the store is found mainly in California, Illinois, Texas, and New Jersey. The store boasts herbs, sashimi, and even matcha-flavored Kit-Kats.

Walmart is a hypermarket, meaning that it constitutes a department store and a supermarket. Walmart has more than 11,703 stores nationwide, and is the world's largest company by revenue. It was originally only located in the South and Midwest, but since the 1990s has moved steadily from coast to coast. Walmart came in sixth place for value for money in the survey.

Stop & Shop originated in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1914 and was opened by the Rabinowitz family. It is considered a pioneer in modern grocery stores, as it housed all everyday items and produce under one roof. Stop & Shop stores mostly are located in the Northeast.

Safeways is a supermarket that was founded in 1915, and is mainly located in the Western and Central parts of the country. It was first opened by businessman Marion Barton Skaggs, who bought his father's grocery store for $1,089. Today, Safeway has  1,335 stores in the United States and 195 in Mexico thanks to a partnership with Casa Ley.

Giant was originally founded in 1923 as a small meat market in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A move to a bigger store in Lewistown, Pennsylvania signaled the first use of the name Giant. From then on it became solely a grocery store. Giant operates stores in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. In the survey, the highest that Giant placed was 13th (for ease of finding items).

Sam's Club first opened in Oklahoma in 1983 and is one of the largest members-only retail warehouse clubs in America. Sam's Club boasts more than 47 million members nationwide and is the eighth largest retailer in the country. It came in fifth in the survey for value for money and 13th in the speciality-department services section.

Meijer was founded in Greenville, Michigan, in 1934 by Hendrik Meijer, a Dutch immigrant. It became one of the first stores to offer customers the option of self-service checkout. Due to the pressure to compete with larger stores like Walmart, Meijer completely revamped their company image, including their logo. Meijer came in eighth in the the value for money category and 14th in the availability of its items.

Albertsons is the second-largest supermarket chain in North America with 2,200 stores. It was founded in 1939 by Joe Albertson in Boise, Idaho. Albertsons placed seventh for cashier courtesy and 12th for fast checkouts.

Food Lion was founded in 1957 in North Carolina by Wilson Smith, Ralph Ketner, and Brown Ketner. As the store — initially called Food Town — expanded into Virginia and Maryland, it changed its name to Food Lion because stores called Food Town already existed in these states. The store has seen both highs and lows, the lows being the closures and lease cancellations of locations in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Oklahoma in the 1990s.  But today, Food Lion can be found in Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, to name a few. It came in 15th place for value for consumers' money.

Shoprite, famous for their "Can-Can" commercial, which first introduced their Can-Can Sale in 1971, featured an animated chorus line of cancan dancers singing, "ShopRite does the Can Can, Selling lots of brands in can-cans." Now, in a nod to their roots, canned goods are placed on steep discounts each January. Based in Keasbey, New Jersey, ShopRite consists of 48 individually owned and operated affiliates with more than 296 stores, all under its corporate and distribution arm, Wakefern Food Corporation. ShopRite's story began in 1946 when a Del Monte Foods sales representative talked seven independent grocers in Newark, New Jersey, into paying $1,000 to launch Wakefern Foods, which later became ShopRite. It scored seventh place for value for money.

Founded in 1925, Winn-Dixie was built up by William Milton Davis and his sons Artemus Darius Davis, James Elsworth Davis, Milton Austin Davis, and Tine Wayne Davis. William Davis started the business in Burley, Idaho, where he bought a general store in 1914 that he later renamed Davis Mercantile. In 1925, Davis borrowed $10,000 from his father and moved to Miami, where he purchased Rockmoor Grocery. In 1939, the Davis brothers bought Winn & Lovett, which had 73 stores, and the 117-store Dixie Home chain. It was ranked No. 4 in ease of finding items.

Target or "Targét" as some people lovingly (jokingly?) call it, is mostly known for its discounted prices on household goods. Founded by George Dayton and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company was originally named Goodfellow Dry Goods when it opened in June 1902. It was later renamed the Dayton Company in 1910. The first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota, in 1962 while the parent company was renamed the Dayton Corporation in 1967. As of 2017, Target operates 1,834 stores throughout the United States. Target Corporation is the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States. It ranked 12th place for money value and store cleanliness.

Speaking of Kroger... Dating back to 1883, Barney Kroger invested his life savings — a whopping $372 — in opening a grocery store at 66 Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati. He sold his mother's homemade sauerkraut, a staple that proved hugely popular with his German customers. The son of a merchant, he ran his business with a simple motto: “Be particular. Never sell anything you would not want yourself.” In the early 1900s, most grocers bought their bread from independent bakeries, but Kroger, always pursuing quality as the key ingredient for profit, recognized that if he baked his own bread, he could reduce the price for his customers and still make money. In 1901, he became the first grocer in the country to establish his own bakeries. Such specialty departments as bakeries and meat and seafood shops remain fixtures in the company's supermarkets. They ranked eighth for specialty department service.

Located in Arizona, Fry's Food Stores are a division of the Kroger Company. With help from his brother Charles, who had a degree in mathematics, Donald Fry founded Fry's Food and Drug in California's Contra Costa County in 1954. In the 1960s, he opened 41 new stores in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Arizona. Kroger now operates more than 120 stores in Arizona, and is considered the nation’s largest traditional grocery retailer. Not to be mistaken for Fry's Electronics in the San Francisco Bay Area, this Fry's has everything from baked goods, cheeses, and a deli to sushi and their famous olive bar — all under one roof. Fry's ranked fifth place for fast checkouts.

Whole Foods Market was founded in Austin, Texas, in 1978 by 25-year-old college dropout John Mackey and 21-year-old Renee Lawson. They borrowed $45,000 from family and friends to open the doors of a small natural foods store called SaferWay in Austin, Texas. They lived at the store. Two years later, Mackey and Lawson partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to merge SaferWay with their Clarksville Natural Grocery store. The result was the original Whole Foods Market, which opened on Sept. 20, 1980, with a staff of 19. Their staff still remains the most affable, and they are ranked No. 4 in cashier courtesy.

Back in 1967, two Boise-area businessmen, Ralph Ward and Bud Williams, founded a discount store in Boise, Idaho, under the name Waremart. It was a no-frills, warehouse-style grocery store focusing on low prices. In the 1970s, Waremart evolved into a supermarket that became regionally famous for low prices, flat-carts, and grease pencils that customers had to use to write the price on each item. Those are gone now, but the low prices remain. In 1985, the hardworking men and women of Waremart bought a controlling stake in the company from the Ward family, and established WinCo Foods. Today, there are 119 employee-owned stores. WinCo Foods was ranked No. 5 for item availability.

If you've ever had to shop for a party or in bulk, Costco would be the place. Their operating philosophy has remained simple: Keep costs down and pass the savings on to its members. The company's first location, opened in 1976 under the Price Club name, was in a converted airplane hangar on Morena Boulevard in San Diego, California. Costco became the first company to grow from zero to $3 billion in sales in less than six years. Costco ranked seventh place for store cleanliness. It fell behind in cashier courtesy to 11th place.

Hy-Vee's history dates back to 1930, when Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg opened a small store in Beaconsfield, Iowa. The store was leased only a few weeks before the stock market crash of October 1929. The two men began calling their operation Hyde & Vredenburg in 1933, and decided to pay its store managers on a profit-sharing basis. Since its founding, Hy-Vee stores have operated autonomously, choosing their own inventories and setting their own prices. Store managers (now referred to as store directors) were always encouraged to test new ideas. One of the first such entrepreneurial concepts — employee bonuses — was introduced in 1936 and endures to this day. Hy-Vee Food Stores came in fifth place for store cleanliness.

Harris Teeter Supermarkets is an American supermarket chain based in Matthews, North Carolina. The chain operates 245 stores in seven states — North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Delaware, and Maryland — and the District of Columbia. It was founded by entrepreneurs William Thomas Harris and Willis L. Teeter who started separate businesses during the Great Depression in Charlotte, North Carolina. Harris opened the first full-service drug store, called Harris Drugs, and Teeter opened Teeters Food Mart. They later merged their names and their ventures. Harris Teeter ranked No. 4 for fast checkouts, availability of items, and store cleanliness.

Aldi is the common brand of two leading global discount supermarket chains with more than 10,000 stores in 18 countries, and an estimated combined turnover of more than $100 billion. Based in Germany, the chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946 when they took over their mother's store in Essen, which had been in operation since 1913. Their method is to take a simple, cost-effective approach to grocery shopping that saves shoppers money. They pride themselves on the fact that shoppers who switched from national brands to ALDI-exclusive brands can save up to 50 percent on their weekly must-haves. They must be doing something right, as ALDI once again led for value on the survey.

The story of H-E-B begins more than 100 years ago in a small, family-owned store in Texas Hill Country. In 1905, Florence Butt opened the C.C. Butt Grocery Store in Kerrville, with just $60 to get it started. In the 1920s, Butt's youngest son, Howard E. Butt (H-E-B), took over the business, which now serves families all over Texas and Mexico in 155 communities, with more than 340 stores and more than 100,000 employees. H-E-B came in third place for availability and ease of finding items. Their specialty department service also ranked third.

Trader Joe's opened its doors in 1958 as a small chain of convenience stores called Pronto Markets. In 1967, founder and original "Trader," Joe Coulombe, named the store for himself. The stores themselves feature walls decked with cedar planks, and the crew wears cool Hawaiian shirts. The chain is known for its packaged innovative, hard-to-find foods under the private “Trader Joe’s” name. Their Charles Shaw wine earned the nickname "Two Buck Chuck" for its $1.99 price tag, eventually selling 800 million bottles. As for the survey, Trader Joe’s was found to have the most courteous cashiers.

Wegmans, founded in 1916 by John and Walter Wegman as the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company, is known for its fresh produce, reasonable prices, and massive stores. The New York-based, family-owned chain is expanding steadily, with a focus on employee training to ensure customers have a great experience. They create superfans eager for a new location to open near their homes. Wegmans ranked highest for its specialty department services, and was a close second for item availability.

Publix Super Markets was founded in 1930 by George W. Jenkins, affectionately known as Mr. George by his employees. He mortgaged space in an orange grove and built Florida's first supermarket. The chain seems to embody its motto — “Where shopping is a pleasure” — setting them apart and making them known to shoppers as a store where they can easily find the items they want. Publix also was found to have the cleanest stores and fastest checkout speeds.