The Best Supermarkets In The Country, As Ranked By 'Consumer Reports'

Fed up with high prices and bad service at your local supermarket?

It's time to move to the Northeast, home of the country's top supermarket as judged by 24,203 readers of Consumer Reports magazine. (Click through below to find out which one it is.) They were asked to rate various grocery chains on service, quality of produce and meat, price and cleanliness to determine which was tops in the country.

The results are printed as part of a blockbuster cover story in the May 2012 issue of Consumer Reports. The story also includes some helpful tips for saving money while shopping for food. One of the most surprising such tips was the power of store brands. The magazine compared the total cost of a shopping trip focused on name brands to one where a shopper only bought generic -- and found that the latter spent $66.23 to the former's $164.28. That's savings of nearly 60 percent.

But the most eye-opening part of the story is the supermarket chain ranking. As you'll see below, some well-known chains ended up in the top 10. But others -- like Whole Foods, Target and Stop & Shop -- don't crop up until much further down in the 52 chains included. Indeed, many of the best performers are regional chains that put friendly service and low prices ahead of flashy marketing.

Click through the slideshow to find out the country's top 10 supermarket chains, as ranked by Consumer Reports: