I've learned that living in a rural area, in the summertime, means bringing a cooler to the supermarket. Some supermarkets here have machines that provide free ice by the exit. You don't want to buy frozen meat in August, then drive it home for an hour or more while it's sitting in a grocery bag in the trunk. So you bring a cooler, load perishables into it and cover it in ice for the drive.

Reusable ice packs might seem like a more convenient or less wasteful way to go. Having used them, I'll say the jury's out. One hassle is that reusable ice packs take up valuable space in your freezer. If you store them outside of the freezer, you have to remember to put them back in the freezer the night before you go shopping, which I've found is easy to forget. Another problem is that they are bulky and rigid; they don't allow for flexibility in packing your cooler, which can turn into a game of grocery Tetris.

In contrast, ice cubes conform to whatever you're packing, making it easy to create negative space. And if you get it from the supermarket, you don't need to remember to freeze and bring ice packs. The downside is that whatever you're packing gets wet; for instance, if you're ordering wrapped meat at the butcher counter, you have to bring large ZipLoc bags to store it in for the drive. Another minor hassle is dumping the ice when you're done. Depending on the size of your cooler, it can be too heavy to hoist up to sink level, so you end up scooping the ice from cooler to sink with a can.

It's not entirely relevant, but a company called SharkNinja makes this FrostVault Cooler, which comes with a drawer. It's the only cooler like this I've ever seen. The idea is that you load it with ice up top, for things that you don't mind getting wet, and you keep things that should stay dry in the drawer below.

It seems to be marketed towards the barbecue/picnic crowd rather than rural grocery shoppers (I don't think there's a lot of manufacturers trying to solve the latter problem). I'm already invested in my solution and will stick with it, but if I was starting over maybe this would make sense.

These run $250.