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I haven't checked out the new Giant, but I am very glad they're finally making a play for the city market. Between this, the Heirlooms, and the stores they've allegedly committed to (Broad & Washington, Columbus & Reed), they're really going all in. I think it's smart, too, because there's really an opening for a solid, mid-level supermarket in the city. Acme is just consistently, shockingly mediocre in all areas (and is absolutely terrible on price), while I've never been overly impressed with our Shop-Rite options. Sprouts is fine but surprisingly limited for the space they have. Giant is no Wegman's, generally, but if they keep approaching their stores like this, I think they'll do very well.
Shoprite is a full scale grocery store where Aldi is a small discount store. I'm surprised you paired them together.
For the record, I like both stores but find the purpose they serve in the market to be rather different.
Eh I think the problem with ShopRite is that it is actually a franchised grocery chain, so it is run by different owners.
And they are very inconsistent in quality because of that. Some are not bad.. But a few I have been too were actually extremely dirty (to a disgusting level) like dirt everywhere on the floor and just overall not very nice. One in Delaware I went to, was just awful.
I went to one in New Jersey as well and it was overall not clean whatsoever with little to no prepared foods and awful customer service and selection.
They have some competitive prices on some products when on sale though and this is why I paired it with Aldi.
Customer Service at ShopRite is also below average because they pay below average.... so im not a huge fan of that market whatsoever.
Giant also pays below average... and the majority of their suburban locations are less than average.. which is another reason why this new Center City location has me not really wanting to be a frequent "flier" and I rather go to Wegmans, Trader Joes or Costco.
Stores like Wegmans, Costco and Trader Joes pay better and also have low prices and there quality is top notch.
Again Giant is trying... but its prices are definitely higher than Wegmans.
The Heirloom markets are higher in price than both a Wegmans and Trader Joes and the suburban Giants are really about the same price point as Acme overall.
Last edited by rowhomecity; 03-23-2021 at 11:35 PM..
Everything is canned or frozen.....or packaged junk. I didn't think it was clean. And one of the times I went to one of them it didn't have ANY beets. I wanted to do a quick run-in and get a can of beets. At that time I'd never been. I was in the area and knew it was a smaller store so I figured it would be a quick in-and-out.
I've been to 2 of them in DelCo...Chester Pike in/near Sharon Hill, and MacDade Blvd in Woodlyn.
Maybe I just don't want my groceries/food to be "outlet." I can be a snob about that at times.
I'd put Grocery Outlet below Save-A-Lot.....and believe me that's saying a lot about just how low I rank it.
(I just googled about GO, and the one in Woodlyn was scheduled for closing back in October.)
Out in Mt. Airy it looks like we will have a Grocery Outlet opening in the spot that was once intended to be an Aldis. It will be an urban format store right on germantown avenue with a large (for the neighborhood) apartment building on top. I know next to nothing about the chain except that they have very low prices. If it is decent it will be a decent addition to the area. The southern end of Germantown Ave in Mt. Airy is slowly starting to come along.
Paceselhars' opinions of the store (and I happen to share his low opinion of Save-a-Lot), I do want to check out Grocery Outlet sometime.
There's a meat market in Bensalem — one of the few places hereabouts I can be assured of getting reasonably priced brisket that's not corned beef to smoke; oddly enough, Walmart Supercenters are the only other such source I can depend on — that also sells what I call "groceries that fell off the truck". Like large jars of Grey Poupon mustard for $1. I suspect that Grocery Outlet is this kind of store, only minus the fresh meat and service deli.
As I'm sure you all know, I enjoy shopping at off-price stores — I consider the fact that you don't know in advance what you'll find once inside part of the adventure. I suspect that I will find Grocery Outlet appealing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PHL10
Shoprite is a full scale grocery store where Aldi is a small discount store. I'm surprised you paired them together.
For the record, I like both stores but find the purpose they serve in the market to be rather different.
Indeed. And ditto. But:
Quote:
Originally Posted by rowhomecity
Eh I think the problem with ShopRite is that it is actually a franchised grocery chain, so it is run by different owners.
ShopRite stores are not franchised.
Wakefern Food Corporation, owner of the ShopRite and Fresh Grocer trademarks, is a wholesale cooperative that's owned by the supermarkets it supplies; the company is run on a one-owner, one-vote basis, regardless how many stores that owner runs. The now-defunct Pathmark chain was born when what was then the largest single member of the Wakefern co-op (Supermarkets General Corporation) decided to strike out on its own in the late 1960s.
(Producer and wholesale cooperatives are actually rather common in the food industry; some of the best-known brands in their categories, like Ocean Spray, Welch's, Cabot, Land O' Lakes and Borden, are owned by farmer/producer cooperatives. (In fact, the same dairy farmer cooperative produces every advertised brand of butter you find in local supermarkets except Breakstone's [owned by Kraft Heinz] and Land O'Lakes [see previous].) The oldest wholesale grocery cooperative is Associated Wholesale Grocers of Kansas City, Kan., founded in 1926; Wakefern was founded in New Jersey 20 years later — according to one survey I saw [I think it was on Thrillist], ShopRite is the largest employer in the state of New Jersey. That, however, would include the employees of the independently owned ShopRite stores.)
But you are correct that any one supermarket in a setup like this is only as good as its owner, and some owners are better than others. One of the better owners in the Wakefern cooperative is Jeff Brown, who owns four ShopRite and two Fresh Grocer stores in the city and close-in suburbs. I'm sure you all have read something about him; I understand he is considering a mayoral run in 2023. I often go to the Fresh Grocer in Wyncote (20-minute bus ride) rather than the La Salle store (three-block walk) because Brown owns the Wyncote store while the La Salle store is owned by The Fresh Grocer's founding family*, the Burnses, and their stores aren't as clean or well-run as the Brown stores are (though I prefer the selection of prepared foods the Burns stores offer).
Quote:
Giant also pays below average... and the majority of their suburban locations are less than average.. which is another reason why this new Center City location has me not really wanting to be a frequent "flier" and I rather go to Wegmans, Trader Joes or Costco.
Stores like Wegmans, Costco and Trader Joes pay better and also have low prices and there quality is top notch.
Again Giant is trying... but its prices are definitely higher than Wegmans.
The Heirloom markets are higher in price than both a Wegmans and Trader Joes and the suburban Giants are really about the same price point as Acme overall.
I didn't check the price tags on the regular-priced items (I pretty much kept my exploration to the rim of the store and didn't scope out the inner aisles), but I did think that the sale prices at this Giant were quite competitive. It is my estimation that Giant is one of the region's more expensive chains, too, however, and I did mention that to the division head I interviewed for the article. (Giant's city stores, the one in the Far Northeast excluded, are basically their own division within the company.)
You are aware that TJ's is owned by the other Aldi company, right?
*I was "present at the creation" of The Fresh Grocer in the late 1990s. The University of Pennsylvania, in whose communications office I worked at the time as managing editor of The Penn Current, was looking for someone to operate the supermarket it was building in the ground floor of the parking garage at 40th and Walnut streets, one of the linchpins of its strategy for shoring up University City (a collection of incentives, programs and developments I refer to collectively as the "Penn Urban Revitalizaton Playbook; its co-author now runs Drexel and is writing a revised and updated version). From what I understand, the university approached Whole Foods Markets armed with resident surveys suggesting they would love to have a store like theirs to shop at, but WFM turned Penn down (they hadn't yet gotten up the gumption to open stores in "inner city" locations like the one they opened a few years later on Chicago's South Side). So they approached the operator of the Drexeline supermarket in Upper Darby, showed the guy the surveys, and (again, from what I hear) twisted his arm hard. He agreed to lease the space, and thus the first Fresh Grocer was born.
This store is no longer a Fresh Grocer, though. Burns missed a deadline for re-upping his lease, and Penn decided to offer the space to another operator. The university inked a deal with Acme, and Burns waged a fight to keep the store (I don't remember whether the fight included filing suit against Penn). About a year later, Burns lost. That store is now an Acme, which I consider a step down from FG.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rowhomecity
Eh I think the problem with ShopRite is that it is actually a franchised grocery chain, so it is run by different owners.
And they are very inconsistent in quality because of that. Some are not bad.. But a few I have been too were actually extremely dirty (to a disgusting level) like dirt everywhere on the floor and just overall not very nice. One in Delaware I went to, was just awful.
I went to one in New Jersey as well and it was overall not clean whatsoever with little to no prepared foods and awful customer service and selection.
They have some competitive prices on some products when on sale though and this is why I paired it with Aldi.
Customer Service at ShopRite is also below average because they pay below average.... so im not a huge fan of that market whatsoever.
Giant also pays below average... and the majority of their suburban locations are less than average.. which is another reason why this new Center City location has me not really wanting to be a frequent "flier" and I rather go to Wegmans, Trader Joes or Costco.
Stores like Wegmans, Costco and Trader Joes pay better and also have low prices and there quality is top notch.
Again Giant is trying... but its prices are definitely higher than Wegmans.
The Heirloom markets are higher in price than both a Wegmans and Trader Joes and the suburban Giants are really about the same price point as Acme overall.
Aldi AKA Aldi Süd pays roughly the same as Lidl and Aldi Nord AKA Trader Joe's.
It's trash day in the 'hood. Almost every house has a Giant bag in the recycle or being used for recyclables. I think they're gonna do pretty well!
I went there to see it for myself and bought a few products.
I will say it is nice to have an alternative, larger scale conventional grocery store in Center City. Its price point is definitely the same as Acme though...
And the prepared food is lackluster and below average overall. The prepared food I bought was actually awful. I almost threw it out; it was that bad, and it was at the same price point as Di Bruno Bros...
They are also missing a self serve prepared food section a la of the salad bar types you would find in Whole Foods and Wegmans, and that is actually lacking in Center City and probably would of been a lunch hit for the office and dinner crowd if they incorporated one. That was a big miss for them.
Its produce works, but they do not really source local ingredients which is a feature I like from Wegmans.
But if you want a conventional grocery store option in that part of the city, I guess it works.
Another thing I disliked, is they only have self checkouts for the most part. And when you purchase a lot of groceries that actually can be quite annoying and bothersome.
Also the beer feature seems odd to me. I would never seek out to go to Giant to have a beer on tap.
I think Giant is just an average market, its suburban locations are expensive and lackluster and definitely no more different than Acme.
I will be honest MarketStEl... I think your write up of the "food hall" gave Giant a little too much credit. It is lackluster and a miss. IMO. And if I want a beer on tap, I would rather go to an outdoor beer garden than Giant.
Last edited by rowhomecity; 03-30-2021 at 09:58 AM..
I will be honest MarketStEl... I think your write up of the "food hall" gave Giant a little too much credit. It is lackluster and a miss. IMO. And if I want a beer on tap, I would rather go to an outdoor beer garden than Giant.
I have no quibble with that argument — so would I.
(However: the outdoor terrace at this market will also have its own, smaller tap wall. The terrace is open, but the taps are not open yet. I imagine they'll get them going once the weather turns nice consistently.
(But I'd still take Frankford Hall over this terrace. Nonetheless, it does bring a beer garden to a neighborhood that lacks one right now. That's probably not a real big miss when one has the Cherry Street Tavern close at hand, but that's still indoors.)
Edited to add: TBH, I didn't care much for the view from the outdoor terrace. The apartment tower this store is part of blocks the view to the north. They should have built a cantilevered terrace on the west side of the space.
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