“Limp produce, helpless help, long checkout lines…” If any of those grocery store descriptions hit close to home for you, perhaps you are a shopper at one of the worst supermarkets in America.
Consumer Reports is out with its latest rankings of the country’s best and worst food-shopping destinations. The list, last updated in 2012, rates 55 supermarket chains across the country, based on survey results from 27,208 readers and 48,076 shopping trips.
Such surveys typically give high marks to places like Publix and H-E-B. Both scored well in the Consumer Reports survey, but Wegmans earned the top spot this year.
What if you don’t have a high-scoring supermarket in your hometown, though? You might be stuck doing your shopping at a place you can’t stand.
The typical grocery shopper makes 88 supermarket trips per year and spends about $6,000, Consumer Reports notes. “But just because people shop a lot doesn’t mean they enjoy it.” More than half of survey respondents said they experienced at least one problem during their last shopping trip. And a third said things had gotten so bad at one of their local supermarkets, they “fired” the store and quit shopping there altogether.
The most common complaints include high prices, long waits, poor selection and just plain bad food. Even some stores that scored relatively well overall, had their share of drawbacks. Schnucks was singled out for having a “confusing layout.” Save-a-Lot shoppers gripe about the store’s “lack of choice.” And even the popular Market Basket gets low marks for its “congested aisles.”
But none of them are the worst of the worst. Which supermarket was described as the “trashiest grocery store in the universe”? Which has a “reputation for having the highest prices across the board,” which is “a rotting hole of disaster” and which offers “all the pleasures associated with jury duty”? Find out, by clicking here for a slideshow of the 13 Worst Supermarkets in America.
They forgot festival foods I worked there and they only relied on me because the other people didn’t do anything even when I had school they wouldn’t get me a break and I asked for time off they wouldn’t give me any even though we had so many people were in my line of work.And the food is so overpriced it’s like 5 bucks for just a plain loaf of bread I can get for 1.50 at a gas station and if you work there you get paid more by spending 1000$ on stuff there and I only got paid 8.50$ so yeah don’t go to Festival Foods
What???
Walmart dead last? That’s BS.
I really think its a bizarre pop culture bias. Seriously.
Everyone loves to hate Walmart. Its ‘COOL’ to hate Walmart. That ranking is not deserved. No way. No how.
And Kroger…Whoa. Middle of the pack? Not deserved either. We have a new one here in Forney and have to be honest I’m in the middle of a full blown hot-and-heavy love affair w/ that store. Yesterday, my husband and I went shopping at Kroger …for fun. We needed nothing. Ultimately we spent over $100. We had our Starbucks coffee as we browsed, came home w/ sushi for lunch and then had fresh halibut w/ brussels sprouts and baby red potatoes for supper (Yes, we bought wine too)
At the end of that day, we joked that dinner and a movie MIGHT have ben cheaper. But we had FUN shopping there and then cooking together. $100 well spent. 🙂 Now call ME biased.
But bias aside: Kroger is a LOT closer to the top and not of a middle ranking. That list has serious flaws-don’t bank on it.
Agreed. Sam’s Club–a division of Walmart–at #35, but Walmart itself is down at dead last? Target, essentially Walmart’s twin with a better fashion sense, gets slotted in at 26? And Hannaford’s up at #16? Apparently value (price paid vs. quality of product) wasn’t accounted for–in my area just about everyone calls them “Can’tafford’s” because they’re consistently higher-priced on the exact same product as their competitors, by an average of 35 cents per item. (Also, Hannford’s and Stop & Shop are owned by the same parent company–yet there’s 31 spots between them?)
There’s no way this is a non-biased list. Either cherry-picked data or weighted questions.