| rev:text
| - If you see a woman standing in the aisle and swearing at the shelves, that's me. I've lived in this neighbourhood for more than 10 years, and been shopping at this store during this entire time. It's never been a great store. They have always stocked plenty of low-end, low quality lines. Their produce has never been very attractive, even at the height of Ontario's growing season. However, prior to a few years ago, it had a nice, neighbourhood feeling and there were a few good products you could count on, like the excellent home-made roast potatoes and vegetables.
The new management thinks that they have made it "nicer." I will grant that they have added a few interesting items. However, the store is now packed to the ceiling with Compliments and Sensations products, to the point that brand-name stuff has been removed. There are a few good Compliments/Sensations items, but most of them are inferior. For example, their basic chicken stock has about 2X the sodium as the other brands, but they stopped selling the Pacific line to make room for the crappy Compliments one. The cheese section has more space given to Compliments pre-sliced cheese than it does to any interesting varieties. They reluctantly sell a few loaves of Ace bread, because it will interfere with their higher margin crap.
I have a particular loathing for the changes they have made to the produce section. They actually shrunk it, apparently to make way for more ready-made, high margin items. They don't stock Spanish onions any more. What kind of grocery store doesn't have Spanish onions? They have also started packaging almost all of the vegetables, from beans to turnips to small hot peppers.
So, I basically hate this store now. I shop here for basic things because it's a few minutes from my house, but recently I have been going out of my way to purchase items I just can't get here. I agree with the comment below that says it's very white-bread and suburban now. I think it's actually worse than that; it has more of a convenience store feel.
By the way, I love the staff. Most of them are very friendly and I've known them for years.
|