Giant

My family has been shopping at Giant since the 70’s, so when I moved to Edgewater 5 years ago I was happy to have a location so close to home. Unfortunately, every time I go there is a lot of negativity — rude staff. Is it so wrong to expect a smile? I’m irritated the second I notice that my cashier can’t bother to look up, smile, say hello — this happens ALL the time. Each time they have a good employee they disappear. I think they are trained to do other things, some I see at other Giants. Anyway, I just leave with such a bad attitude because I’m so pissed off that the cashiers are so blatantly rude, and the baggers destroy my food. Chips go in with sodas, bread goes in with heavy frozen stuff, of course I’m looked at rudely if I say anything about it.
On a positive note, I do think that Giant prices are the best, it’s a clean store, and for the most part the produce is pretty fresh. There are a lot of nice employees especially in the deli, bakery, and flower shop. It really is the cashiers that could use some customer service training. I gave two stars because it’s the cashier that I see last, that I hand over a lot of money to each week. Don’t they realize the customer IS their paycheck?
The customer service issue has me thinking that Safeway deserves a try. I have gone to other Giant locations but they are not convenient for me. So goodbye for now Giant — for goodness sake, just learn how to smile.

I was recently screamed at repeatedly by an employee I never saw before. She was at the service desk. Safeway and Food Lion are both just as close. Much nicer people.

This is a great supermarket for those in Edgewater. We shop at the Bay Ridge Giant (most of the time), at Sams, sometimes at Shoppers Food Warehouse (a better ethnic mix), and at Fresh Market. I stop here on my way up and down Rt 2 for fill-​in grocery shopping. The staff is helpful, the food is fresh, and the aisles are big enough that it takes someone completely oblivious to block traffic. *grin*

I shop here when I don’t want to go to Safeway, or when I know I’ll be placing a deli order, since Giant seems to offer more deli meats/​cheeses.
A few things I wish this Giant would improve upon:
More organic fruits and vegetables. I can’t be the only one in the area that wants these. You can usually find organic tomatoes, strawberries, romaine, carrots, but not much else.
There is a natural foods aisle, which I love, that has a cooler at one end. This contains soy yogurts, organic creamer, organic eggs and kefir. However, you have to go clear to the other end of the store to get organic milk. I don’t understand why these organic products can’t also be found in the regular dairy aisle or why the milk isn’t also in this cooler. If you’re going in for just organic milk and creamer, which I’ve done before, you hit both ends of the store. It’s nice to have that little cooler in the natural foods aisle, but those products should also be found with the regular dairy foods (like most stores) for ease of shopping.
Additionally, while you’re shopping in the back of the store near the dairy, there are displays in front of ALL the coolers, which makes it extremely difficult to navigate with a shopping cart when there are other customers in the area. Thought this was just a seasonal thing, but it’s been there for months and months.

Giant is a very decent, and busy market. A lot of the times the sales here (e.g. 10 for $ 10) can be better than a lot of other markets in the area.
Produce wise the selection is fair but doesn’t compare to the average Whole Foods; but, then again the prices here are far lower. Deli wise the selection is slightly better than most; however, it’s average still. The cheese selection is a lot better than most markets though the seafood is below the standards of a seafood market.
The location is clean, inside and out though the bathrooms have some items which aren’t fully functioning their small inconveniences.
3 stars.

Wow, what a disappointment this new Giant was. Since I live in the area, I was looking forward to seeing what a brand new «Super» Giant would offer. I was expecting some new products, interesting displays, awesome fresh seafood and meat offerings, and a great produce and bakery department.
I’m not sure what they were shooting for when they put this place together. Outside, the store looks impressive and high end with the brick exterior, landscaping, and lighting.
As you walk inside however, the wattage from the lights are almost blinding and the linoleum floors (gasp) don’t do anything to deflect the brightness. The floral shop looked like an afterthought, and the bakery cases seemed to display the same poorly conceived sugary concoctions and bland looking breads that grace most mediocre stores.
I also thought the prepared food section might offer some new interesting dishes, but I saw much of the same over dressed coleslaw’s, potato salads and such. When I got to the deli counter, I noticed they did not have a system in place yet for taking a number. Wow, kind of glad I wasn’t here during the «rush». Yea, Boar Head meats are decent, but with everything but bologna at almost $ 10/​pound, you wonder who can afford to buy this stuff on a regular basis. I was expecting some great pricing, but there was none to be found.
Both the meat and seafood depts. were tiny compared to the store’s enormous size and I saw nothing that even made me want to pause to investigate further. The old tiny Giant on Rt. 2 would have some interesting things like fresh individually packaged duck breast. Nothing like that here. It was as vanilla as it comes.
I didn’t spend too much time elsewhere as I completely lost my interest. I perused the frozen food section a bit, just to see if maybe just maybe they may be offering some Home Run Inn pizza’s (from Chicago). But alas the cases were dominated by the usual suspects.
I did find some NY made frozen bagels 6 for $ 2.99. Kettle cooked, and man they were good. Don’t know if that would make me want to come back. Just doesn’t seem like incentive enough.
I was also hoping that the neighboring store fronts might bring some new interesting options. Unfortunately, places like the «Hair Cuttery» «Subway», «Panera Bread» aren’t that unusual and heck I can find them a couple of miles away. Guess I will stick to my Safeway, Trader Joe’s and Wholefoods routine.