Smith’s Food & Drug Centers

This is a nice store. They were super clean and had a nice selection. Produce looked good and there was a small section specifically for the organic/​natural foods. The wine selection was great and the cashiers were friendly. For general grocery shopping, I’d go back here.

The only place I shop in Taos for groceries and misc. Great produce, large organic section, lots of choices for alcoholic beverages, and super customer service. I tried shopping in Albertsons, but just don’t like anything about that store. The pharmacy in Smiths is also good. And gas prices with the discount are worth it.

Huge liquor section and decent health food section make for a great grocery store that has been located in Taos for a very long time.
Staff is generally friendly.
Beware the cheap gas. Many a vehicle has been corrupted using this gas!

Pretty good grocery store with fresh produce, and nice variety. Good parking.
And no one solicited me in the parking lot! Always a bonus.

I like shopping here. Pharmacy is quick and easy. If its got a line I can go shop and come back. Good produce. Decent selection around the store.

Went there tonight to buy a few items including a 6 pack of beer. The guy working the self checkout refused to believe my 49 year old wife was over 21, and then actually laid his hands on me when I told him he was being a fool. He further attempted to restrain me from leaving until I had heard his story about getting a citation last week. I told him I really did not care to hear it, in slightly harsher language, and basically ran him over to depart when he kept stepping in front of me. This is a man with a tiny bit of authority, who all of a sudden imagines himself a BIG man. He yelled at me as I left the store that I was not to ever come back! That made me laugh. I spoke to the manager, and she defended his actions due to him receiving a citation. Once again, I mentioned I did not care about that! She did not apologize, so I can only assume she supported his actions. There is an Albertsons right up the street, and they took my money without assaulting me!

Stopped to get gas because it was 3.50 for regular which seemed good enough, until we actually put gas. We had a half gallon in a ten gallon car so we figured 15 will more than fill it up. It ended up just giving us another quarter of the tank, how does that happen?!

Smith’s is a food and drug chain that’s usually pretty reliable for most things. But this branch has some of the most surly staff one will ever encounter. Almost as though this branch manager trained them to either ignore customers or have an unacceptable attitude. Paseo del Pueblo is full of supermarket-​type stores. This branch evidently wants you to go to one of their competitors.

I used to shop at the old Smith’s every couple of weeks. Their prices were fair even though I didn’t find the store to be particularly clean. They remodeled the store adding a huge deli center, sushi bar, olive bar and a seafood dept. that was not there previously. I had not shopped in the store for over 6 mos. due to the remodeling and the parking lot was a disaster. I went in the day before X-​mas and went to the deli counter. There were four workers helping customers and NONE of them were using gloves. The three women had hair in their faces and were touching their faces, coughing and sneezing. The man in front of me ordered some cold cuts and the woman was touching individual slices with her bare hands as they came off the slicer. They were using the same slicer for both meats and cheeses. When it came to be my turn, I asked if the woman if she would please use gloves. She gave me a funny look and put the gloves on. It still wasn’t clean in the area as everyone seemed to have a cold.
I frequently travel to Mexico and marvel when I see the workers in a kitchen all dressed in white uniforms with elasticized caps on their heads (no hair visible), masks and food service gloves. Mexico is supposedly a third world nation but tSmith’s in Taos in no way meets the standards that it should and better fits the third-​world country standards we think of – dirty and yucky!
I went to customer service after checking out to report my experience and I was behind a woman who was returning a large bundle of crab legs that she had bought the day before. She said she tried to serve them the night before but when she opened the package, they smelled bad. I could smell them from six feet away. The customer service worker opened the package and it was leaking all over the counter as she tried to scan the label. Can you spell «Salmonella»? Everything that crossed that counter after that was contaminated. I don’ tknow how many people were sick on X-​mas from their visit to Smith’s as I was.
In the past, I had had problems with frozen foods, poultry and dairy prior to the remodel. Last year I returned a fresh turkey that still had three days for the sell by date that had a strong amonia smell. I have opened containers of sour cream that were moldy. Frozen vegetables often had losts of frozen snow in them a result of defrosting and refreezing. The ice cream often has heavy ice crystals on the outside. They used to often have problems with the freezer/​refrig. units and apparently, they still do.
I don’t feel safe in the store. The workers are unkempt and lack proper sanitary procedures and the number of shoppers does not justify the quantities of fresh deli foods that they set out.
The store has these annoying child carts that are like a huge plastic car with an attached basket that clog the aisles. Children are hanging out over the edges and some day someone is going to knock one of these kids silly and there will be an injury.