Thursday, February 24, 2011

Giant Foods: Seriously, what the hell?

I honestly believe that somebody at Giant is paid to stalk me, figure out what I like, and discontinue it.  Here's a list of everything I can remember that has disappeared soon after I began regularly buying it.
  • Individually-packaged ramen - now you can only get the Souper 6-packs of only three different flavors.  They used to have a lot more variety.  I've since stopped eating ramen since it's about 90% salt.
  • Their salad bar - It used to open at 8 AM, then suddenly one day there was a sign that said something to the effect of "To serve you better, our salad bar now opens at 10 AM."  So, when I show up at the store at 8 AM, I can be better served by not being able to get a salad?
  • Sargento Limited Edition cheeses - these were all amazing, and they just disappeared with no warning.
  • Fanta Zero - One Giant stopped carrying it entirely.  Thankfully the other one still carries it.
  • California Pizza Kitchen flatbread melts - completely gone, yet they still have the DiGiorno trash.
  • California Pizza Kitchen personal pizzas - all except for the thin crust margherita variety, which I don't care for.
  • White Castle Cheeseburgers - It's been three weeks in a row now that there have been zero of these on the shelf.  They still have the hamburgers, so maybe it's just some weird stock issue, but the least they could do is put out a sign saying "Temporarily out of stock, will return soon!"
The absolutely horrible thing about all of these is that there was zero warning.  Normally when a store discontinues a product, they put out a sign saying "Discontinued!" and maybe have that item on sale just to clear it off the shelf faster.  But here, there was nothing.

You know, I think Giant has some weird policy of not putting out notices that they randomly enforce.  Because during the national Eggo waffle shortage, all the other stores in the area had signs informing people about it, but not Giant.  They just had two empty freezer cases for a few months.  But when I was there today, I saw several hastily printed signs on shelves for various things (helpfully telling me that my TracFone card was going to cost 50 cents more because apparently prepaid phones need to be taxed to benefit 911 service?  I dunno).

Giant, I hate you right now.  If this habit of yours continues, I'm shopping at Kroger instead.  They carry the only unsalted chips available in the region, anyway. (warning, site has bad web designer and therefore requires Flash)

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