Stop & Shop Woburn MA -- An Opportunity Lost

The national news recently has covered the fight for control of local supermarket chain, Market Basket.

Market Basket is basically my favorite grocery store because:

• Although its stock is somewhat limited, it manages to carry pretty much everything I want.
• The prices are quite reasonable.
• The store brand food tastes as good as the name brands.
• The people are friendly and hardworking.
• The shopping experience is pleasant.

The past few weeks I've not shopped at Market Basket.  This is not only because the shelves emptied, but also out of solidarity with the movement to keep Arthur T. Demoulas as CEO, and to continue running Market Basket the way he and his team built it.

Instead I did most of my shopping at my local Stop & Shop.  Soon Marked Basket will be restocked and I will have a choice.  The experience of Stop & Shop Woburn MA strongly reinforced my opinion to Stop Shopping at Stop & Shop.  

An opportunity to create a welcoming environment for new customers was completely wasted.  Here was my experience.

After parking my car, I go to the front entrance door nearest the middle of the parking lot and am greeted by the sign, "This entrance closes at 10:00 PM."  I remember this sign.  I remember making a previous late night trip to Stop & Shop, parking my car in the middle of the lot, and then discovering I had to walk over to the far entrance.  Why?  Apparently the staff likes to clean that part of the store early so they can get home earlier.

Entering the store I go to where the shopping carts are housed in-store.  Alas, there are no carts there. Unlike Market Basket, there apparently are no junior staffers constantly bringing the carts from the parking lot back to the store.

I go back out to the parking lot and try to find a cart that is in decent repair: with all the plastic still present on the main handle, and that has no sticky wheels.  On my third try, I get one that's mostly acceptable. Pretty much every Market Basket shopping cart I've ever touched was in perfect shape.

Re-Entering the store, I being shopping. First stop: the Deli counter.  Here is where Stop & Shop really could shine.  The activity that takes the most of my time at Market Basket is waiting to work with an employee to fulfill my deli order.  Stop & Shop has a kiosk that lets me key in an order and continue shopping.  Better yet, it has the ability to remember an order associated with my Stop & Shop card. Unfortunately, there are problems:

• The laser card scanner, for weeks, has been unable to recognize the Stop & Shop card on my key ring. The self-checkout works ok, so I presume it's a broken scanner.
• The first time I used the deli kiosk, the employee got my order wrong.
• In the most recent two weeks, the deli-slicer has either been mis-aligned or subtly broken. I prefer my cold cuts to be of uniform thickness, not fat on one side, and pointy on the other.

While my deli kiosk order proceeds I do the rest of my shopping.  The next disappointment happens in the produce section. I see that the usual "higher than Market Basket prices" for all produce changed while Market Basket was closed. So I can get my Granny Smith apples pretty much for the same price I paid at Market Basket. Too bad they didn't taste as good. Differing suppliers, I guess, seem to result in issues with many items on my weekly grocery list:

• Romaine Lettuce: How come Stop & Shop Romaine lettuce is so much more beat up, and seems to have veins of brown, and splotches of rot that I never find in Market Basket Lettuce?
• Pre-packaged Spring Mix:  They found a supplier of "organic" spring mix that tastes about the same as what I got from Market basket, at about the same price. So this is ok, at least until the special dollar off pricing ends.
• Red Onions: Why do they all look smaller and more beat up than what I get at Market Basket?
• Cherry or Grape tomatoes:  Do they really have to be that expensive?

Pre-packaged foods, spices, meats, and dairy seems pretty much a wash as  long as you stay away from the flavorless Stop & Shop brand, and as long as you don't mind paying fifty cents to a dollar more per item, or per pound of meat.

I did find it rather annoying that the bakery was half a store away from the pre-packaged bread aisle.

Buying ice cream was a challenge.  My refrigerator at home, and the refrigerated display cases at Market Basket seem to be pretty much frost free.  Unfortunately, at Stop & Shop, I had to scrape the frost off the ice cream containers to verify what I was getting.  I think it may have had something to do with the refrigerator case door that's been broken and held together with duct tape for the past several weeks.  Broken shopping carts, broken deli kiosk scanner, broken frozen food case.  This is a trend.

Going back to the other side of the store, I pick up my deli kiosk order and then travel back across the whole width of the store to check out.  I skip the few stations staffed by human beings.  The lines are too long.  Instead I'm first up or second up at the machine.  It is at this point that the unpleasantness of the Stop & Shop experience becomes complete:

• Why must I count to five while the machine acts on the deli item number I've keyed in?
• Who organized the list of deli items to pick when I don't have the number?
• Why do I have to select "Credit" both at the register and on the credit card scanner?
• Why does the system need a staff member to come over to get it to accept my coupons?
• How can I possibly bag all the groceries piled up at the end of the conveyor before the next customer's purchases start landing there?

Having taken about the same time as the first in line at self checkout as I would have taken as third or fourth in line with a person, I now exit the store.

My overall impression:  The primary management focus for the Woburn MA Stop & Shop is the minimization of costs that keeps personnel to a minimum and results in poor repair of basics like shopping carts and freezer cases, with no resultant decrease in prices to be passed on to the customer.

Making sure everything was in good repair, and creating a basic human contact could have made me say, "I can go to Stop & Shop as readily as Market Basket."  But no, it was business as usual:  I pay more for food that doesn't taste as good, and I have an unpleasant time doing it.

I look forward to never going back to Stop & Shop.