Safeway sucks

Yesterday I railed about Bloom's nearly complete lack of customer service and exceptionally high prices. However, after a quick shopping trip yesterday, I'm taking potshots at Bloom's rival, Safeway.

I stopped in last evening to pick up a prescription and ended up buying a few things I'd mysteriously forgotten I needed. (Why does this always happen to me at the grocery store?!) While standing in line, I decided I'd buy a pack of sugar-free Orbit Gum. I've been buying this particular confection for years, usually for about $1.09 a pack. Sometimes it even goes on sale for 99 cents.

Not at Safeway, not anymore. Orbit Gum is now a whopping $1.49 a pack. That's a 25 percent increase in price! Is there some cartel I don't know about that's protecting and ratcheting up the cost of gum? According to Reuters, Wrigley increased prices by 10 percent in 2007:

Wrigley said the increase was due in part to rising costs, but did not specify which costs. Food companies have been hit by higher costs for natural sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup as demand for use of crops in ethanol has sent prices soaring.

Okay, so what about the additional 15 percent increase? That's Safeway gouging its customers. According to Forbes.com, Safeway focused this year on costly real estate investments. "Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Burd said Safeway chose to work less on lowering prices in 2008 to keep its earnings guidance intact in the current economic environment. Now it is planning to cut more prices heading into 2009." It's going to have to as shoppers to reduce their spending during the recession/depression and look for more frugally priced grocery stores.

Hopefully we consumers can encourage Safeway and its ilk to drop prices by taking our dollars to discounters such as Wal-Mart, Bottom Dollar, Target, and the like. Here's one cost-savings tip: buy your Orbit Gum at Walgreens. It's only $1.19 a pack.

The bloom is off the rose (and brand) at Bloom's

Bloom, a relatively new entrant to DC grocery marketing, blossomed in Rockville last year. And blossomed it did: there isn't one department that isn't simply splendid. The store features a good bakery, prodigious produce, delectable meat and seafood, and just about everything else you can imagine. Unlike Safeway or Giant, it is actually fun shopping at Bloom.

Bloom's marketing department created a glorious look and feel for the chain. The corporate palette includes saturated food-based colors, such as avocado, apple red, blueberry, plum, and wheat. While the logo's lower-case lettering conveys a friendly openness, the store's icon seems like it will start to spin any moment, leaving shoppers feeling energized and excited.

All of this sounds great because it is. But Bloom suffers from two enormous problems: ridiculously high prices and virtually zero customer service.

Problem Number 1: Bloom's prices are outrageous. Granted, Bloom is on par with Safeway (which is also obnoxiously overpriced), but unless you're a rich heiress, you'll be planning to live in the gutter by the time you finish your shopping trip. I went to Bloom yesterday to get a halfway-decent deal on New York strip steaks ($5.99/pound) and ended up doing the rest of my shopping there. My goal was to make a ham and veggie fettucine dish for my boyfriend - that doesn't sound particularly expensive, does it? But here's how it added up at Bloom:

• 1 ham steak $5.29
• 1 bunch of asparagus $ 3.99
• 1 yellow pepper $1.76
• 1 red pepper $1.96
• 2 tomatoes $3.78
• 1 package shredded mozzarella $2.99

Grand total? $19.77. For ONE meal! I realize that we're in a recession/depression and that it's the middle of winter and the vegetables are out of season, but c'mon, this is ridiculous. I wasn't making filet mignon, for God's sake. Bloom proves to be simply too expensive for weekly shopping. Next time, I'll go in for the steak sale and leave with one package of meat - that's it, that's all.

Problem Number 2: At Bloom, you get virtually no service. When you first enter the store, you are faced with a huge rack of self-scanning devices. The idea is that you scan products before you place them in your cart. When you are finished shopping, the device calculates your total and allows you to pay via a self-service kiosk when you are finished shopping. I tried this exactly once. It took me at least twice as long to do my grocery shopping using this newfangled pricing gun. Forget it. My time is worth a lot more than that. I want to get in and get out, no matter how pretty the store is.

Bloom's we-offer-no-service pledge goes deeper however. The store's employees routinely badger shoppers into using the self-check out aisles. During a busy shopping day, Bloom opens six self-service lanes and only ONE full-service lane; full-service means you have someone scan and bag your groceries. Not a lot in terms of service, right? Don't you expect your grocery store to provide grocery clerks to ring up your groceries and bag them? At Bloom, the management apparently thinks customer service is a big luxury - one they are are not going to provide if they can possibly help it - even if you are paying through the nose for their products.

I don't think the gas station self-service approach works in a grocery store environment - especially one that charges you a premium price for groceries. America started pumping its own gas during the 1970s gas crisis because it cost us less to fill our tanks. We might consider scanning and bagging our own groceries if it meant we could save some dough - but Bloom is asking us to serve ourselves and pay a higher price to do so.

Bloom's brand suffers greatly under these policies. Bloom could be greatly improved by lowering prices and increasing the number of open full-service lanes. Without these changes, the company will surely wither otherwise.