Martin’s Food Store

I should say before I start that I don’t live around here and have not for about 10 years. I do visit friends in the area and this is my regular spot to pick up beers, snacks and stuff to through on someone else’s grill. I like that it’s always clean, huge and seems to have a pretty good selection of stuff, but have never done a full grocery trip here. The staff is friendly almost to a fault. Maybe it’s the cultural difference from WV to DC but never once has any of there employee’s ever seemed in hurry or have any sense of urgency. While fine in some settings, when the lines start growing it gets annoying. I am happy to see that they have a bunch of self serve lanes and will always use them from here on out.

How a store could spend so much money increasing their size and adding new departments to the store, but end up with a lower quality store overall in the long run is mystifying to me. You would think that after spending millions to make the store so much larger, the company would want to make sure that the store was run well… but like every other chain in the area (Food Lion and Weis), Martins doesn’t seem to be able to decide what its identity is or who their competition is, and it has suffered as a result.
Basically at this point there are two types of grocery stores: the «high end» ones that focus on quality, have well paid workers who care about their jobs, and offer a variety of products. Wegmans and Whole Foods are a good example of stores like this. Then there are the «Low end» stores, who offer dirt cheap stuff but rarely have a wide variety, and the quality is pretty low in general. WalMart, Aldi, and Save-​a-​Lot are good examles of these stores. Sadly, Martins and the other chains have decided to try to compete both with cheapo stores like WalMart and with good stores like Wegmans, and as a result has done neither very well. Because of not being able to compete well with their rivals, this has led to less profit, which means less money for wages, which has resulted in the stores going to mostly parttime workers with low pay and no benefits who don’t really care about their jobs… and it shows on the shelves.
Whenever you shop here (or at any store), check the expiration dates — ON EVERYTHING. As the stores have ballooned in size and cut back on labor costs by mostly only hiring part timers so they don’t hvae to pay benefits, the quality of the maintainence of the stores has gone downhill. Products are not rotated properly when they are stocked, so it is not uncommon to find out of date products on the shelf, and I am talking about even in the dry grocery section… not just perishables. Occasionally the store has an outside group come in to check the expiration dates in certain sections of the store. Every time they are there, they end up throwing away cartload after cartload of out of date product. That is pretty sad, considering some of these items are good for YEARS after being packaged. It comes down to lack of effort and poor management, but it is also common at the other stores in the area as well.
Produce has become a bit of a problem too. A lot of it is just not as fresh and good as it should be. Green peppers that are wrinkled and drying up, and onions that are starting to turn to mush make regular appearances here.
Meat is an issue as well. To cut costs, chains like this have gone to more and more prepackaged meat, which is a big red flag to me. I refuse to purchase this prepackaged stuff, because it is this prepackaged stuff that is recalled regularly due to suspected contamination from bacteria because of the way it is processed. Since it is churned out in factory like settings, if ONE piece of meat has bacteria in it when it goes through their assembly line, then that one piece of meat potentially contaminates every single piece of meat that has gone through that line. That is just a bad way of doing business — both financially and from a health standpoint. The seafood at Martins is generally good quality — but don’t believe their ads when they say they are selling «dry scallops». When they are actually dry, they look dry… they are not sitting in a tub of milky white liquid.
I had hoped that with the remodel, this store would be like the Wegmans of our area, but instead it has been a huge disappointment. It has been worth the drive to Frederick once a month to just stock up at Wegmans, where everything is top notch, and to only pick up the occasionaly dozen eggs or gallon of milk at the local stores.

Love going to this store for the gas points and how close it is to home. You can get some things cheaper at Walmart which is a little farther away from home, however if you shop smart you can save a lot here too. The employees have always been nice and have smiles on their faces.
More baggers would be nice during rush times however I love bagging our groceries as I can be particular with what I want in each bag whereas sometimes it seems like they don’t care.

I am a fan of Martins and shop regularly at the Martinsburg store.
I also like the «cents off» promo for gasoline purchases. I just bought a VW Jetta TDI (diesel) and this is the ONLY Martins I have found that has diesel available.
Won’t be going out of my way to fill up, but I do get by here periodically during the promotion period, so I will be able to use the promo on this car as well as my SUV that takes regular unleaded gas.