Mollie Stone’s

Love coming here for the stellar staff, the manager is a great help when I need to find items. Very expensive and they have a weird bunch coming in to shop. Like today an older woman told me I wasn’t a true Californian or even from the Bay Area because I called muffins, muffins (like how they’re marked and how look) and not cupcakes like everyone else. Didn’t know that they’re cupcakes my bad lady LOL.

I used to think whole foods was a rip off. At least with whole foods, you get something for the money. Molly stones charges whole foods prices for Safeway product. On top of the ridiculous prices, they have the nerve to run promotions and not give you the promotional price. I guess it’s too much work to update the point of sale to reflect new prices. Be prepared to be double ripped off when shopping here.

I think Mollie Stone’s is s superb store, have been shopping here for quarter century, and love it. I don’t shop there for everything, but if you choose wisely, use their flyer, hit a variety of stores, you can do well. There are products and brands here that you can’t find anywhere else, such as specialty foods and natural/​organic selection.
Their fresh produce section is so reach. Excellent hot deli bar, salad bar, plenty of delicious meals offered that you can have for lunch or dinner. I went with sushi tonight, and unlike those pre-​made packages at other supermarkets that look like sushi but taste like nothing at best, sushi here are actually creative and tasty!
I believe Mollie Stone’s were incepted in the mid-80’s, with the first store opened in Redwood City. They started out with only natural and organic products back then! Just think about it, not that many people were looking to buy organic only. They later added cereals and other packaged brand-​names, combining organic roots with conventional convenience.
Still, love them for their uniqueness. Every local store, whether singular or a small local chain, has its own character and offers unique choices — between Mollie’s and Piazza, Andronico’s and Draeger’s, Country Sun and The Milk Pail Market, DeMartini Orchard and Sprouts, Grocery Outlet and Felipe’s Market, Oakmond Produce and many more fine stores, there is so much to explore and make healthy choices in everything and not just your food.

This place is so expensive for items that is available everywhere else for must cheaper. I enjoy coming to this store since it is close to work and has a great variety of pre-​made food for lunch or if you are too lazy to cook. I am just shocked at how over priced some items were. Pre-​packaged salads in a medium/​small sized bowl can cost you 7.99−10.99, what!!! I can get the same salad at Trader Joes or safeway for under $ 5. I do enjoy the organic selection and I get some fruits once in a while when it is reasonably priced but I won’t be doing my weekly shopping here anything soon. It is worth coming into just to see what an unique place this is.

I love the bathroom here. I’ve used it plenty times.
I also love that they have one of my favorite rare to find energy drinks Bawls here.
THey have sushi and some cool singing robotic stage show here in the produce section.
The salad bar is really good along with the bakery .
Everything here is very fresh and delicious.
I love the chocolate ice cream and the cherry pies.

It’s like Whole Foods, give or take certain sections.
Meeting up with friends, I found out one party was late as they were picking up Umami Burger, and the other 3 had already ate, so I was off to myself. Right down the road was Mollie Stone’s, and I do love me grocery stores.
When you walk in, I recommend heading to the right for the bakery, deli, hot food, and premade section. Ended up getting a Boar’s Head sub, some pasta salad, a 6 pack of cookies, a beer, and some jelly beans. For $ 35! Holy crap is everything $ 7 here? I mean the sandwich and beer that’s not bad, but wow.
To the left of the entrance is the more standard grocery portion, and props to having the beer display front and center! The butcher and fish sections had a good selection, but sadly I couldn’t pick anything up.
I will say the thing that will make me come back is the Kosher section. I’m very secular — if my intake of pork and shellfish wasn’t a clue. But I haven’t been able to find candles for high holidays, and a variety of Passover friendly foods before stopping by, so you have my business for that wretched week.

Interesting supermarket that I came across today while in downtown Palo Alto. It’s too bad this chain doesn’t have stores further down the south bay.
Based on browsing the whole store before buying stuff, I would say it’s like part Whole Foods, part ethnic grocer, part BevMo, and stuff. Basically they offer quite a variety of goodies for a regular sized supermarket. Granted they don’t have everything that you may find in Whole Foods, ethnic grocer, etc. but it’s a decent mix. Some of their selections for some product brands beat out a Whole Foods a mile or two away. They are a bit pricey though for some stuff, even with sale discount, Whole Foods was cheaper on some stuff. But not everything is expensive at this store, some stuff is comparable to other grocer’s prices.
What interested me in the store are some hard to find items they carry that are not normally sold at your neighborhood grocer (perhaps also somewhat excluding Whole Foods). In particular: Joyva (brand) halvah, raw cocoa drinks, Angostura bitters, piroski, several specialty ice cream brands, fresh squeeze orange juice machine, their tea leave/​bag selection, and delicious looking selection of bakery sweets.
FYI, Joyva halvah (an east coast brand) is hard to find on the west coast. I previously had to Amazon order online to get it. Now I have a place to get it. :)

This is the only time I have ever given a second review for a business. I love this place. The food is not as cheap as Safeway or Trader Joes, but the selection and service truly wins. They have employees that have been there for 10 years+. This shows management cannot be terrible :-D.
I would like to give a shout out to Steve and Tony. When it comes to customer service, these guys win.

*Update*
Quality of service is improving. Please continue to work on your customer interactions. I’ve noticed a big improvement with the cashiers. The deli department could still use some work. For example, they always look like their doing anything but helping customers. You pretty much have to jump up and down and scream to get their attention. Once you do the service is nothing but mediocre. Glad to see improvement, but we demand more from a high price point grocery store.

HORRIBLE customer service. You really need to hire people who are genuine and care about their customers. The only reason I shop here is because of the convenience. Otherwise, I would take my money elsewhere…
Hire some younger workers who have a «pulse». Taking into account your INSANE prices you should at least be provided world-​class customer service.

Outrageous prices! The same items you’d find in Safeway are about 20% more. The only way that you could justify shopping here on a regular basis would be alternating with Grocery Outlet to break even.
Looking over the produce, it’s no better than any other store. Same for the deli. On the plus side is that they have an immense variety of grocery items — brands you’ll have a hard time finding elsewhere.
The store clerks were friendly, and there was plenty of parking on a Sunday afternoon. I plan to make shopping here an annual event.

Sandwiches at Mollie Stone’s deli are missing the meat. My turkey on sourdough had one thin, lonely slice of turkey and an equally thin and sad slice of cheese. For nearly $ 7 I would have expected them to at least match Subways less than generous meat allocation. Prices in the deli are very high but the quality is not present.

The Price is RIDICULOUS!!! I shop in Mollie Stone because it was very close to where I live, I know it is expensive, so I try to only get what I need there, but recent shopping experience just made me furious. Avocado 2.69 each for non-​organic, 2.99 for organic. (btw, even they are super expensive, they are really ripe, so they don’t last for more than 2 days), a regular spice like black pepper cost 8 – 9 for very little tiny bottle. The same spice in indian store can buy two large bags. I was pissed. I guess can charge a premier price for a lot of things given their location and given that they are in Palo Alto, which is the wealthy live, BUT BY NO MEANS that they charge double, even triple the price to most of the items compared to even Safeway, Ranch 99 and so on. They are taking advantage of people who are price indifferent by overcharging people by 100% or even 200%. I will try to avoid ever coming back again! Eventually people will realize that it is a total rip off.

Eddie took loving care of us on a $ 250 carry out order. Thanks! Interesting store with reasonable prices considering the quality of their product. Wine was well marketed at reasonable prices.

I just hosted an event for 50 people and needed some good food catered.
The process was easy the food fresh and the platters huge!!!
John Garcia the manger in Palo Alto was amazing.
Highly recommended.

Great variety of healthy foods, but very expensive.
For how much space they have, their selection is impressive.

Someone wrote «high quality food for high prices» and I gotta disagree. More like «passable food for sky high prices.»
Ridiculous.
With the cost of living in the Bay Area already so high, I would only pay $ 7.99 for a medium-​sized watermelon if it was lovingly raised with utmost individual care and attention in a kindly grandpa’s organic backyard garden. I doubt Mollie Stone’s can lay claim to that standard.
Produce is of average quality and overpriced for that quality. Not a huge produce selection either. The sandwiches, deli and prepared food counters are always busy at lunchtime. Some items are not bad like the quinoa salad, but most things are overwhelmingly average. I’ve tried multiple cakes from the bakery which all had fancy names and flavor combinations but all ended up tasting of nothing but sugar. Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, or carrot cake? Nah it just tastes like sugar.
Their most impressive feature would be the imported foods aisle, which had a decent array of kosher and European goods.

This is a cute specialty store — kind of like a mini version of a whole foods. Lots of healthy, organic, special diet, etc type of food. It’s open early which is nice and they have a bbq every Friday!

I’m on the fence, found a great price on blue berries and their meat but other things like mushrooms and corn were way more expensive than my typical safeway. I guess it’s a place similar to whole foods, kind workers, good customer service, great to-​go food, and fair pricing on some items with outlandish pricing on others.
Overall it was a good experience and my dinner was pretty tasty that night.

Watch what you pay! Sneaky sneaky!
Picked up tomatoes (1.5 lb at $ 2 per lb) and a bunch asparagus (1 lb at $ 7 per lb)…
I was charged for 1.5 * 7 + 1 * 7. That is, I was charged for tomatoes at the rate of asparagus. $ 7 just like that…
Was it an error? Please read more reviews; which unfortunately I had not read earlier. I also saw a lady upset at the same counter, arguing about the bill; however you see things differently when you feel being cheated; so I will hold back my thoughts.

Good sandwiches, made-​to-​order at the deli (got a turkey — avocado — every veggie imaginable and mustard which was LOADED — fork-​and-​knife worthy), but the food prices were insane. I would never shop here, normally.

Boy, don’t I love Molly stones! Just grocery stores so great, they have produce they have meets they have a deli they have toys they have pretty much everything that your average Whole Foods has. However this is a little bit more neighborhoody. I came in here just to pick up a bunch of sandwiches for the office. When I got to the deli the man at the deli was very rushed because there was a long line but I had a lot of sandwiches to order so I just asked him if I could give him the list and he said that’s totally okay so I just gave him my list of sandwiches, and he worked them up very quickly.
Soon after me, there was a long line of people for the deli. There were a lot of people working and they all worked really fast and great. From what I could tell everyone was very polite, and trying to help you out as best you can. As for the rest of the grocery store looked great call the house everything that you would need, it just might be a little bit more expensive then Safeway or Luckys. But I think the quality is substantially higher.

I LOVE Molly Stone sandwiches. I get one every week when I hop off the Cal Ave Caltrain. I don’t know why, but I get the same turkey sandwich every week. I prefer MS to any fancy sandwich shop. LOVE!

We stopped in and really like the new lady checker. She focused on getting everyone through the line and didn’t chat with other people.
Great selection of shampoos and soap.
I’m still so stunned by the total when we check out. Prices are similar to Draegers and Andronicos. I just don’t see a point to go regularly.

Mollies often has the item I cannot locate at other stores.
Today I discovered they no longer carry the brand of Smaltz I was looking for. However they have an alternative I am going to give the rendered duck option a try.

***Mollie Stone’s is a grocery store with lots of gourmet and ethnic options throughout the store including a wide variety of snacks (including unsalted potato chips and international options); service was fine and quick, but the prices were very high (though their Snake River Farms’ U.S. Kobe beef seemed to be priced right)***
This grocery store has its own small and free parking lot. You can also find additional free parking on the street.