Price Chopper

I really, really, REALLY want to like this grocery store. I would rather support Price Chopper over Hannaford — mainly due to a lot of the charity and philanthropic things that the Golub family does.
That said, shopping here… at the newly refurbished «Market 32»…just isn’t great. I had very few things on my list… one of them was gluten free pasta. Ronzoni makes the one I was looking for… and it’s generally not hard to find… but the pasta area is a cluster. They simply don’t carry it (unless I somehow missed it… but I walked in circles for about 20 minutes and didn’t find any gluten free pasta… nor anyone that I could ask…).
Some highlights are the beer area — a lot of nice choices for a «make your own» 6-​pack as well as a growler station, the giant cheese section and just the overall openness of the layout. Problem is, I have trouble finding stuff here and the selection just isn’t as good as some of the competition.
They often don’t have enough lines open… but the people that work the registers are very nice.
I’ll give it another shot… I hope it improves.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Price Chopper but I can’t figure out what they were thinking with this remodel. I know they were going for the health store vibe but they actually had a healthier selection BEFORE the remodel. The remodel pretty much destroyed their natural foods selection, replacing it with unnecessary things like a growler station, Starbucks and a sprawling produce section that takes up a third of the store. Unfortunately, that huge produce section isn’t full of fun, hard to find produce or even a good variety. Like someone else said, they simply have repeats of all the basic produce with even more repeats with their sale displays. If you happen to look at the produce before you purchase it, you’ll notice moldy berries, rotten lettuce and expired products everywhere. I had the displeasure of purchasing all the fixings for salads here and the next day I noticed 90% of it was rotting. Not sure why Price Chopper tried to jump on the healthy bandwagon this way, especially since their next door neighbor is an actual health food store. Do yourself a favor and head down the street to Hannford. No, they don’t have flashy coupons for junk food in their flier but they do have edible produce and an actual selection of natural food for reasonable prices.

When I go food shopping I like just walking up and down isles. Some things are better off left alone. Woman don’t have time for walking in circles. And your prices are far from chopped

Years ago the San Francisco Public Library opened a new main building to great accolades. The head librarian, who guided the project, was lionized. Then it turned out he hadn’t allowed enough room for the books amidst all the airy public spaces so those that didn’t fit were stashed in the basement or simply discarded. In short order the head librarian was fired.
Go to the the rebranded Market 32 in Wilton and you’ll soon see why this story is relevant. There’s lots of technology and innovation at work, but it’s frequently at odds with the basic mission of making it easy for people to buy groceries.
For example, some departments are cramped while others are overbuilt, making you wonder what kind of sales volume analysis was done. The produce department is easily 50% larger than it needs to be, leading to double displays of some items (green bell peppers) and making it hard to find what you want. Right next to it, the deli case is too small to display deli salads so they have to get them out of a back room for you.
I tried to place an electronic deli order on the spiffy terminal, but all the cole slaws and all but one potato salad were out of stock. There’s a growler station with ten taps, which is great and the beer selection is excellent, but unless someone’s working in the area you have to go to customer service and have them page someone to fill your jug. (At Market Bistro in Latham, the beer is part of a service counter which is the way it should be; in Wilton it’s an isolated island in the middle of the store.)
I’ve given Market 32 quite a few tries before writing this review, and I’ve finally decided it’s not me, it’s them. This location needs a do-​over.

The following is my opinion. Price Chopper rebranded some of its stores, including this location, to something called «Market 32.» This apparantly was intended as a homage to the company’s start in 1932, but how would you know from the name alone? Ridiculous name, but it gets worse. The company spent what must have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, completely remodeling the building inside and out. Prior to the remodeling job, this store was famous for narrow aisles and slightly higher prices than Hannaford and Walmart, two competitors within ½ mile. Plus the parking lot is oddly shaped and awkwardly designed. The remodeling job, sadly, is atrocious. It has the feel of being inside of a BJ’s, cavernous, but with no consideration to «traffic» management, i.e. how people normally walk through a food store. For example, all the dairy products are shoved into the far corner, and on busy days it’s impossible to quickly access yogurt and similar items. Then you have to fight the other customers to squeeze back into the rest of the store. Somehow they managed to rearrange everything and enlarge the store, but it still feels cramped and awkward. They also added the obligatory, pretentious «gourmet» cheese section, a beer filling station (what? why?) and a Starbucks (because everyone knows people will do ANYTHING to prolounge their time in a grocery store, and what better way than to wait in line at a Starbucks!). The meat section now runs nearly along the full length of the back wall, also awkwardly laid out. Plus, they never bothered to put out any plastic bags for your meat products. I picked up a couple packages of chicken, and when I got to the register, found that chicken blood/​juice had dripped all over half of my items, what a waste. Then there’s the fact that the store is still not finished, adding to the «warehouse» feel, piles of construction debris are strewn about randomly. Food racks are right next to construction materials. Overall my biggest complaint is the layout, it is simply moronic, whoever designed this place must never have gone grocery shopping for a family before, because it just doesn’t make sense. Amazing that the PC (excuse me, I mean «Market 32») executives approved this store design. It’s a shame that they wasted so much money and this was the result. I would have rather seen them invest the money they spent into lowering prices a little. The previous store design was fine. The new store in my opinion, failure. Do yourself a favor, go to Hannaford instead, or pinch your nose and go to WalMart, either is a far better choice than the pretentious nonsense that used to be Price Chopper.

It’s tough for me to be completely objective about this particular Price Chopper, because the one across town, on Ballston Avenue, has all the «grocery store bells and whistles» compared to this one. This one is okay, and it has what I’ve come to expect as the better things in a Price Chopper, like the seafood department, the bagel station, and good loss leaders. If you participate in their gas rewards program, there are several nearby participating stations (I don’t, and I’d gladly explain the math why if you really need to know).
On this particular day, only 4 of the 16 full service registers were open, which didn’t seem like enough. Though each one had a packer — until it was our turn, at which point the packer disappeared.
It would not surprise me if this store gets a face-​lift in the next year or two, similar to the one on Ballston Avenue. After all, the nearest competition, the Hannaford around the corner, is getting one as I write this review. And the name of the game is «keep up or perish.»

This is usually where I end up buying groceries + supplies. The name isn’t just a name — stuff is cheaper here then anywhere else. Especially their no-​name-​brand stuff. The store-​brand advil were easily cheaper than say, CVS, by like a buck. Selection isn’t super great, but you’ll find what you need for sure.