Smart & Final

Cleanliness ⁸⁄₁₀
Selection ⁸⁄₁₀
Hours ⁹⁄₁₀ [6am-​10pm]
Parking ¹⁰⁄₁₀
Registers ⁹⁄₁₀

my favorite store… in sunday i saw one of your employee’s using a smart ans final shopping cart. putting bags of trash from the outside trash cans inro a cart that people use to put their grocery’s
unsanitary is that… filthy use something else to do that in… one star get ot together manager eddie!!! speak with the employees about this. was alot of trash too heavy for a woman. you let your men take out the trash…

Clean with a large selection and even an organic grocery section. I’ve never been here before but they had apple cider vinegar on sale so I biked there to buy it. Most of their other items were more expensive than my neighborhood Ralph’s (with the exception of buying in bulk which I don’t need to do). The service was great and the parking was ample.

Our go-​to place for staples like milk, produce, even cleaning supplies and canned goods. Prices usually quite competitive. Great parking, usually no wait at check-​out, and helpful staff (when needed), so much less hassle than C — — .

It’s always hard to find your way around a grocery store the first time you go there. We asked a bagger named Laura where to find an item and she was so nice and led us right to it! Made us all feel right at home, Laura is great! This place is top notch.

I do 95% of my grocery shopping now at Smart & Final. Great meat, produce, dairy — spotlessly clean and well-​stocked, huge parking lot. I’m a Costco member but I only go there now when I absolutely have no alternative. The store personnel are friendly and efficient. Whole Foods is preposterous, Costco is a nightmare, why shop anywhere else but S&F? Let’s see, Why did I want to go to Trader Joe’s again? Oh yeah, I wanted to wait 10 minutes for a parking place and then play dodge’em cars with the shopping carts in the tiny aisles so I could buy some really stale sushi.

saw something that i couldn’t believe… this is my favorite store very clean great employees. i spend alot of money here. walked in one afternoon went to the produce dept to get some fresh veggies. the employee was taking the bad frust out of a factory sealed container. with his bare hands. then filling another container up and putting it back on the shelf. i know the rules about food handling. what are you trying to do… not loose money and sell me something that’s been tampered with. i saw this twice. if a company seals the package please don’t tamper with it. yes product will go bad. what he did is wrong. don’t try and make the produce dept look good by doing this… in watching you and so are others.

I agree about the restrooms, they are clean and fairly neat. I appreciate having them there and that they are generally kept up. Also, they generally have lower prices on most anything than the major supermarkets, except breads. Their bread is list price, and therefore too pricey for me to buy there. Dan R.

A bin full of squishy, overripe Roma tomatoes, plastic produce bag dispensers empty again. No Miller Lite to be found on a Friday afternoon? Sigh. Inventory problems at Smart & Final Venice drag on. No lentil soup? Out of Starbucks 5lb French Roast? «Come back Tuesday.» Yeah, sure.
Most disconcerting is the paucity of healthy foods, apart from what seems to be a lower grade of produce frequently pushing its shelf life. Good luck finding zero or low calorie beverages other than sodas, for instance. No Powerade Zero, while VitaminWater Zero is sold only in more expensive, individual 16-​ounce bottles (each of which carry a nickel redemption surcharge).
Feels like the upgrade to a Smart & Final Extra! is an attempt to compete with traditional grocery stores, but storewide selection is largely as nutritionally dicey as fast food eateries. Plenty o’ high-​fat, high calorie stuff in bulk slathered in salt and corn syrup. Trader Joes beats S&F for quality hands-​down, and often on price (blackberries, a buck more expensive at S&F).
Having shopped there for years, I’m buying less and less — sticking mostly to paper towels and the like. There’s the cheap milk, but as a full-​service grocery with quality products reliably on hand, this place has a long way to go.

I’m only writing this review because of the restrooms at this store. Nothing short of a fancy restaurant: clean, calm earth ceramic and not the cheapest one they could have found and… a scent of fresh flowers.
On top, all soap and towel dispensers are nice brushed chrome and the paper towels are soft and puffy like I never seen at a grocery or even a café.
In short everything works… unlike the common SoCal big-​name markets were they leave vandalism untouched for the sake of not throwing good money after bad.
While waiting in line for the cashier I moved over to give a good word to the manager (maybe Eddie Perciado, as mentioned on my receipt…) He said he make a point of maintaining it as if it was his home’s restrooms. And he’s talk actually walks
One tip I share with him is to contract with a local bakery so they could offer at least one type of unpackaged bread baked on the same morning (because they lack an on-​site bakery as many market have).
And finally, it would be easier for your clients to leave comments for you if beside the store # you also print your address on the recipt

Great place. Good deals. CHECK THE EXPIRATION DATES. I was shocked at salad, milk, salami and a slew of other items that expired that day or the next. Who eats a pound of potato salad in one day?
Still, half of what the grocery store totals me. Would be five star if the ‘old expiring food’ thing was addressed.

Clean, well-​lit store, VERY FRIENDLY STAFF, good selection (even produce), cheap, GREAT BAKING SECTION. The meat selection is so-​so, but otherwise you can get a lot of your weekly grocery shopping done here. They even carry Earth’s Best baby food and King Arthur flour.

Loving it, ever since they went «extra» (expanding from just bulk offerings). Surprisingly impressive produce section, and can’t beat their sales on whole chickens.

Great prices, large store. Plenty of parking.

This location recently upgraded to Smart & Final «extra.» They have expanded their selection to include smaller packaged items, more dairy and a full produce section. But they still carry the bulk items if that’s your thing. I just learned that they accept coupons, too!
The pricing is great. I’ll use ground turkey as an example — regular price for a 20 oz. package of Jennie-​O is $ 3.79, compared to $ 5 or more at a regular grocery store. The other week, they had it on sale — two for $ 5! While ground turkey probably isn’t the best example to use right now (salmonella outbreak!), you get the picture.
Ample parking, no club card needed.

The prices here are great. It’s clean and well stocked with friendly staff. I don’t drink, but people tell me the booze is cheap here also. The prices are a little bit higher than at the Smart & Final in SF, but it’s still $ 14 for a block of First Street sharp cheddar that will last you a month and is pretty tasty cheese to boot.
The produce varies from store to store, this particular store being just ok. Most of the stuff is bulk, but nothing I’ve bought here has ever been low quality, which is a problem sometimes at wholesale places like Costco and Sam’s Warehouse.

You can live on 25 dollars a week for groceries. First the eight pack of frozen chicken-​9 dollars. Grab a large cereal box-​3 dollars. Ah but anyway it is kind of fun shopping here. Most of the stuff is designed to be put in the freezer and then defrosted or heated quickly. Not for everybody but I prefer it to whole foods.

Hells yes!
I can get warehouse sizes without entering the madness that is the Costco parking lot? Sign me up!
I go here all the time to get food for my roomates and me when the supply of chips and meat runs low. There is not a better value that I can find in the area. I don’t buy beer here or anything, you can get it cheaper elsewhere, but for food and snacks and shizz… this is the place.
Yeah, it’s in a kinda crummy area, next to the worthless Fox fleamarket thing, but get over it… it’s Venice for god sake. If you need quality, take it across the street to the new Whole Foods and get screwed on price.
I remain a firm believer in Smart and Final.

I really don’t understand what is smart or final about this place, and when I first started coming here, it was really only when I needed something in bulk, cheaply, and going to Costco or Trader Joe’s was totally out of the question (like, say, evening or weekends?). I kind of hated it — huge, empty, kind of depressing, with minimum wage clerks who really couldn’t give a sh*t. But when we were doing our play a few blocks away at the Electric Lodge, it came in real handy, bailing us out when we were out of the all-​important wine (amazing how much you can go through when you leave the bottles out with a basket, asking for a «suggested donation» of $ 1. Even old Asian folk will start pounding down the cheap merlot at those can’t-miss prices). The folks at the Electric Lodge were downright fascistic about using green materials in things like coffee cups and plastic cups, and Smart and Final actually had this stuff, so again — lives and the environment saved.
Since then, we’ve had a variety of gatherings — writer’s salons and casual living room play readings, and of course, there’s always some last-​minute thing you need, and though Smart and Final ain’t as cheap as it ought to be, it’s still cheaper than most alternatives when you absolutely have to have something in bulk RIGHT NOW.
You all know what’s there — food, booze, drinks, barbecue paraphernalia, party paraphernalia, cleaning supplies — a strange business plan to be sure, but I have to admit, I’ve grown accustomed to this place.

Hookers and Tweakers?
This place is what it is. Having said that…
This location is very clean on the inside. This is impressive because this part of Venice is known for hookers and drugs. You can get so many great things here (even hookers and drugs… on Lincoln in front of the location):
Cooking gear, large bottles of liquor (super hook-​up if since there are no BevMo locations anywhere), sodas for mixing cocktails and some frozen snacks too. They have many more edible things too!
Don’t half step. Go here to purchase your big bottles of liquor for a party if you don’t have the time/​patience to go to Cost Co on Washington