Pros
Their commitment to offering quality food products in their fresh produce, cheese, dairy, meat, seafood, floral and candy departments is laudable. The variety of products, imports, and local sourcing is great, while their prices are high. Most employees seem happy, benefits are relatively good, opportunities for advancement are good, and there are lots of long term employees.
Cons
Sadly, the commitment to quality and alternatively sourced ingredients, creative product offerings and freshness, so evident in the rest of the store, does not carry over to the deli, prepared foods and bakery. Nothing offered in these departments had any higher quality than what can be found at Walmart. Only the higher prices distinguish these items from Walmart products. The low pay offered to cooks and bakers and even department heads is a barrier to hiring people with the skills, organizational abilities, creativity and talent to make these departments reflective of the quality offered elsewhere in the store. Cakes, pies and baked goods are made from the cheapest prefabricated ingredients-pails of cheap buttercream without any butter, canned fillings, frozen, prefab croissants, and baking mixes are the norm-nothing is made from whole ingredients. The same holds true for the prepared foods department-cases upon cases of frozen chicken wings are thrown in the deep fryer, then tossed with sauce from a bottle. Vegetables are frozen, quiches made with cheap frozen crusts and cheap pre-shredded cheese. Soups are purchase frozen in a plastic bag, then thrown in an enormous, water filled steam kettle to heat up, then dumped in the steam table. The deli only offers the ubiquitous Boars Head deli meats without offering higher quality brands like Schaller and Weber or Saval-both locally available. The potato salad and cole slaw comes out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket. Sanitation practices at the self serve hot food and salad bar skeeve me out-I found a mini quiche offered for sale that had a bite taken out of it and put back in the steam pan. None of the offerings reflect the quality, variety, and creativity reflected in the rest of the store. Sadly, this holds true for the other store locations as well. Pay is low for the work and skill needed to run a quality prepared food and bakery, thus all the cheap, prefab junk food sold as gourmet products, but aren't.