as long as they continue to carry peanut butter, jelly, Kendall Jackson, and lubricated domes, I have no complaints.

i hate giant. i can't wait to move back to CT so i can get my groceries at super stop and shop. giant has crappy produce and i always leave the store not being able to get things that I need. a smaller selection is the exact wrong thing for giant to do.

I no longer shop at Giant or Safeway. I no longer put up with dirty stores, empty shelves, and rude treatment from store employees. I now do all of my shopping at either Trader joe's or Harris Teeter. Both offer much more enjoyable experiences.

If you live only two blocks from the O Street Giant, you're probably in walking distance of the P St Whole Foods too. Is the cost of the Zip Car plus driving to another Giant still cheaper than just shopping at WF? I know other people say WF is ridiculously expensive, but every time I price compare, it's about the same as Giant, Safeway, and Harris Teeters in similar neighborhoods (two exceptions: junk food that WF doesn't carry and old stock they're trying to get rid of, which I think WF must throw out, donate, or turn into its prepared foods).

The new HT had some good deals on ice cream, mangos, etc., but everything else there looks like its within 20 cents of the WF price.

Except for the sales (a lot of 50% off & 2-for-1), I avoid Giant as the prices generally are higher than the other stores, even tho I have a frequent buyer card.

I live in Mo Co so there are plenty of cheaper choices. The closest ones to our home are SFW which is pretty cheap & still good variety, and Safeway which I go to occasionally. Also nearby that I frequent are Bottom Dollar, Bloom & SuperFresh.

Due to rising food prices, I resort to buying a lot of packaged goods from dollar stores, Entenmann & Wonder Bread outlets, Costco & KMart or Target...

Giant has been OK for basics, but I find that if I want anything even remotely "exotic" I have to go elsewhere. Bad enough that they discontinued the full service seafood dept at my local store.

I just want to be able to shop without having the staff actively hate on me. There's one guy at the Old Georgetown Road Giant who I really think wants to kick my ass; he gives me the stink eye every time I'm there.

I sincerely apologize for needing pasta sauce while you are restocking, Mr. Angry Giant Stock Dude.

Not really an issue for me and the missus; I'm more perturbed that Peapod doesn't have quite the selection the stores do.

The most distressing is that of the two Giants near me, one is good to shop at for quality meat and fish, the other for baked goods. Why they have to be so different in cleanliness and taste I've no idea, but the disparity between the two is obvious.

I'd prefer shopping at HT or TJ, but neither is in a good, nearby spot for me to shop at. Usually ends up being a once-a-month excursion to get the few things we enjoy from those stores.

Hopefully, that'll change when we finish buying our house. Teeter's right up the block.

If this is what Giant feels they need to do to compete in the area, then good for them. If they have miscalculated and it causes them to finally totally lose their stronghold on the area, then even better for us!

the Giant in Old Town sucks (horrible, horrible staff, worse selection) so i started going to the Giant up on Duke Street. i think i'll start going to the new Harris Teeter on route 1. it'll take me just as long to get there...

Funny how a little competition forces the stores that treated us like crap for decades to actually consider changing their ways.

A lot of it adds up to employee attitude. Most of the Safeways I've been in in DC have a few really great employees and a whole bunch of really pissy ones that obviously think getting you to leave and stop bothering them is Priority One.

I think the Park Rd Giant is usually pretty well stocked (unless you go on Sunday evening or something). And it's definitely cheaper than area Safeway stores. I think they can probably afford to cut back on some items that don't sell well. Most of the other Giant stores I have been to were pretty pathetic, though. That one on Connecticut north of the Cathedral is pretty bad.

This whole mess is too freaking little, too late. You can slap pancake makeup on an old mattressback whore but that ain't gonna turn her into Keeley Hazell.

to ICDC

I'm not happy about that either, but tomorrow is free cone day & wednesday is 31 cent cone day.... so be happy for that.

I went to the Giant on Lee HWY yesterday, the produce was horrible, even worse than the Rosslyn or Watergate Safeways.....TRADER JOE'S FTW!!!!

@eteeling -- you *are* aware that Giant and Stop and Shop are owned by the same parent company (Royal Ahold), no?

Are you more interested in making sure their prices stay low rather than having a lot of specialty food items available?

Me? No. I want the fancy stuff. But then, I'm a yuppie with disposable income. I suspect the DCist demographic makes up only a sliver of Giant's target market, and this may be them saying "eh, forget them, let's focus on the rest of the city."

@ MSto and Monkeyrotica

Totally agree about both the Old Town and Delray Giants. I think each actually takes cashiers off duty at peak post-work shopping times. Plus, the lack of selection (particulary in the "deli" section) has turned me off. The Rt. 1 overpass construction keeps me from going to the Delray Giant, and I only go to the Old Town one for the occasional beer run. All other shopping is at the new-ish Potomac Yards HT, now that I don't have to drive down to the Duke Street HT.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Harris Teeter. It has clearly been touched by his noodly appendage!

Anyone been to Bloom? I think they're way out in Fairfax or something

As long as the O Street Giant still lets scary people loiter outside and sell bootlegged DVD's from the entrance way while the rent-a-cop and real MPD officers stand idly by, I am happy.

For many non-produce/non-meat items, I have been going to the new Target. It's selection is not that of Giant, but it is decent for a target and it is considerablly cheaper than Giant.

People still shop at grocery stores? I thought you people ate out at Saint Ex every night?

The corner bodega has me covered. For me, 90% of my grocery purchases are Power Bars, Budweiser Cheladas, expired Hot Pockets, Steven Seagal's Lightening Bolt, and Slim Jims. I also have a restaurant-grade ventilator installed in my bathroom.

Every time I go to the Columbia Heights Giant they have less and less items on my list. I recently went to the new HT in Adams Morgan and will never shop anywhere else again. It was AMAZING! They have items that I've never seen in other stores before. I'm in love!

This confirms my theory that has been building for the past year. Tampons to chili fixins to selections of band-aids...all dwindling. Screw them. Wegmans or Harris Teeter or even Whole Foods, here I come.

It seems their selection has dwindled since they were bought by Ahold. I stopped going there because I was tired of having to make a second trip to another store to find the things I wanted.

I like the idea of patronizing local stores, but there's really nothing local about them anymore.

voteprime - You can buy the stuff online or at Walmart, although I have found them tucked away in the back of a 7-11 beneath a box of expired copies of Swank.

Your best bet is to order Lightening Bolt direct from the source and have it shipped. Pick up a copy of Steven Seagal's CD "Songs from the Crystal Cave" while you're at it, pop it on the stereo, kick back with a Lightening-Bolt-and-Everclear, and you'll swear you've gone to hell. Cheaper than a movie and you don't have to get trapped listening to anyone on a cellphone.

"Anyone been to Bloom? I think they're way out in Fairfax or something"

Yeah, I've been to the one in the greater Manassas-Dumfries corridor (don't ask). The best way to describe Bloom is "SFW with WF's marketing department." The product is as bare-bones as it comes; but the packaging is *really* nice!

Going a bit off tangent here, but does anyone know where Giant on 14th puts their raisins or do they not sell them? I looked everywhere for them or are raisins considered by Giant to be a normal good so they are taking them off the shelves. Or am I stupid to think that Giant would base their decesions on econ 101 type stuff?

@ blittle: try looking in the "canned fruit" aisle. I found myself in grocery-store purgatory one time, after already looking in the produce section, baking, and "nuts sections. Turned up in the canned fruit section, even though they aren't technically canned.

Stupid emasculated grapes....

i've noticed the raisins on the shelves underneath the produce

Hot tip: the raisins at Giant are repackaged rat poo. Pass it on.

You don't want to know what the craisins are.

Don't blame me. I want to send free condoms to the Third World so people would stop breeding. I want to kick Robert Mugabe's ass out so farmers can go back to growing food insted of being executed. But the current administration and their suckbutt lackeys say that's a BAD idea.

As for the rising cost of food, where were you people when we had almost no inflation for the past decade? Remember all that cheap food that was being supersized and turning us all into diabetic fatties who couldn't get around without a motorized wheelchair and a Chevy Tahoe? You were whining when food was cheap, now you're whining when it's expensive. Grow a vegetable garden, go bow hunting, and turn your backyard shed into a goddamned smokehouse. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to kill and others will feed him for a lifetime.

What bugs me the most is that Giant and others have gradually reduced or eliminated many of the healthier, low sodium, or fat free options. I fear they will go even further in that direction now.

thank you all for the raisin tips. It's been driving me nuts. Everytime I walk out of the freaking giant or whole foods I'm like does dc hate raisins or what does dc have against god's miracle candy? You know it's god's or jesus' miracle when rat poo can taste so sweet and good with your bran flakes. it makes the baby jeebus toot puppy breath.

All these stories about Giant reducing the selection are coming out now this process has been going on since august 2006. They have been going through aisle by aisle removing the items that dont sell and giving more space to those that do. At the same time reducing most prices (alot in most cases) to the point where Safeway and Harris Teeter do not compare. dont believe me check it out for yourself,check out a few non-sale items at all these stores and you will find Giant is much lower

"[Wegman's] just seems to think that there is no market other than the mega-store McMansion burbs these days."

When you're driving southbound on I-95, there's a sprawling new construction on the last exit before Dumfries, VA. Given that Prince William County is seeing 12% foreclosure rates, that seems like a perfect spot for an upscale grocery.

Fire the Giant unionized workers, and hire people who actually want and deserve jobs. When I do shop at Giant (they're closest to my house so I do shop there, but not on weekends or after-work hours if possible) I use the self-checkouts, therefore I can avoid human interaction with any of them. When I do use regular checkouts, the checkers are avoiding customers, and chatting back and forth amongst themselves, bitching about their schedules, or counting down the minutes until their break.

The biggest problem with Giant is inconsistency. In nice neighborhoods, they are generally nicer. In the ghetto they don't give a damn because they don't think they have to. CVS also has this problem.

In Va. Giant is no better. The Glebe Road Giant is terrible with the only exception being that the pharmacy is great. No renovation in sight there. Employees sit or stand around talking on cell phones or in groups while lines pile up behind registers. The store is dirty and is THE last place I want to buy meat or fish. The produce always looks 3 days old. Like earlier posters have witnessed "popular" items are disapearing fast. When buying alcohol at a self-check I'v had to wait 15 minutes before someone could card me and release the machine. Arggggh! I haven't seen ANY lower prices as a result of the paring down. I shopped at Shoppers Food Warehouse last night and came away with substantial savings and enjoyed much more of a selection. It was a supprise to find a large international section which I think is better than the one at HT in many ways. The check out at Shoppers was fast, efficient, and friendly. While Shoppers is low on ambiance and high on big box I am DONE with Giant for good.

Giant Food will either be sold or go out of business. I worked for the company when they were the best grocery store in DC as well as the best employer. I was there for 14 years, serving in a management position the last 4 years. The people running Giant now are total idiots, they couldn't run a lemonade stand. The management has stopped listening to their customers and their employees, simply put they don't care if they loose customers. I had friends and family members cut-up their "Bonus Cards" and send them along with angry letters to Giant's HQ, they got no response from the company. Giant use to be famous for their customer service, now there is no service at all. Giant Food really belives that pumping money into renovations will bring back their customers, that is totally WRONG. Customer service is the only thing that will bring their customers back. If they took all the money they're planning on spending on renovations and put it in to better training and better pay for new employees, they'd be on the right track to winning back those customers they've lost. Renovations are not needed, here's what they need to do; replace the burned-out lights, get a good wax on the floors and clean-up the stores, everyone would think they renovated.

God forbid an employee tries to stand-up and say anything to management about how poorly they're running the company, that employee is singled out, harrassed and sometimes even black-mailed. Izzy Cohen is rolling over in his grave. DON'T SHOP AT GIANT FOOD, THESE PEOPLE ARE NOTHING BUT LIARS AND WHORES.