Mount Royal Market — Attraction in Duluth

I ate at the deli and was accused of stealing the food for absolutely no reason. Like everyone else, I walked over to the registers and paid for my meal before walking back to the seating area to eat. Then, an older employee walked out from behind the deli and accused me of stealing it in front of everyone. It was very embarrassing. He was not being nice about it or even questioning whether I stole it or not. So, after he kept going on and on, i simply got up, told him to please follow me to see the cashier I just paid. He did so but did not even apologize to me after the cashier informed him I just paid for my food. He simply walked back behind the deli and continued to work. The seating area was full at the time and everyone there probably thinks I stole now so I left.

Other than that, this is by far the most over-priced grocery store I've ever been to. It's exceptionally overpriced! Seriously, prepare to pay double for the exact same food you could get at other grocery stores. They do have pretty good variety but so do a lot of other bigger and cheaper grocery stores in the area. There may be a few items that only Mount Royal "Fine Foods" sells in the area but other stores will have very similar products available. Plus, you can get practically infinite variety online and it will be much cheaper than Mount Royal "Fine Foods" even after shipping.

Oh, and I saw an employee assault a customer at the front door once as I was entering the store. The employee violently shoved a man out the front door! He did this with no regard for the small children and elderly folk standing nearby. Someone could have easily been injured. The reason the employee did that? He thought the customer was stealing. But, the man, who I know from my electrical engineering course at UMD is most definitely not a thief so he emptied his pockets after the shove to show he had nothing in them. Again, no apology from the employee who is lucky he didn't face legal charges for assault. After that happened, I've never gone back and I live next door, literally. It's just too overpriced and the employees are ridiculous. Hell, I wouldn't even go back if their prices were reasonable.

Overall: The worst customer service I've ever witnessed + the highest prices I've ever seen in a grocery store by a wide margin. Personally, I'm surprised anyone goes there. It's near a rich neighborhood so they're probably counting on their customers not looking at the price tags because they have so much money that they don't care. For anyone who values money, even slightly,...

Very nice, clean place to shop. Such a wide variety of produce and pretty much everything else you can think of. I will be doing most of my shopping here from now on.

EDIT: I have since revisited this location a few more times. Unfortunately, while there is a wide variety of produce, most of it is not good. I was examining a fresh shipment of blueberries, and I examined about 30 packages, and every single package contained mold. The cherry tomatoes are often squishy and moldy, and for my last three visits there have been fruit flies all over the tomatoes. There were soft onions and cucumbers, and just generally old produce. You can tell that they don’t rotate their stock as often as they should. The quantity is there, but the quality of the produce definitely needs a lot of work. I will not shop here again. If you want good produce, go to the Super One down the road.

EDIT 2: Obviously the owner has some issues with my negative review (from years ago might I add). Why would I have reason to lie about my experience? I used to love shopping there, then the quality went downhill FAST. Fruit flies everywhere and moldy fruit, every time I went in to shop over a period of months. I can understand it happening once or twice, but this was over a long period of time. Things may have changed since then, but surely now I will never ever shop there again and will actively steer people away since the owner feels like throwing their honest reviewers under the bus instead of addressing the issues that they have. For real, just go to Super One. I’ve never had any food issues with any of the ones...

The variety and quality of products here cannot be beat. I always find something new or interesting to try in their fresh sections. Because of the cost associated with the fine quality fresh products I find that the prices on staple products can be somewhat higher than the other local supermarkets but certainly within a reasonable range. Just expect to pay the full retail price for most staple products as opposed to seeing large numbers of specials or coupons. That being said, I find the shopping experience very enjoyable and calm which I dont find at most supermarkets. This alone can be worth the small uptick in bill. At the checkout is where I find my only difficulty in that the younger staff I have been helped by have generally been in unpleasant or disinterested moods in a way that seems different than my checkout experience at local supermarkets. Of course there is a wide variety of communication styles between people and nobody is perfect at work. Still, coming from a guest service industry myself, I'd like to see a smile or at least a sincere greeting. Those are hallmarks of the upscale business. Its a small thing but it jars with the excellence of the rest of my experience. I do still fully recommend Mount Royal. The shopping experience is the most...