Bridge Street Market — Attraction in Grand Rapids

The experience degrades with each visit.

The parking is always pleasant, the produce is the best in GR next to Knapps Corner.

Customer service is non existent though. The "attendant" at the ridiculous self check outs is always hurried. Just install actual cashiers like you have at the liquor counter. The items I stop in for most frequently are produce and alcohol. I must wait constantly and repeatedly like a child waiting for an adult to "help" me.

The biggest issue in the past year is the constant re arrangement of items. More boutique items like $8 chips and $14 pints of ice cream are displacing entire swaths of affordable brands, including Meijer's own brand. Products that are staples or common items found in other Meijer stores and gas station chains are no longer available AT ALL. There's an increasing volume of yuppie/hipster garbage like the 300 flavors of kombucha, yet the regular, creamy peanut butter, tea, and refried beans I buy are gone. There's not even a spot on the shelf for them. No employee can inform me if or when they might return.

The produce, as much as I enjoy it, is egregiously labeled and organized. No signs corresponding to the actual produce can be found. It's just a random list of items and prices written in chalk and you hope to grab the parsley instead of the cilantro. That is, if your greens or fruits have not been displaced for $30 pink pineapples. This may be something to be reported to MDARD for inappropriate weights and measures.

Another issue they seem to have problems with is the huge dead space in the SW corner of the building. This giant dead spot is unused and no one travels it. Perhaps this would be a great spot for my peanut butter and tea that have had their shelf space encroached upon by the 9 oz, $9, "Organic" Spicy Cinnamon Peanut Butter that no one on earth asked for and no West Sider can afford.

The overall focus on margins with a huge deficit in customer care, right down to the " Oh well, bummer dude" attitude towards broken bottle returns and missing products has me skipping the place more and more. Family unfair has terrible prices as well, but they offer coupons and actually have the same products in stock regularly. This place is no longer worth the...

Typical Meijer math. Double the price for 1.6x times the food. 3.49 for 5 lbs and 6.99 for 8 lbs. These corporations are getting greedier and greedier. And they think their customers are too intelligent or to unobservant to notice the store is robbing them. Disgusting. Staffing has also gone downhill. They used to be helpful, friendly and engaging. But that was when Mitch was the general manager. Now they promoted the bigoted racist Jill who hates it when staff engage with customers. They're there to slave for her. Not build trust in the community and make friends with customers. I used to shop here several times a week now I shop here 1-2 times a month. In general I can get everything here at the big box store and they have weekly sales instead of monthly.

This store has dropped all the way down to a 1*. It's gone from bridge street market to a small Meijer with over inflated prices and removal of the mass majority of local small businesses goods. Now for every "new" local item they get they've stopped carrying 5. The baked goods used to be 70% local small businesses now it's 80% factory mass produced stuff. And 60% of that is Meijer brand items. It's the same all over the store. More and more Meijer brands which they want sometimes MORE money for than the name brand. And they've adopted the big Meijer store policy of minimal mark downs on products expiring within 1-2 days. Because their corporate policy is they'd rather throw it away and write it off than offer a significant discount so their customers get a good deal. They used to mark EVERYTHING down 50% Now it's like the big store 10-40%. But the 40% items are generally the items that were already priced so high that it was obvious corporate greed. But even the big stores will mark down some baked goods up to 65% off such as Meijer bakery breads but not this store baked goods now max...

UPDATE 01.27.25: I keep turning up, hoping for different results. Why.... ugh, wishing they would have taken action by now. A week ago I bought mini cucumbers that molded overnight once I got them home. Today, full fuzz mold on strawberries, AGAIN! it's so disgusting. I actually saved a woman, who was in a rush and who grabbed a box of the fuzzy berries. Picture this time. It would take mere minutes to check your produce in the morning versus selling garbage.

UPDATE WARNING 08.05.24: This used to be a great local market when they opened, but in the last several months the produce section has went DOWN HILL. Frequently the produce is about 24 hours away from spoiled. Today I stopped in for strawberries. The big display of strawberries had actual FUZZY MOLD growing. I attempted to notify the employee standing right there, and the response was, "yeah, it's like that every day." Not a ringing endorsement to shop here! They also DID NOT come over to view and remove the spoiled strawberries, so some future hurried shoppers will buy these and realize later they are inedible! Gross! Why waste your money on this food?!

The only downside, milk that expires within days of the day I'm shopping. I now buy the more expensive milk so it will last a normal amount of time after getting home (which is frustrating). I wish I could give 4.5 stars, but since I can't 5 is the better option. This is my new regular shopping place and I actually love the more limited options when buying. Big Meijer stores are now too big, too crowded, and too confusing. Here I can get in and out with a weeks worth of shopping in under 20 minutes. I do of course go to a large Meijer every 6 or so weeks to get my specific toiletries and cosmetics that are not carried here. And they carry on the bone...