Key Food Urban Marketplace — Attraction in New York

I've been going here for about 3 years. The store is clean, bright, and well-organized. They typically have a good selection of most things, especially considering the size of the store. Their craft beer selection is fantastic for a grocery store. Meats are pretty limited, though, and their selection lacks a variety of cuts besides the typical beef chuck and round and pork loin. I've never seen lamb at the store either. During my most recent visit, they replaced half their beef selection with the artificial, overpriced, plant-based alternatives like Impossible and Beyond. No longer can you get the family packs of simple ground beef. Not everyone wants to pay a premium for chemical off-tasting alternatives. I do like their sales, especially the 10/$10 Chobani yogurt specials. Most of the time, the sale applies to all types, but strangely only to the original varieties during my most recent visit. One super annoying issue I have is that the bottle deposit machines on the side of the store are rarely attended to. Out of maybe 10 trips to the store, only once was the glass bottle machine not full. And if you ask the customer service desk for help, they will place the call for someone to assist, but no one shows up for at least 10-15 minutes. This is a huge shame since their beer selection is quite impressive, but it's nearly impossible to return the bottles. Further, customer service refuses to manually take the bottles unless the machine is physically broken (not just full). Since I carry these bottles back in the same bags I use to go shopping with, I have literally turned back to go home, dropped the bottles off at my house, and took my grocery shopping elsewhere for the week when I am unable to return the bottles due to a full machine. There's also a cashier with purple hair that has a horrible attitude. She'll tell you that she's been working here for 17 or whatever years, but clearly she hasn't learned customer service during that time. When I do buy dozens of Chobani yogurts when they're on sale, for example, the lady flipped out and said she can't just enter the number of items, but insisted I put all of them on the belt to be scanned individually. Then she changed her mind and decided to try to enter the total quantity. When I said that I had 32, she decided not to trust my counting skills after all, dug through my bag to count herself (had she been more patient, she would have noticed that there were 8 stacks of cups each 4 high for 32) which messed up my neatly-placed stacks, then insisted yet again to take them all out to be scanned individually. She also counted 32 in the end. The whole ordeal backed up the line for minutes. All of the other cashiers have been very helpful and courteous in my experience, and none of them have ever given me this trouble. Overall, it's a good grocery store but there are a few simple issues that the store could...

Every cashier, worker, and especially the one older guy at the deli are amazing here.... Incredibly friendly and helpful people. It is also a very pretty store that generally has everything we need.

A few issues, though:

1.I just moved back to Astoria from Brooklyn and the prices for everyday items like eggs, onions, yogurt, etc. are much higher than the C Town close to where I used to live (Newkirk Plaza in Ditmas Park). It also seems to be a little more expensive than the C Town off of Steinway St.

Some of the customers are really obstructive and create huge hold ups. I hate to be ageist, but it is always an elderly customer who is either arguing with the cashier about a special price, making cashiers re-bag groceries because they don't like the way they've done it , or (in one case) an elderly gentleman harassing the cashier because he wanted them to break a 20 dollar bill into quarters for him (mind you he hadn't purchased anything from the grocery store).

The secretary guard is really strange and weird and seems to be following customers around and then when he gets close pretending to look at an item on the shelf. It is like a bad detective routine. Then, one time I asked him where I could find something (another thing about this Key Food is that it tends to be incredibly understaffed---particularly for stockers) and he was a jerk about it.

Long story short: I'll probably going here on the way back from the train but if I have a choice I always go to the C Town on 28th Ave or the other Key. Food further...

I have been assaulted by the security guard at Key food Supermarket in Astoria. Yes! The name for that is assault. It happened on Friday, 12/01 around 10:45am. I stepped in the store for 30 seconds to check the price of the grapes. On my way out, the security guard pulled my bag off my shoulder almost throwing me off balance. I had a shopping bag with two Italian cakes inside I have bought on the other supermarket down the block. And I had the receipt for that. I have showed the receipt to him and he just walked away without even saying “sorry for that”. If he were doing a good job, he ‘d have seen that I walked in, took a look at the fruit section and was on my way out of the store. He’d not be harassing costumers for no reason. Security guards have a protocol to follow when they want to check someone’s belongs. They must first ask permission to check the bag and then ask for the receipt. Nobody has the right to touch nobody’s belongs without permission. It is clear that Key food is using unqualified personal to do the security job. My rights and dignity were violated at Key food Supermarket. We have rights which are granted by law and must be protected. I will no longer go shop at Key food Supermarket. Less...