Tops Friendly Markets — Attraction in Town of Carmel

This is my favorite grocery store for the following reasons: it is extremely, squeaky clean! It has ambient lighting. The shopping carts are state of the art - they glide around with finesse and ease, reminding me fondly of Nancy Kerrigan, while putting all the other stores' clumsy metal carts to shame, reminding me (with a shudder) of Tanya Harding. It has a plethora of health food store flora and fauna, all organic, all fresh. The staff is friendly and pleasant. When you ask them a question you receive a polite response. Another important distinction is that they are all human beings, unlike over at Stop-n-Shop, my FORMER favorite supermarket until their introduction of "Marty" the mechanical menace, who scoots around the store getting up in everyone's grill and scrutinizing people so they feel like they're in a George Orwell novel. Marty (which rhymes with...well, something stinky) is uniformly hated by all, as he never helps with anything. At the very least he could have been a Roomba, but nooooo! Well, anyway, I digress. Yes, Tops also has an easy to navigate floor plan and plenty of space to move around and socially distance yourself (something Marty should learn, but there I go again). Anyway, Tops, you...

At first I did not realize what this place was. I used to just drive past it when I drove through Carmel NY, joking about the store name. What brought me here was that I was rather angered by the fact that all of our grocery stores in my area closed after 10:00 p.m. however we needed to find some grocery store somewhere that's still open to get a few things for the week. I was actually happy that this place was open until midnight for those of us who have to work late.

What impressed me even more about this grocery store is that they have way more selection of products vs our common Stop and Shop, Shoprite, and Big Y grocery stores combined. I almost went into brain overload looking at the vast amount of choices they had in practically every department. Also that night with the amount of stuff that I was expecting to Total to about $100 we ended up spending less than $50. I can guarantee I'll be shopping here a lot more even though Carmel is a bit of a drive but not that far...

I work in this plaza and know lots of the employees that work here. They're all very friendly people and are always able to answer questions I have. their covid protocols are a little weird. They say they require masks, but I've seen several employees wearing no masks and just wearing a face shield. This is not safe enough to protect from covid, both mask and shield should be required. I've also seen many employees wearing their masks on their chin or just not wearing them at all. Other than that the store is very clean and things are stocked. In the past I've emailed or spoken with customer support about products I'd like to see stocked, Just to see them be stocked a few weeks later. willing to listen to customers gives me a four star for them, I would go to five if they're covid 19 protocols were a little more...