IGA Saint Albans — Local services in Melbourne

I have love hate relationship with this particular IGA.

Lets start with the positives.

Their Deli is probably the best part of the supermarket. It has an old school charm, the ladies behind the counter look after it very well and it has really good variety of deli meats, cheeses and olives. There is a lot here that you cannot find at the major supermarket chains.

You can find a lot of European and Asian products that can be hard to find elsewhere. If you need non perishables from Germany, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Poland, Malta, Greece or Italy this is a great place to pick up your pickles, ajvar, german mustards, mastic etc. The Asian section is your stock standard. They also have a nice selection of pastas, tinned tomatoes, bread (don't expect sourdough) and dairy products.

The Butcher section is great for the price and quality. Pork has no boar taint as it's all female pork and they have a range of cuts available. I especially like the pork neck. Their beef and chicken could be improved as sometimes the beef is tough and the chicken has a grainy texture and chemical smell. Their premium beef mince is great to make burgers as it has a good ratio of meat to fat.

The staff are rustic, real and wear their heart on their sleeves. They never fake how they are feeling but don't take it out on you either. However, some of the staff at the butcher department are quite grumpy and unhelpful. There is a difficult language barrier if you want to enquire about something in English as they only speak Vietnamese.

Ok now for the negatives.

The supermarket is run down, somewhat unhygienic, grotty and there are some weird smells around the place. The people who clean the IGA at night don't do a very good job, all you need to do is see the sweeper and mop they use. They are filthy and smell like an off rag. The supermarket requires a major upgrade and renovation and it needs a REALLY deep clean. The shopping baskets and trolleys are dirty, grimy and this standard is not what is expected at a place that sells food.

The fruit and vegetables are only fresh on some days of the week. Mainly Thursdays and Fridays. Do not bother with the fruit as all the apples are bruised, oranges dry and pears bordering on mouldy. You will find a lot of fresh produce here just about to go bad. Cabbage, pumpkin and capsicums seem to be consistently good though.

The car parking situation is a disaster. Especially, when a lot of people coming from non English speaking backgrounds shop here and there is also a lot of elderly who shop here too. They find it difficult to navigate the ticketing system and many cars are stuck behind the boom gate because they didn't validate their ticket. All signage is in English and can be hard to understand if English is not your first language. You need a lot of patience at this car park and if you want to park for free you also need to spend $10 or more, which is not great if you need to pick up only a few things. Sadly, parking around the supermarket (Alfrieda St, Victoria St etc) is hard to come by.

Overall, the supermarket has a lot of positives, however can be improved in many areas. The owner Christina needs to use the money to upgrade/renovate the supermarket, hire new cleaners (and keep it hygienic!) and upgrade the fresh produce's quality and freshness. Instead of purchasing herself an expensive BMW car, she should be putting money into her business to keep customers returning and new one's coming in to shop there. She needs to understand that if you invest in a business you will make regular customers happy to shop there and gain interest of new customers.

Christina, please make these changes for our community as the IGA is falling behind with the times. St Albans is changing, and moving forward but your supermarket is not improving...

Just moved here and decided to look through the local iga... I do not plan on going there again. At the checkout i was asked to show my bag, which i was more than happy to do. She continued to argue with me about my purchases from woolworths, very obvious she was implying I stole the plugs in my bag. Another employee finally informed her they do not sell the plugs she accused me of stealing. The OLD (yeah love, you and your red head friend are over the 'hill') lady and her red-headed manager did not apologise but continued to try and excuse her bad behaviour. Im getting too old to be treated like a thief, appalling behaviour from employees, their apology was full of excuses....

Absolutely shocked with the cleanliness of this store. Walking to the store smell of Urine and rubbish on the street and front door of the store , their back roller door was opened with delivery guy smells bad and dirty. Inside the store workers handling food items without gloves. Meat and vegetable were stinky. Cashier very dirty looking, chewing gum or eating. Talking on phone and not attending respectfully to customers. Hope health department audit this place. I felt I was in third...