Save-On-Foods — Local services in Calgary

Visited family over the holidays and came here to grab lunch. The store (it's not really a market) is well kept.

Immediately gravitated towards the hot table and the lamb shank that was very reasonably priced. "What was the lamb shank braised with?" I asked the young lady in cook whites behind the counter. She had no idea. So she handed me their recipe from a binder which I didn't mind at all. If you don't know, better to refer to the actual recipe than make it up. She asked if there were certain food aversions I was concerned about which I appreciated even though I do not have any, I was just curious.

She asked us if we were dining in or taking the food to go, we were eating in. I went with a side of coleslaw which was in its own container and a crab cake. As the young lady was trying to punch us out, she expressed some frustration with the POS system. I got the sense that she was at the end of her shift and was looking forward to going home.

We paid and sat down to eat in the the dining area. I realized as I cut into my crab cake, it was stone cold. I walked back to the hot table to have it warmed up. The young lady was now gone and a young man was behind the counter now. I explained that my crab cake was cold to which he responded "everything in this case is cold" and stared blankly at me as I struggled to find a response.

I had so many questions such as: "Why would you serve someone dining in a cold crab cake?", but instead I asked him politely to heat my crab cake up in the microwave.

If the Urban Fare wants to dress their staff up in kitchen whites, they should anticipate that customers will make the assumption that they will be asked questions as if they were somewhat involved in the preparation of the food. Otherwise, provide new uniforms. Even so, some expectation should be set with staff of a base level of customer service.

Anyways, the food was fine, the only thing that was salty was me after experiencing the most bizarre customer service experience I've had in food in some time. I'm from Toronto, so I can't give too much insight on how I find prices, since I think Calgary food prices are generally higher in Calgary than here, but I don't take stars away based on that unlike other reviews. It's simply management not training staff on how to interact with customers and staff not using common sense when it comes to dine...

I have gone here 12 times for lunch now and I will not be going here any more. Today I was building a salad at the salad bar, just as I was reaching for the chicken a stuff member grabbed the whole insert and walked away with it. There were 4 of us standing there waiting for her to bring it back. After a long while two people just threw their salads back at the table and walked away. The girl came back and dropped an empty insert back into the salad bar. I asked her why she brought it back empty and she just looked at me, turned around and walked away. So I just tossed mine on the table as well. So far the staff I have dealt with here have been rude and not helpful at all. To be honest the food I have had hasn't really been amazing at all. I thought with this place opening up that I would have so more options for lunch but disappointed after giving it a fair chance. They layout is stupid as well for when it's busy.

I tried to do some grocery shopping here on a Friday evening and that didn't go well either. There was no one around and I was looking for something. I saw a manger on the grocery side that was busy flirting with these 3 girls. I could tell he was flirting by how he was giving them free stuff and showing off the perks of being the boss. I went up to him to ask him a question and he turned to me and said "yeah yeah yeah" and walked away. I just put my basket down and left.

A buddy and I took 6 pictures of things we wanted to buy with there with prices and compared them to Safeway down the street. The 6 items there came to $60 and at Safeway is was $38. I tried it, didn't have any great experiences and from what I have seen the management isn't very educated in what their doing. I will not be going back.

My company had two small teach meetings in that bar area at lunch that didn't go so well. So we will continue our weekly meetings...

I am absolutely outraged at the horrid service here!! My friend and I were going to have our lunch, and we had not boughten anything before we sat down. This worker named Chana came and yelled at us saying that we were not customers and we needed to buy something. My friend and I then walked up to the hot buffet and grabbed a soup cup because we did not want that much food and did not want to waste a whole container due to us wanting to be environmentally friendly. We scooped about 50g of pasta into the soup bowl, which is not enough food to even think about wasting a very large food container, and went to check out. Chana was at the register and began talking to us extremely rudely. She told us that we can not put food in the soup container and we had to put the food into the large containers, despite us telling her we wanted to be less wasteful. She charged us 4.99 for not even 50 g of food! Are you kidding me! We then asked why it was so expensive and she said it was because we didn’t put it in the right container. So we suggested pouring the food into the RIGHT container so that we could be charged by grams. Chana then proceeds to say that we “are not allowed” to change the container and that it is too late. She essentially forced us to pay for the outrageously priced pasta. Chana also expressed very rudely that we should have read the signs that explains what containers to use, but looking back, the sign does not explicitly say what containers to use when grabbing food from the hot buffet. Maybe you should read the signs first Chana! Would not recommend this place to anyone....