Hopey & Co — Local services in Asheville

i want to preface this by saying that i did not walk in here expecting top-notch groceries for discount prices. i grew up eating out of trash bins and often not eating at all. but walking into here bothered me quite a bit with the sheer amount of expired product i saw on shelves and the high prices of “normal”, non-salvage and non-expired goods. a lot of expiration dates, especially on more expensive products like Ghirardelli syrups, covered the expiration date with the $1.99 price tag.

food expiration dates are often simply a guide, yes. sometimes food is still safe past these dates; but what i observed was that much of the shopping population was elderly. folks with compromised immune systems who may not be able to fend off food borne illness because they couldn’t read expiration dates that were hidden or because it was marketed as affordable while actually being unsafe.

discount groceries can absolutely be done correctly - but not whilst marketing expired goods to vulnerable people and charging the same prices as high-end stores for things like meats that were procured second-hand.

i’m sure on good days there are some good finds here, but i was annoyed with playing the game of, “is it affordable and expired or standard store price and...

I enjoy trying new things at Hopey. They have organic eggs, milk and sometimes butter.

Often their gf selection is great. Bread is 99 cents....very good. Ice cream cheap. Yogurt hit or miss, but cheap. Cheeses sometimes wonderful...found a goat milk feta and it was very good. Sometimes organic cheese selections too.

Chip selection not great, but cheap. Kettle cooked potato chips in plain sea salt and bbq today very good, but mostly corn chips, veggie straws and pretzels.

Mexican food selection pretty good and they sell dry goods and spices reasonably under their own lable.

They have odd and cool items come in all the time. Sometimes Kicking Horse Coffee for 4.99 or amazing frozen fresh lasagna pasta sheets for 1.99, then they're gone so get them while you can.

Often canned goods are dented.

Produce seems fine and about the same as regular grocery store.

They also have fresh and frozen meats to choose from and vegetarian in freezer section.

Frozen isle interesting. We always find something....Against The Grain gf pizzas lovely, for instance.

Worth a...

I like shopping at Hopeys since the Sweeten Creek store. Why is it so difficult to hire and TRAIN cashiers in customer service? It’s consistently bad. I checked out yesterday and the entire time from beginning to end she gave me the price and never another utterance! Do you value customers and service so little that that this is the face of operations, a teenager or 20 something looking angry and surly? The other complaint is the five percent charge for using a credit card. Never ever have I seen anyone charge MORE than the cc companies charge the vendor. You definitely need to warn customers of this practice and I should not need to ask for my receipt which is how I discovered I was...