Food Lion — Local services in Hampton

Employees and service 4 star Groceries and prices 3 star Produce 1 star Meats 1 star Bakery 1 star

Updated March 25, 2025 I lowered my review of this store to 1 star. I purchased uncured bacon with a special sticker on it marked down 50 cents. I cooked breakfast for my companion and she said the bacon tasted funny and very salty. Later that day and the next day she had bad diarrhea. I pulled the sticker off and they had covered the use by date of Feb 07, 2025. I purchased this on March 16th so this store was selling a meat product that was over a month past the expiration date.

Previous review 2024 Employees are pleasant at this store and if you need help, you won't have trouble finding it. The store is kept clean and it is normally a fairly quick check out process.

The one thing I do not like about this store is you have to be careful with meats and seafoods. This store will sell you meats and seafoods that are past the date and may make you sick. About 2 years ago, I bought some pre-cooked ribs that were marked special. When I opened them at home they were slimy and moldy on the bottom. When I pulled the special tag off, they were weeks past the use by date. I bought some fresh Mahi that was prepacked in the meat department. I opened them 3 days later and they were all slimy. I looked at the date on the bottom and the use or freeze by date was 1101 when I had purchased them on 1109 -- they were selling seafood over a week past use by date. I had them for 3 days so they were now 11 days past the expiration date. About 6 months ago, I went to pick up some packaged lunch meats that were on sale. When I looked at the date, they had expired over a month prior. I mentioned it to the manager and he just turned and walked away. Do not ever buy the Food Lion brand fresh chicken. I bought a whole chicken and when I opened it in a pan, it was loaded with water they inject to raise the weight, When they process the chicken, they inject a salt water solution under the skin. After completely draining the chicken in a pan, it had almost 12 ounces of liquid they added to a 3 pound chicken. You are paying about $3 for a cup of water. The chicken tasted horrible with the saline water injected into it. It was not edible and tossed in the trash.

Most of the produce is not fresh. On almost any day of the week, you can find moldy produce on the shelves. I buy bananas and prepacked salads but do all my other produce shopping elsewhere. Wash your bananas and fresh produce as soon as you get home. The produce at this store in infected with those small fruit flies. They lay eggs on bananas and other produce. 24 to 48 hours later, you have fruit flies all over the house.

The fresh baked bread is more like 3 day old bread. Twice I have bought the twin french loaves that are supposedly fresh daily. Not a chance. The inside is stale and dry. When you cut the loaf, the bread is so dry is falls apart. They are probably repacking bread that wasn't sold and changing the date.

For groceries, you can get some good sale prices. The regular prices are just about the same as Wallie World. I shop here regular but rarely purchase meats or produce since they are...

Pathetic customer service! Used the shopping app to place my order for pick up. Went at my scheduled priority time, and the order was not ready. Was told by Kay she has no control over time or how the orders come down, but my order had 8 more before my group of orders came down, and they dont have shoppers right now. There were at least 5 people standing around doing nothing in that area. I asked if I could do the shopping myself, and she told me to call my app help line. As I walked away to call the help line, Kay began to refund my order. ( I was very angry at this point becausei didnt tell her to cancel anything, i said so not nice things becausemy money was being held in limbo) I reach my help line and they told me it would be 7 to 10 business days before I could get my money back. I became more angry, I had no money and no groceries. As I spoke with the person on the phone, a rather larger man and another manager approached me, cornering me against the wall to ask what happened. While explaining, Kay came to the area, as if she felt the need "put me in my place" and said she would shop the order although I was nasty to her! What?!?! These managers I felt tried to intimidate me and did not step in to help in a professional manner but instead allowed Kay to talk to me, the customer with anger, for asking and expecting her to do her job. I will not be returning to this store. This store needs training on time management, their pick-up system accuracy, customer service, and how to deal with angry customers. This entire mess could have been eliminated if Kay would have said, your order is not ready, but we will shop it right now. Instead of telling me she had no control and I would just have to wait. That is good customer service. Kay shopped my order and did not give me half...

Since this is the closest Food Lion to my home; this is where I prefer to shop if I'm not doing a Walmart delivery order. Lately I have been very dissatisfied with the quality of customer service. The way they all snaped at people on Christmas Eve 2023 was very distasteful. They proceeded to yell and scream kicking people out when it was not time to close. It was very rude and unprofessional. I have made my last trip to this Food Lion and will from now on go to the one in Phoebus. The cashier was very rude and not able to do her job. She could not multi-task efficiently but insisted on having a non work related conversation with the customer in front of me. She would ring something up stop talk; pause and then maybe continue. This red head that worked 1/1/2024 evening shift does not belong in customer service. She insisted I wait until her conversation was over and proceeded to continue to have the conversation even after the other customer had stopped. When I asked for a manager employees state that there was no manager in the store. Because of the lack of staff and no one would ring me up on another register. I had no choice but to leave my groceries. It is unfortunate that this incident has caused a loss of revenue. If this type of customer service continues Food Lion will continue to lose revenue. The two encounters that I've mentioned in this review are not the first. I have just had it up to the tide rising with the Food Lion...