Giant Eagle Supermarket — Local services in Millcreek Township

A little after 8 this morning I entered the new Giant Eagle in the Millcreek Marketplace. The store was starting to fill up with patrons and there were several key corporate executives on hand to christen the new store.

The store is a new concept for Giant Eagle being dubbed "Giant Eagle Signature". This new format is slotted in between a traditional Giant Eagle store and a Market District in terms of selection and service. The store is slightly more compact than one of Giant Eagle's traditional supermarkets (although there is no true typical size of a Giant Eagle as all stores are uniquely designed).

Departments

The entrance eliminates the traditional 2-sided entrance that Wegmans, Tops, and most Giant Eagles use and uses a design used by Kroger Marketplace stores with more of a one way in one way out design (although you can go in the in door and out the out door if you wish). When entering through the "In" side you are greeted by an impressive mix of preparred food, deli, produce, salad bar, and probabbly one of the best beer and wine selections of any grocery store I have ever visited (and I have visited a lot). In the very left front corner there is a special dinning area that can be rented out for special events. The fresh made sushi section is huge compared to Harborcreek Giant Eagle. The deli is located between the prepared food and the bakery and looked to be pretty standard. Next the bakery (which smelled amazing this morning) is debuting an all new brownie bar with a selection of fun specialty brownies. The meat and seafood section continued Giant Eagles tradition of being known for having the best meat selections of any store that even the beloved Wegmans stores fail to compete with. Be sure to check out the incredible variety that I do not have the time to list out here. Also new to our area they sell dry aged meat (a Market District infusion).

Grocery Area

While packaged grocerys are the same no matter where you buy them from, the atmosphere in the isles of this store makes it more of a happy place to shop. The lighting, spaced out isles, and marble-stone floor all add to the experience. While many people love Wegmans for the experience you recieve when you enter their stores, I really feel like they drop the ball after you enter their grocery section (its just really bland). This new store maintains a pleasant atmosphere form enterence to exit.

Registers

The new store boasts a healthy 18 registers (with an additional 2 in the prepared food area). This is probably my favorite part of the new store. They have a state of the art system in place to direct traffic at the checkouts. Instead of choosing a checkout lane, you queue into a single line and a kiosk tells you when to proceed to a register. This way you never get stuck in a slow moving line. Think of a bank style line. I believe every business should use the "one line" concept.

I could go on with more, but you really should just check this store out...

I am trying to be as moderate as I can but wasn't thrilled with the store. I just moved to PA from WNY and the store appears very clean and well stocked. First time in meat Dept almost had a heart attack when I saw there was a $12 per pkg markup on its family pack beef if you didn't have a Giant Eagle customer card??? Tops Markets may be overpriced on its products, but not even they try to sell beef at more than double the cost for regular customers ... it's idiocy to even print price disparity on the meat products ... I understand reasonable laws, especially of alcohol sales to minors ... but for God's sake why make people jump through hoops to buy a 6 pack of Miller to enjoy while grilling those steaks? I was shadowed by a store employee, maybe a manager or assistant. Finally I had them approach me and my adult son near the registers and he inquired "what was my intention with the beer?" I told him my intent was to buy then drink it, he then followed up with well, you can't purchase it here" I thought he was being pretty stupid at this point and asked him why not since I just picked it up here? He then in a dismissive way stated that actually I bought it in another section of the store and it had to be bought there, not main check outs because of proximity to any minor. Now I am at the Deli / take out section of store and got the same sort of silly explanation for why store sells beer the way it does ... I had her explain it to me while she took my money and put a red sticker incl. receipt ... again she reiterated that because of law, beer cannot be anywhere in proximity to minors, so I was flabbergasted and exclaimed loudly, "so what now, do I have to leave the store and place it in my car and then re enter to checkout my groceries at opposite end of store?" She then told me no, I could now head to other checkout where my son was waiting. WHAT???? So here I am walking through store with my beer purchase and walking alongside several minors and wondered out loud how does putting red sticker w/ receipt magically ward off minors? By their definition, they covered their asses, but then allowed me to do the one thing that they couldn't do by having beer in the general checkout with minors standing all around me, lol. I get home to prep and grill my Porterhouse steaks after this ridiculous adventure and my son and I were seriously disappointed. For steaks marked for $15.95 / $27.95 for non card holders ... both steaks were the most flavorless I have ever tasted in my nearly 60 years of eating steak. I could have saved myself the grief and just gone to Save a lot and a beverage center, gotten better tasting and better priced Porterhouses and saved gas and money. Unless it's a earth shattering sale, I don't think I will be shopping GE...

I didn’t want to give one star but after today I’m very disappointed and upset, I shop here because it’s got good deals and I’ve never had an issue plus it’s right by my work so it’s also convenient to pick up right after work… I usually place mobile orders so I can just pick up and go home, well today was issue after issue and at first my card didn’t go through so I paid for it when I got there no big deal it happens, but then it said I owed 28 cents so I paid that in change, she took the change then 10 minutes later tells me it wouldn’t let her do partial payments so I transferred from my savings and gave her my card to pay the rest, sit there for another 20 minutes for her to charge me another 15 dollars, then cancel the whole order and my transaction telling me that I have to wait for the money to come back on my card in 5 days, I sat there for 30 minutes for absolutely nothing to be done and I never call and complain and when I called and spoke to the manager, funny enough she said it was her which I’m sorry but not very good at it because she didn’t do much to help me out at all and didn’t seem like she knew what she was doing, so she sent me over to another manager who didn’t explain it any better to me, so now I have no money for groceries and no groceries, it was the worst experience ever and the worst customer service I will not be coming back to this location...