Portland Food Co-op — Local services in Portland

Wow I had kind of a terrible experience and as I love supporting local businesses, this is a bit sad for me to share. The co-op requires a number of safe handling practices that are a bit different from other grocery stores: no personal gloves allowed (mine are fingerless), you must use their grocery carts or baskets, baskets can’t go in through check out..., which is all fine, I’m happy to go through all of it but the people that work there are kind of condescending about it. The cashier who checked us out explained the basket can’t be placed on the conveyor belt, fine, and that we aren’t supposed to use our reusable bags, fine, but then she had to add in “‘cause, you know, the virus.” Ok, thank you for that information. Then she gives us the runaround to find more produce to fill our food rebates quota only to tell us they won’t take expired ones. Which is also fine, but in the past they would just switch it out for me and that was always okay. I don’t know, maybe to me I don’t think that just because you have all these new rules that you can also be rude about it. I’d been coming here for a few years and I’m not sure I want to go...

We've been members for years and I'm sad to leave this review but I'm also extremely tired of accidentally buying rotten or stale food. Without exaggeration, more than half of the produce we purchase from the Co-op molds within 24 hours. In addition, the last few times I've bought prepared foods (sandwiches), the bread has been so stales it crumbles in my hands after taking it out of its packaging. Finally, we also can't shop here for packaged foods as many packaged foods are marked 1-2$ up from their retail at nearby stores, including the expensive Whole Foods. An example is the canned fish selection.

We will continue to shop at the Co-op for bulk foods, which are priced well and seem to be fresh. It's a shame that the largest city in Maine has, IMO, the most lacking co-op. I mean no disrespect to the employees working at the Co-op who are always kind, although...

I come to this store a lot and the customer service is very friendly. However, today I came and had an unfriendly encounter with a cashier named Deb. There were customers ahead of us who had their own bags for her to bag and she didn’t have a problem with it. When it came to us, she asked if she needed to bag our groceries. Why would a cashier ask to bag our groceries when it’s their job? After we looked at her in shock because this has never happened before, she had a bad attitude and seemed annoyed that she had to bag some groceries...even though that’s her job. Seemed like she had a deeper personal issue with color instead of bagging some...