North Park Produce — Local services in Poway

June 2025 Update: I had to visit this store again, specifically for the fresh bread and I had a very different experience this time. It seemed like the same staff had gone through customer service training because the service was faster and I think I may have seen a smile or two from the staff. I'll bump up my review rating, but the checkout line situation still needs improvement.

I try to avoid this place, but we needed halal meat and it's closer than the halal meat shops in El Cajón, so we stopped in. Once aain, the meat counter guys seemed bothered that we needed help. Forget trying to get a simple greeting from them. One star off

Went to the bakery section next and saw a dozen+ of the white round bread ready to buy. The lady working there was putting the bread into bags and I asked for 3 pieces. She tells me to wait 5 to 10 minutes because she is busy bagging. What? I've never seen her there before, but she needs some training in customer service. I told her to forget about it and walked away. Another star off.

The strawberry boxes were priced at $1 each, which is always a bad sign and sure enough every box had at least 1/4 rotten pieces there. That's pretty gross. If the food is bad or expired throw it away. Why are you trying to pass those off for $1 each nix? Sick. 2 stars off.

The final straw was the checkout line. I'm not sure what's in charge at that store, but they need to straighten out their checkout process. They have 2 to 4 registers open, but everyone queues up in a single line, which today went past the deli section, across the restaurant entrance, past the dry cookies and well into the vegetable section. There must've been 15 to 20 people in line. This is ridiculous. You can't queue up to open registers like at Costco for God knows what reason. When I did get to an open register, the lady tells me she's closed while her light is on indicating she's open. This is as she's helping her customer check out. I got upset and will not be coming here again. Another star off.

The people that work here have a serious customer service problem. They need training and an adjustment in attitude. They lost another customer today. Awful service and...

My mother has been coming here for years as a loyal customer as she loves the great deals. She loved it so much she would even recommend it to other people. However my mother will not return to the store ever again as she was embarrassed by the staff by accusing her of stealing a single bottle of oil. My mother came to the store with intentions to exchange a faulty bottle that would not open no matter how hard you try. When she came to the store to exchange, she explained to the cashier the matter and the cashier even tried it out for himself to open the bottle to which he also couldn’t and agreed that it cannot be opened. However, instead of simply exchanging the bottle, he called over a fellow staff member, where my mom thought he was asking for help. After discussing with each other in their language, they asked for the receipt from my mom which she didn’t have as it was purchased long before (my mom’s intention was to just exchange the bottle or receive store credit and admits she had been forgetting to exchange it). Since there wasn’t a receipt, the other staff member accused my mom of stealing the bottle off the shelf. To which my mom strongly denied and even told them to check the security footage, but their response was “the office is closed”. After interrogating my mom, the cashier just told the other staff member to get a different one off the shelf. In that case, the interrogation was just a waste of both party’s time and just resulted in humiliating my mom in front of other customers. When they went to the shelf to exchange the bottle, the cashier grabbed a different bottle of the same oil and saw that it was easy to open unlike the one my mom was trying to exchange. Ironically, the faulty bottle was placed back onto the shelf. My mom left the store stressed out and was on the verge of crying. It ruined her whole night as the incident raised her blood pressure. Would a person ruin their name for a simple...

I really enjoy coming here as they have a variety of produce for extremely good prices in comparison to local grocery stores, you can’t beat their prices!

My 3 stars however is for how north park has responded to the pandemic.

The store itself isn’t that large, the aisles are narrow and not much space to move your cart around (2 carts can’t pass in an aisle making it difficult to move around in the store). having it be this small i would expect them to put a capacity of customers in the store at a time so it isn’t so crowded. i always feel uncomfortable with being in such a tight area, and today it was beyond crowded i literally didn’t finish my shopping because of how many people were crammed in the store. everywhere else is monitoring the numbers of customers entering and exiting the store and limiting customers, they should be too!

They also don’t sanitize their carts, they have spray provided outside, but no hand sanitizer to use after touching a bottle that EVERYONE else touches, so the spray is useless when you’re not providing hand sanitizer for after use.

they don’t sanitize the conveyer belts or credit card machines after a customer is done. i hate having to use the pen to sign knowing that it hasn’t been sanitized, and there’s no sanitizer provided for after touching it.

i have seen in multiple trips employees wearing masks with their noses open. Not to say their employees aren’t wearing masks. they are, but a few have their masks or bandanas below their nose which is NOT okay.

once again everywhere else i’ve been, target, trader joe’s, walmart, costco, sprouts, vons, stater brothers, is implementing all these measures. I always feel safe shopping at these places, but not north park! I really hope they see this review and do...