Tops Friendly Market — Local services in Town of Hunter

Very small (as far as branches of the major grocery retailers go) - with very limited selection of foods. For example: there was exactly 1 variety of chopped beef available for burgers - 80% lean ! That's it ! (No 85, no 90...)(and no chopped sirloin or anything else). No fish or seafood section at all !! Only thing available in seafood is prepackaged bags of things like frozen shrimp or crabmeat. No real stock of "ethnic" foods. The selection of non grocery items - like OTC drugs, utensils, cleaning, electrical, etc. is very limited as well. The store is often crowded on weekends - small aisles, kind of old and dirty feeling - obviously hasn't been renovated anytime recently. The prices are surprisingly and absurdly high (a few examples: this Tops price for a regular size Paul Newman's pasta sauce (not organic) is $3.49; regular price for 1/2 gal. of Tropicana OJ is $5.39 !! (when "on sale" - which isn't that often it's 2/$7) - at Tops on Rt. 6 in Carmel, NY in Putnam County (actually a much wealthier area) the regular price for the Newman sauce is $2.19 !! and Tropicana OJ 1/2 gal is usually on sale at 2/$6 - when it's not price is $3.99. One obvious reason is because they have a monopoly here - it is around a 35 min drive to larger towns that have other much larger grocery stores (such as Catskill, Saugerties or a bit further to Kingston). If you are planning on spending time in the Hunter/Tannersville area, probably a good idea to stock up on food on your way. And if you're going into this Tops in the future, I'd mask up (during any possible future recurrence of a COVID surge)... Poor ventilation, small aisles, etc. All in all, if you have a choice - stay away. Or you can also go to the Hannaford in Woodstock/W.Hurley or the Hannaford in Cairo NY (both about 25-28 min drive) - both of the Hannaford's have larger selection and...

I have family in the Philippines, the hurricane left them all homeless. I called the store, to find out how much I could Western Union to these poor people. They said only $1000. As there is 17 of them, $1000 was not going to get it done. So, I had some friends come to the store with me, and we each sent $1000, to five different family members. They messed up the names on the forms, so I had to go back to the store to get that corrected. The manager asked me, why did you not just send it all at once. I told her, because I called, and they said you can only send $1000. Then I asked her, could I have sent it all at once. She very rudely, answered. That’s Western Union policy, talk to them. I told her, I only asked, because you, asked me why I didn’t send it all at once. She said, if one person send too many money orders, it sends up a red flag at Western Union. Well one person didn’t Send to Many western union’s. It was done by five different people here, to five different people there. I sent someone in today to send one to another family member in the Philippines. They told her no, that we were red flagged by Western Union. This was not the case, add like I said five different people sent to five different people. This woman went out of her way, to mind our business. She called Western Union, and got us a red flag, as they had no way of knowing that we all came in at once. So, now thanks to her, there are people suffering in the Philippines, that did not have to. I own an apartment complex, with 10 rental unit. All of which, are now boycotting Yes store. So, she went out of her way to put her nose, where it didn’t belong, which has left people suffering in the Philippines, and has lost a supermarket a lot of future sales. Thank...

The store is usually clean and organized. Employees are generally polite. There is an employee that gets upset when dealing with people who have accents unfortunately. I also sometimes feel that the elderly customers could recieve better service. The bottle and can recycling machine is closed frequently. Prices on a lot of things are high, but they have decent sales.

Now on to the main reason that I'm leaving this review: Check the thermometers above the dairy section if you need to buy something. Several times over the past couple of years I have checked and found that the thermometers were above 40 degrees. I've never seen them throw anything out, or move items into a working cooler when the temp is too high. But I have seen the refrigeration company's van outside the next day or two days later, so items probably get held outside of a safe storage temperature for atleast 24 hours with no care. I now try to stock up on dairy down the mountain. I recently bought cheese (with a 2025 date) which I opened today that is spoiled already. This cheese was actually from a different section (on the other side of the store) but I thought it might be helpful info for folks who are forced to shop...