Smart & Final

Tonight I decided I am no longer shopping at Smart&Final in Fremont. Second time I have bought spoiled meat from them. If you are deciding to purchase meats from this store I strongly suggest you check the freshness and smell before cooking it. The first time it happened I spoke to an anonymous employee of that store and she mentioned she would never buy their meats. She said their staff consisted of people that do not care of keeping things fresh and in the fridge/​freezer as needed to keep fresh. I have seen packaged meats on shelves past dates and sitting for several weeks spoiled and brown. Some packaged salami and hot links opened and spoiled. Our cashier was awesome! The manager, Mathew was a joke. Told him we bought spoiled meat and you can tell he has no customer service technique. He brushed us off and directed us to the cashier and walked away even though he had to come back and approve the credit back. We mentioned this was the second time and what a staff member mentioned and he acted careless and didn’t give us any eye contact or apology however the cashier was very apologetic. I didn’t like Mathew’s service at all and caught him acting very rudely with a woman cashier. Looks like the typical young man with a power trip and does nothing but bark orders. After going to Boston Market to get a rotisserie chicken since our pork ribs were ruined we came home. Guess what? Our dessert from Smart&Final, a Dutch apple pie, undercooked! The crust was straight dough! Good bye Smart & Final!

Not very clean, and the produce looks like it’s seen better days. but what really got me was how rude the cashier was. She ignored the Asian family in front of me and then completely ignored me, instead asking the man behind me if Evian water tasted good. They had a whole conversation about it and she never even acknowledged me whatsoever, didn’t even hand me my receipt. She just dumped it into my basket. Whatever happened to at least stating the total of the charge? Overall, a really gross shopping experience.

It is a nice shop and the worker is very friendly… there alot of item. We get fresh vegitables and meats. The price is less to comparing other shop… It is a big store and service is best.

Well maintained and clean store. They are providing good service. Quality products

Bought a rack of baby back ribs here. Upon opening the package we could immediately tell by the rank odor that the meat was completely rotten. Never buy your meat here.

Why I shop at Smart & Final:
DiGiorno Parmesian $ 7.29
Unsalted butter $ 2.99
Total: $ 10.28
Safeway
DiGiorno Parmesian $ 10.99
Unsalted butter $ 4.99
Total: $ 15.98
I saved $ 5.70 on just 2 items!

Always able to find household supplies that are in bulk and cheap. The lines are always long but the cashierS are nice and friendly though. They need to open more lines and add more cashiers. Beware of encounter rude customers. They are in the parking lot and in the store! Lot of Middle Eastern shoppers here. You know what I mean and how the feeling is if you have had the same experience here and at Costco’s parking lot in Fremont. Beware!!!

THEO, the Assistant Manager is totally Rocks! He went WAY above and beyond his realm of duties to assist me with a dilemma that came up for me down here in Southern CA. The next time we are in the area we will definitely be paying this incredible young man a visit to thank him in person for his tireless efforts! Thank you Theo, from the bottom of my heart!

The management and workforce of the Fremont Walnut Avenue store richly deserve high honors for serving customers well, with the same floor plan as for example for Union City Smart and Final, but with smaller, more crowded floor area. No wonder it seems so congested at the checkout lines and some of the time in the produce area.
Reasonably good produce specials, a few weeks ago it was 99 cents per pound at S&F for seemingly good green beans! At Safeway today on 9÷11÷15, the ad said $ 3 ($ 2.99) per pound for green beans. Parking not all that pleasant due to little shade and parking lot not level, but I can walk there with backpack and balanced canvas carry bags. Smarter faster warehouse store does describe the appeal of this store. Checkout lines have in the past blocked my desire to visit rest of the store (cannot get around front of the aisles) but I have looked through all the aisles. If you go down all the aisles, you can buy a variety of groceries and related items. A 50 pound sack, which I seldom buy myself, of potatoes or onions is very inexpensive. Prices are reasonable, but not quite as low as Costco on many items, for example cottage cheese at $ 5.19 which is $ 4.99 at Costco. Today on 9÷11÷2015 I saw 50 pound sacks of whole carrots for $ 3.99, i.e. 8 cents per pound for carrots.
Checkout lines seem difficult to me; I do not agree with whoever called them fast and friendly. Lines get way backed up. If they did have a policy that cashiers deploy when customers are into the lines, that would work, but somehow it doesn’t seem to happen that way in practice. Cashiers do not push the belt divider bars back at all so that the customers can separate their order from the previous order and next order. Cashiers have a weird, perhaps understandable, fetish about walking around to look under the grocery cart. Checkout line areas are very crowded and that even makes it difficult to move through the aisles. Today on 9÷11÷2015, my checkout experience was quite good as Rosario did a hot swap taking over from another cashier who went on break. The management still made her read the UPC code on the bottom of my shopping cart.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that the parking lot is abnormally less level than many other lots. The cart will run away even while you are unloading into your vehicle.
Smart & Final got me to go back in with an American Express rebate (were they mad at Costco?), so good that I hesitate to explain it, yet I have continued to do a lot of shopping at Smart & Final even after the rebate has been done with.

Customer service was very nice to us. Each staff member pointed us to proper aisle or brought us directly to shelf. We didn’t know there was a bigger SAF, as we usually shop at Mtn View and Santa Clara. But now we will frequent this one. It’s more expansive and bigger freezer/​cooler areas. The reason it wasn’t a five star is they didn’t have 2 herbs I needed, but the dept person double checked the back. But we will patronize this SAF «EXTRA» :)
Don’t laugh but in this day and age, the bags offered to purchade is a sturdy plastic bag. I know it’s a small thing to mention, but it was a neat suprise… :)

This review is strictly for customer service or the lack thereof. I needed to wash some cleaning towels so I figured I would go to laundromat. Found I was short $ 1 in quarters and since I needed a baking item I decided to pop over to S&F.
There were 2 lines open and I choose the wrong one. I get behind a women who ended up spending close to $ 400. The good thing at the time was the guy appeared to know his codes and was humming right along while I caught up on reading the magazines. I thought finally, oops wrong, she had to tell him she had more items on the bottom of her shopping cart. away he went to zoom zoom with his little instrument and say excuse me while he was leaning over punching stuff on his screen that was going off. Again I thought finally, oops, again the lady said you’re the boss you have a key another 5 minutes and then 1 can of milk that was locked up was brought out (now I am wondering what kind of store am I in where I think formula has to be locked up??) Great finally, as she writes her check and then I said wait that is not mine… No she had more stuff that she was getting (I started thinking there has to be TV crew somewhere she is not leaving). Yes now me, I told him I needed my change to consist of a $ 5 bill and the rest in quarters. He gave me a $ 5 and 2 quarters so I just looked at him and said where is the rest of my change I need in quarters? Now I know you do not have to figure anything out any more the machine will tell you give her $ 6.51. He finally got it, he open the cash drawer where I saw a mound of quarters, he gives me $ 1 bill and said he doesn’t have that many quarters, and turned to the next customer. Really???

As I entered, the scent of rotting oranges hits me. Produce is the first department that one encounters. A lot of the fruits and vegetables were spoiled. Too bad, because they have quite a variety.
The rest of the store is decent. I picked up some Cattleman’s Finest brand rib eye steaks in the meat department. We broiled them that evening, and they tasted great. I checked the dates on some of the dairy and frozen food products, and they were all current.
I was delighted to find some cans of Stag Steak House chili with no beans, as no one else carries it anymore, as well as a large variety of trash can liners in sizes that are hard to find elsewhere.
Checkout was quick, and the cashier friendly. This is a good place to get groceries at a discount. I will try them again someday, and hopefully I’ll have some good news to report on their produce section.

This Smart & Final Extra is located in the Walnut Plaza here near downtown Fremont. This location surprisingly actually gets a decent amount of business.
When ever we come to dine at Golden Bay Chinese Restaurant which is a Chinese restaurant located right next to this Smart & Final Extra, we come here to browse around and see what they have to offer and if they have any good deals. We don’t come here often because this store is far from where we live and we don’t get smart & Final ADs in the mail like we do with other grocery stores.
Firstly, yes the parking lot here can be a bit sketchy mainly at night because well it’s poorly lite, the lights here don’t tend to shine that well. There are plenty of «Shopping Cart Corrals» in the parking lot which is actually pretty surprising because well you don’t see that many in store parking lots. Meaning Smart & Final spent quite the money on those probably knowing they’d save more money investing in those.
When we approach the parking lot, we always see someone collecting the shopping carts and bringing them back to the front of the store. The funny part is everytime after we finsh our meal at Golden Bay, we come then to shop here and there out of shopping carts already, happens every time! We’d have to get one from the parking lot!
Smart & Final Extra does sometimes have some pretty good deals. You just have to mainly check out the weekly ad in store or even on-​line via their website
.
We scored some pretty good deals on today’s visit:
Dreyer’s Ice Cream $ 2.99 Each!
Sweet Cantoelope Melons 4lbs for $ 1!
First Street Wide Pan Bread $ 1.49!
Lay’s Kettle Cooked Potato Chips $ 1.99!
Regarding the Lay’s Potato Chips, we noticed that they charged us $ 2.99 for 1, when the price said $ 1.99, but according to the cashier we had to buy 3 in order for the price to be $ 1.99, HOWEVER NO where did it state that on the price listing… and we told the cashier and he looked at it and saw it also said only $ 1.99 so he took $ 1.00 off our total purchase because it didn’t say you had to buy 3 in order to receieve that price, now that’s good service!
In regards to Customer Service, the workers here are nice it’s just that this store never has more than 2 registers open, even when the lines are supper long, they only have 2 lines open!!! They need to either open more registers and cashiers or hire more if they fon’t have any available!!!
Other than the long lines, this store isn’t that bad. It’s a pretty decent store to come and check out. They have some pretty good sales sometimes!

This place is by my work, so I decided to go and get a few groceries.
The one star is for their deceptive advertising. When I was in line, I saw the cashier explaining to a customer why she couldn’t get an item on sale, and she acknowledged that the way they advertise things is a bit tricky.
Then came my turn. I corrected her on 2 large boxes of cereal, that had a big sign in red letters that said 5.49. She told me that is if you buy 2 or more boxes. I looked at the sign, and there, beside the HUGE red numbers was another sign with the sale price and in MUCH smaller letters, apparently were the details. Well, I didn’t need cereal to last me through the millenium, I don’t know who does. So, instead paid the full price. Their advertising is deceptive and I won’t be back.

How did I not know that Smart and Final has so many items that would suit my baking needs?
I had gone out of my way to chefs ware house in South San Francisco and San Carlos to look for certain items such as sheet pan, unique baking pans, containers for ingredients and the like. Also I was looking for large pastry piping bags and I couldn’t find it at Michaels craft store. The largest one they have is 16 inch.
Tonight I was able to find everything I had been looking for at smart and final and it’s only five minutes from where I live! I even found 24 inch pastry piping bags so that I can save some time when I frost big batch of cupcakes. Also I found small paper cups such as 3 or 3.5 oz so that I can make homemade popsicles without having to buy the popsicle molds!
And lets not forget they are the only grocery store that I know of that carries manufacturing cream which is a richer version of heavy whipping cream that’s good for making custard, ice cream, cake frosting and the like.
In case you are wondering about manufacturing cream; the name is a little misleading it is just heavy whipping cream with a slightly higher fat content so that dessert tastes better with it. Commercial kitchens usually use manufacturing cream as opposed to regular heavy whipping cream. It’s basically natural and comes from milk not something manufactured in the lab or something.
They also carry a lot of baking items in bulk such as chocolate chips, sugar sprinkles for cake decorating, flour and sugar, cooking oil, just to name a few.
Granted if you are looking for the high end products you are not going to find it here. For example I was looking for almond flour to make French marcarons, they don’t have it. But surprisingly they do carry some good brands such as King Arthur’s unbleached flour, for both bread flour and all-​purpose flour, in addition to the regular Gold Medal brand bleached flour. For cake flour, however, they only carry the bleached one. Whole Foods is the only store where I can find unbleached cake flour.
The lines at cashier that the other Unilocalers were talking about could be a problem though. I finally finished shopping at about 9:15 p.m. And there was only one cashier open! There were a few people in line with what looks like a two week supply of food. Luckily for me one of the ladies saw my bag and let me go in front of her so I didn’t have to wait long at all. The guy behind me that grabbed what looks like a bottle of coffee powder was not so lucky. They should have at least on more cashier open for express items. Well at 45 minutes before closing I will give them a break this time. Plus kudos to them for opening from 7 a.m. To 10 p.m. Whole Foods only opens till. to 9 pm.
So to sum up my «near-​Costco» experience at Smart and Final, and it is very similar as well: I walked in expecting to spend only 5 minutes picking up eggs and butter, but ended up walking out 45 minutes later with almost everything I had on my baking wish list. I went home a happy baker!

What’s up with Fremont having extremely mediocre supermarkets? This Smart & Final is no exception. It’s OK and has most items that you would need for a household, but it feels a bit dated inside. The produce doesn’t look super great, and the prices aren’t exactly rock bottom here either. I found items that were a bit cheaper at Target (namely, flour).
Also the lines are long and can snake around for awhile.
The clientele here is also a bit… off as well.

Well it is less packed than Costco that’s for sure and some of their products are better priced than Costco as well but i think i’ll stick with costco whenever possible. They suck with customer service and you can be standing in line for a very, very long time. Also, their produce is not as fresh as you’d think and I wish i wouldn’t have been in such a rush when i went in to buy carrots in bulk because all three bags that i got from them were bad. They have them right under those automatic sprinklers and the water gets trapped inside the plastic bags which stains the carrots and makes them all rotten and slimy. Not a happy camper. I was dying to try out a juicer that a friend gave me and i couldn’t, not with those nasty looking carrots. :(

Checked out Smart & Final after my Indian dinner. It’s like a regular grocery store, but aisles are big & prices seem ok.
I found Wasabi & Soy Sauce Blue Diamond Almonds on sale $ 3.89 a small can, bought 6 cans. My friend said Walmart has them too, but I didn’t go there so maybe I paid too much, don’t know.
Found out Amazon has them cheaper! Wahhh wahhh waaahhhh!
Charged it. They have strong plastic bags you can buy for 10c, I didn’t buy a bag.

This place is actually a Smart & Final «Extra», not as the listing implies.
«Extra» as in extra long lines cuz they have a culture of where register clerks are allowed to leave their station, if they deem it slow. That’s fine and all but your store is some 30,000 square feet and people DO shop there. One clerk with 5 – 7 carts lined up (some carts are stacked too b/​c of business clients) is just ludicrous.
«Extra» as in when said lines do form, people get «extra» irate. Customers yelling at the clerks, while clerks yell back. In all honesty, since I shop there often (for business exclusively) I just feel bad for everybody, and it is not the people, IT IS THE SYSTEM.
«Extra» as in if all this already doesn’t sound F’d up enough, the clerks have to endure «extra» B.S. b/​c they also have to answer phone calls regarding price quotes. To hear that phone ring while the register aisle is crumbling under pressure is almost hilarious, but that’s because I have a twisted sense of humor.
«Extra» as in their price scanning system is extremely inefficient. I often have at least one thing on my cart that does not scan. And guess when this usually happens? That’s right, when 6 other people are behind me, giving me and the clerk death stares. Hilarious once again.
The lonesome star is not so much for the store, as it is for my willingness to endure such torture on a regular basis for the fucking sake of «convenience». Who’s laughing now?!: /

Smart & Final Extra’s parking lot is poorly/​inadequately lit in the evenings.
Extra appears to have all the usual food departments but no hot foods to go section.
didn’t check out pricing so can’t compare (yet).\
buys: yoplaint yogurt (.59)
–cream cheese, garlic & herbs (3.19)
should have gotten regular (1.99) since herb one was virtually flavorless.
crumbs:
–friendly banter with cashier (not stuck up at all!)
–concern about safety in parking lot at night (too dark-​not enough lighting).
–lots of parking…