“just a heads up. Columbia Heights giant isn’t selling any perishables today.”

by Prince Of Petworth April 18, 2016 at 4:22 pm 16 Comments

chgiant
1345 Park Road, NW

Been getting a lot of emails (starting at 1:15pm) about the Columbia Heights Giant – most recently at 4:15:

“just a heads up. Columbia Heights giant isn’t selling any perishables today. All fridges and freezers blocked off.”

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Leeran

Busting out my fainting couch… this place is such a drag if you live in Columbia Heights and have to deal with its chaos and disorder often.
Hill Denizen

Do grocery stores not have backup generators or something? The same thing happened last time I went to the Potomac Ave Harris Teeter two weeks ago (though it wasn’t the whole frozen section, only about half) and a few months back at Costco. I don’t remember this ever happening when I lived in Florida (unless there was an actual hurricane that knocked out all the power).
navyard

Any explanation or reason given? With everything off the shelves, I would assume a norovirus or some other contaminant being found, rather than simple loss of refrigeration. But that’s just speculation. Everybody panic!
Anon

Now where am I going to get “flavorful meats”??!!
DF

I sent in the photo. Didn’t speak to anyone as I was just too aggravated by the situation (guess I’m going back tomorrow to finish my trip). Literally everything that was refrigerated or frozen was off limits. Some of the lettuce was stocked with the rest of the cold produce (the central areas).
Just another reason why I hate this store besides being out of basics all too often.
NoNoroPls

guhhh, i just bought a ton of perishables from this store around 12pm…should i be throwing all this stuff away now? really don’t have room on the schedule for a food-based illness this week…
- FridayGirl
  
  I would really go back and ask for a refund with your receipt. I assume it has a timestamp and they’d honor it if it was after the issue started. I see someone down below said it started this morning…..
DC Tropics

I must be the only person in all of DC who doesn’t think this store is awful.
- MM
  
  I’m with you – it has what I need, price is reasonable, most (but not all) of the staff are friendly and helpful. Also, I can walk there.
- saf
  
  Nope, I’m with you.
- Hurleybird
  
  Yeah, this Giant is pretty good. The lines and shelves were awful while the Petworth Safeway was closed and being rebuilt, but now it usually has what I’m looking for in stock and check-out is speedy. Prices are much better than HT or WF, and it’s way bigger and nicer than Sandanista Safeway. They could do better with inventory management for normal and predictable surges though. Those produce and meat sections get pretty empty Sunday evenings. They haven’t had fresh rosemary in stock when I’ve needed it for at least 8 months.
bv1837

Apparently they had a power outage that started this morning (person I talked to said 7ish), so they had to trash all perishables. Some lights were out when I was there at 7 tonight.

On the bright side, no lines at 7pm on a weekday!
mitchgant

When I was there Friday night (4/15) shopping, they had about half the freezers in one section emptied out. I am wondering if this was not a planned outage for maintenance or equipment replacement. I imagine it is hard to schedule these kind of tasks for a store that is open 24 hours a day.

Don’t get why all the hate for this Giant. Far better grocery selection than the nearby Target or any grocery within 5 minutes walk, and a huge improvement over the Giant that it replaced. For the people complaining about this store, I challenge you to try out the 17th Street or Columbia Road Safeways and compare them to this Giant.
- FridayGirl
  
  The Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan, though, is a trillion times better (at least in my opinion).
koheights

I spoke to a Giant employee around 7pm last night. He said a near by contractor had accidentally cut the electric line.
wdc

Can’t blame Giant for this one. The power was out in parts of the neighborhood from around 11am to 8pm. The generators keep some of the lights on and some of the computers working. Anyone who thinks that they should have enough generators on hand to run an entire modern grocery store doesn’t know much about electricity.

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