Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. No non-grocery posts.
Post Reply
storewanderer
Posts: 14379
Joined: February 23rd, 2009, 3:54 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 298 times
Contact:
Status: Offline

Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by storewanderer »

Well, I went to this store. It is a very interesting store, it sits in a very busy shopping center surrounded by thousands of hotel rooms and dozens of restaurants. Getting in and out of the parking lot during dinnertime takes 5-10 minutes due to all of the restaurant traffic.

The store itself advertises various services on its exterior signage, such as "Seafood," "One Hour Photo," and "Pharmacy" which are no longer present and there is no sign of these departments anywhere in the store even. Like, they either walled these off or destroyed them. The store is maybe 40,000 square feet. During dinnertime the store had 3 checkouts open and customers were obviously all tourists all making "hand fulls of items" purchases.

The store has a deli that is largely filled with filler items like hummus and prepackaged lunchmeats. There is a ton of deli refrigeration and there was obviously one much more. There is a service case with a good amount of Boar's Head product, about 4 types of store-made salad, and a few types of olives. They have many store made sandwiches and wraps selling at $5.99. This department did not look overly clean. There seemed to be one employee on duty mostly hiding in the back.

The bakery is also very large. The bakery has an extensive service case with many store-made cakes and other decorated items, various cupcakes, etc. This department was clean and looked good. The pricing was mostly horrific with things like $2.99 small cupcakes, $4.99 small parfait cups, etc. I bought a Key Lime Pie slice ($1.99, and was 1/4 of the pie; the whole pies were selling for $10.99) which was supposedly made from scratch in store and it was excellent. I was a little hesitant to buy anything made in this store but I was pleased with the quality. Prepackaged bakery was a bit light; 14 ounce french bread sold at $1.99 while coffee cake strips (rectangles) supposedly made in store from scratch were an outrageous $5.99.

Next up was the "meat department." The meat department was about 2 feet of a refrigerated case (blink and you will miss it). There were about 8 packages of ground beef that did not look fresh and were not ground on site. There were some chicken packages, a few pork chop packages (appeared cut on site) and the only beef was 4 single packs of fresh looking rather thin cut "choice Ribeye steaks" with a gold sticker on them that had Gooding's Logo and said supreme beef or some such thing; I assume this was the beef program back when this was an actual chain.

The back of the store has an alcove for produce. It is more of a fruits department. There are few vegetables (for instance just a few heads of iceburg lettuce and prepackaged salad mixes; no bunches of leaf lettuce, romaine, etc. They had quite a few (but not really a complete mix of) fruits available and the pricing on fruits was actually mostly slightly less than Winn Dixie or Publix (both of whom have outrageous produce prices) however the quality was lacking and much of it did not look fresh.

There is a back corner of the store that feels kind of unused, maybe this was once pharmacy. Liquor is on the back side wall and has an odd light box above it. The front corner of the store has a very complete, extensive, well stocked drug/personal care department. Private label was Top Care. Again pricing was very high. $1.99 for 16 ounce hydrogen peroxide, $2.99 for travel size Herbal Essences Shampoo, etc.

Center store has frozen in the middle with two door-cases and between them a large coffin. One whole aisle of doors is filled with refrigerated beverages. The coffins are kind of understocked but have a lot of frozen pizzas, etc. The store does not have a complete grocery store mix of frozen foods. Center store was oddly merchandised; some departments had a complete mix, some did not. Pricing varied from okay to outrageous depending on the item. There were no sale items or sale tags anywhere in the store. Some items did not have prices. They had a mix of shelf tags from a wholesaler and some strange looking shelf tags that must be store generated.

Checkout was equally interesting. They have uniforms on the employees and aprons with the Goodings logo. Plastic bags are generic thank you bags. The registers appear to be restaurant registers, not grocery store registers. They have a stand alone terminal for processing credit/debit so you have to hand the card to the cashier and sign the slip that prints out of that terminal (old terminal, swipe only). There is a hole in the customer side of the checkstand which I suppose once housed the cord for an industry standard customer swipe pinpad; perhaps there was a time when this store also used a usual grocery store point of sale system and not a restaurant one. I found the cashier to be rather curt, to say the least.

Basically I assume this store is here because nobody else wants the space. There is too much traffic in the center for it to be an effective grocery store for any other chain. The center is too crowded with customers from all of the restaurants to have enough parking for what a more popular store would need. I think the reviews of this store online are pretty harsh but to be realistic this is clearly a store that does not care about repeat business or drawing in customers based on the lack of sale items, having virtually no meat department, having an incomplete produce department, and the high prices in general.
veteran+
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
Posts: 2233
Joined: January 3rd, 2015, 7:53 am
Has thanked: 1202 times
Been thanked: 71 times
Status: Offline

Re: Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by veteran+ »

Sounds like a store frozen in time.

lol

I bet this was a Pantry Pride store because the address sounds familiar and also because the old Goodings company but many many Pantry Prides.
pseudo3d
Posts: 3851
Joined: November 12th, 2015, 7:01 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 77 times
Status: Offline

Re: Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by pseudo3d »

I read that the store was entirely carpeted. Is this true?

I think part of the "nobody wants the space" problem is that there's just not enough competitors to justify it. Winn-Dixie and Publix both have (better, presumably) stores nearby, and neither Albertsons or Kroger are in the mood to buy another Florida store here (especially all the work that would need to go into it). Walmart NM might work, but they also probably have a Supercenter nearby, and if they do, that's a lot of competition for any supermarket to deal with.

I'm really surprised that they have Boar's Head at all, as the brand is strict on what stores have it and how it's merchandised.
BillyGr
Store Manager
Store Manager
Posts: 1578
Joined: October 5th, 2010, 7:33 pm
Been thanked: 58 times
Status: Offline

Re: Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by BillyGr »

Sounds like it makes sense for what it is - a store that is convenient for those visiting the area.

That would explain more ready to use items and less in categories like the meat, since many of the visitors might have a small fridge and microwave, but not as likely to be doing much "real cooking". Also things (like the HABA) that people may have forgotten to bring and need so will buy wherever they find them easiest, not so much by price.

Also some of the pricing could be explained by the fact that they aren't trying to compete with other markets, but rather be seen as a less costly option than a meal out or prices that theme park properties charge in their stores (for example, compare those pie slices @ $1.99 to what one would pay for a slice at a restaurant and it sounds like a deal).
storewanderer
Posts: 14379
Joined: February 23rd, 2009, 3:54 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 298 times
Contact:
Status: Offline

Re: Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by storewanderer »

Part of the store is carpeted and part has an old looking tile floor (ceramic tile, not standard retail tile). The carpet has some gum stuck to it in some spots but was not visibly dirty. The carpet looks worn in spots. They have two employees on duty in the middle of the night and part of their tasks involve vacuuming.

I do not necessarily agree with the 1.5 stars review on Yelp this store has. I would at least give it two stars. It was not nearly as bad as I expected it to be... but it was by no means a store I'd shop regularly. I bought water there and paid $1.49 and the same water was 75cents at Publix and 99cents at Winn Dixie. I am not too happy. The $1.49 would have been an okay price in California but it isn't okay in Florida.

There is a Winn Dixie less than a mile away. It is a mostly freestanding store closer to houses and obviously does more "local" business. The store was remodeled in the past 5 years and largely pathetic. For instance the refrigerated bakery case was filled with about 25% Lofthouse cookies. They had a donut/bagel/roll case but it had been disassembled and was filled with shelf stable items like crutons and such not even produced by the bakery department. They had a self serve wing/chicken tender bar operational. They had an island in front of deli that appeared to have been a salad bar; currently one side of it had prepackaged olives (not bulk) and the other side was filled with a wonderful assortment of condiments (napkins, ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, etc.) filling up the entire space that once housed salad. I was not impressed at all with this Winn Dixie and it reiterated my low opinion of the chain (which was then improved significantly by their new concept store in Jacksonville but that is for another post).
storewanderer
Posts: 14379
Joined: February 23rd, 2009, 3:54 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 298 times
Contact:
Status: Offline

Re: Goodings- Lake Buena Vista, FL

Post by storewanderer »

Went back to Goodings. Some changes from last year:

1. Employees now have shirts, name tags, and aprons that have the orange Gooding's logo embroidered onto them. Last year it was all generic uniforms with no logo.
2. Produce variety is increased substantially, specifically fruits. Most vegetables are still missing. Pricing is still absurd and freshness is somewhat questionable.
3. Bakery variety seems to have decreased but they still have a substantial amount of product out there (more than even a busy Winn Dixie or a typical Publix).
4. Credit/debit card processing is now being done through the cash register and is Swipe/Tap/Insert (last year they were using stand alone terminals separate from the register and were swipe only). There are only actually 3 checkstands with a cash register now (of 7 or 8 total checkstands), also there are some cash registers over in the liquor store too.
5. Carpet seemed a lot cleaner than before.

Still has virtually no meat department (had some case ready ground beef, some store cut ribeye steaks and store cut NY steaks and store cut boneless pork chops and some store packaged boneless skinless chicken breasts and that was the extent of meat).

The surrounding shopping center continues to be fully occupied and very busy with restaurant tenants, mostly chains.

The Winn Dixie 1/2 mile down the road outside the tourist beehive neighborhood continues to look pretty unhealthy, though very bright, neat, and clean. Salad bar is totally closed now part filled with Hormel products and part unfilled (that part appeared to be intended as an olive bar but not while I was there). The pharmacy appears to have been closed. Bakery has Hostess boxes filling what was intended to be the donut case. Winn Dixie sends such mixed signals depending which store you visit... some are good or perhaps even great, most though, not so good and range from dire to just "not so good."
Post Reply