ClownLoach wrote: ↑November 15th, 2023, 6:55 pm
I have sent in complaints to Kroger twice about their operation at this store, both health specific concerns, and they send worthless form letter responses indicating that they didn't even read my concern. Thus now if I see anything unsanitary I will just tell them to stop, tell them what I saw them do which was unsafe, and if there is product that I felt unsafe about I will tell them I refuse to take it and they need to throw it away. But it isn't always easy to spot based on where the slicers are versus the high cases at the counter. Only other place in town with Boars Head is Sprouts and of course the closest location is a disgusting dump; the other location which is about as far as possible from my house is very well run but is too inconvenient at almost 15 miles away and terrible traffic. The only other Ralphs here is even further away.
It takes mere seconds to wipe the surface under the slicer with sanitizer, wipe it again with dry paper towel, and then lay down the sheet of sanitary plastic. Putting the sanitary plastic over existing meat juice and particles is not acceptable but they keep trying to do it, all that contamination now goes into the zip-lock bag to spread through the product. I think the "Deli Manager" at Kroger stores spends all their time hiding in the back prep room so that they don't have to do real work like servicing the public.
They won't throw the product away though, they will just throw it into the "prepack" area.
I can't see the slicer or much of the process at Sprouts due to how its deli is designed.
The deli manager in one of the Smiths here has been there since the store opened and is constantly working, overtime most weeks as Kroger is very generous with overtime at least at Smiths and has been for years, but when you have constant employee turnover and constant paperwork/red tape imposed on you by Kroger you only have so much time to train and watch the employees... it comes down to getting the right employees into deli who understand and care about food safety. They don't pay enough to get people who care to stick around, other departments are easier work and have higher pay rates. This is a problem across many chains. Deli should in my opinion pay more even than raw meat, raw meat has gotten a lot easier over the years due to the increased processing of meat, increased case ready meat, more and more boneless slab meats (fewer big bone in slabs that require more skill to cut). These Kroger deli managers have a lot of different programs to deal with between Boar's Head, Murray's Cheese, "Home Chef," now some stores are on a fresh pizza program, among others. Recently they changed the fried chicken recipe (which Kroger is hand breading in store) to a double breading process so now that takes twice as long as before. No labor is added. Also Kroger can't seem to figure out if they want to do sandwich prep in store or have sandwiches come from a commissary but when you are trying to run a deli if you have a sandwich program you need to have a sandwich program everyday because that is a bar to clean, stock, vegetables to clean/prepare, etc., and to just do that some random days when the stuff from the commissary doesn't show up messes up the flow of an already messy flowing deli. And of course no labor is added for the random days/weeks when deli needs to prepare sandwiches as the labor model assumes commissary use.
These delis need to cut a lot of excess programs and get back to basics.
