Giant Food

This place is disgusting! The people who work in there remind me of the monsters from the movie called ‘The Hills have Eyes.’ My gawd… it smelled like decayed souls in there. This strange guy that was waxing the floors followed me for 2 aisles. I will never ever ever come this this giant again.

Overall this is one of the best Giants around the well-​stocked everything is clean I enjoy their fresh vegetable section and the fresh seafood prices are really reasonable especially on some of their generic items. They usually have adequate check out capabilities. They’re open 24 hours a day which is a huge plus if you need something late.

This is the main grocery store I use because of proximity. There are some pluses: the store is large and plenty of room in the isles to pass other shoppers, big selection of products, beer, wine, and decent deals on everyday products. Where this place falls short is it’s selection on fresh seafood and meats. If I’m going to get seafood or steak I usually make the trip to Wegmans. The place can look a little ghetto, I always like to tag my produce with the automatic weight machines so checkout is faster, but the machines are always out of order or disheveled. Probably the biggest drawback of this place are the people who shop here. I estimate the average shopper’s IQ is about 70. If you watch the people who attempt to use the self checkout lines, you would think they were required solve a calculus equation before being able to pay for their groceries. I have seen all of the lines occupied with people at one time and they were all staring blankly at the screens. So patience when checking out here is a virtue. Also I don’t recommend driving your brand new Maserati or Bentley here, because if you go here frequently enough, one of the knuckleheads trying to drive in the parking lot will run into your car. We’ve been run into 3 times… And our car was parked, sitting still. Happens all the time. Have fun and shop safely.

This Giant is large, bright, clean and doesn’t have a smell, which for me matters. My go to grocery store is Trader Joes, especially for the fresh produce, but when I can’t find something in Trader Joes I come to this Giant. There are a bunch of other shops in this strip mall so you can run almost all of your errands here.
Be careful with their fruits and vegetables Last week I bought avocados here and I was so disappointed because half of it was brown when I cut it open later that day. Never again. I’ll just drive the less than half to TJ’s.
Anyway, giant carries good deals and if you drive a lot their gas-​points program is great. At one point I remember saving 30 cents per gallon. It’s a good neighborhood grocery store at a good location with plenty of available parking and friendly (deli) associates.

The bakery staff was so nice. Provided an excellent customer service experience, making a beautiful cake for my son with last minute notice. Really impressed with Robin and Kevin.

I had only 5 minutes there. But I’m gonna write a review anyway.
This one is as big as other supermarkets. If you get a membership, you can get many special prices.

It’s pretty decent. Most of the time, they have what I want. It’s pretty large and the staff is nice.
The only thing I don’t recommend is buying your fruits and veggies here. Several times I’ve seen moldy strawberries and others while shopping. Additionally, the fruits and veggie are not really okay quality, but you pay what you get.
Overall, it’s a decent and conveniently located supermarket.

If you want to know what shopping at a postapocalytic grocery store would be like, this is your place. I felt as if I needed to carry around a shotgun to protect my cart from raiders in motorcycle leather, for God’s sake.
This Giant is surrounded by two extremely excellent Safeway stores and an equally excellent Trader Joe’s. In defiance of this competition, this Giant is probably the dirtiest, most utterly unpleasant, and ultimately most unappetizing grocery store I’ve been to in a long time. While the store is clean, it somehow still feels dirty and old, like the set from the movie Cashback (minus the naked girls). While I’m sure the appeal to this Giant is to be as cheap as possible, it certainly makes you feel like you’re going cheap, to the point where I actually began checking the boxed food for bad expiration dates.
Don’t bother going here. Go to Safeway or Trader Joe’s and, if you’re price conscious, just buy store brands or something.

Pretty impressive, compared to groceries from the NW. large, well lit, and well stocked store. easy to locate things for a first timer like me. prices were comparable to Safeway… and you have to have their club card (again like Safeway) to save even more. customer service was very nice/​friendly. only complaint was that i saw they had Boar’s Head meat, but for the love I could not locate the Boar’s Head cheese.

Having lived in the Arlington area about 7 years off and on and being a person who shops for food at a variety of locations, this Giant has stood as one of the best. It’s had its inconveniences such as hassles caused by remodeling (though that improved the look and organization of the layout) and it had all of the lights out during a blackout once. I don’t really consider those genuine issues but circumstantial. If anything, the only problem I really have now is the lines are long but that is everywhere since our boom in population. Parking lot being poorly lit, meh I’ve never heard of any problems or seen anything sketchy. The EBT slowness I’ve been experiencing at the Penrose Giant which is really not acceptable and needs to be dealt with, stat.
Personally, I feel this Giant is the best around Arlington. They always have what I want, it’s easy to find things (though they do tend to keep moving some sections around which is a little annoying) but what really shines is their international section. HUGE. Diverse. I shop at a variety of international grocery stores and stores that carry such foods and this Giant has the most while still being contender for regular groceries. The only other store that comes close to this is Shoppers Food Warehouse but they don’t have the other reason I go to Giant which is to stock up on their library of inexpensive frozen vegetables. Wegman’s would be my favorite if it wasn’t for their frozen veggie selection and driving out to Dulles weekly is not an agenda I want.
Though, nowadays I never go to just one grocery store for all of my needs. Different ones for different items, but if I need to get a lot of stuff, closeby yet not sacrificing satisfaction for locality, this is my go-​to grocery store and unless we get a new kid on the block, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

The Giant staff is always very helpful. I’ve been shopping at this Giant for probably 30 years. I appreciate the meat department and one of the personnel there, Manuel, especially… Several of the checkers are outstanding .very fast. Appreciate all the help. I like the idea of having the products listed by location on a sheets of bond paper and available to carry with me when I shop… easier to find what I am looking for. Wish the pharmacy hours would return to what they were previously. that is, open until 9PM on Saturday and Sunday instead of closing on 5PM on those days. Pharmacy always helpful. Thank you Susan Harris

They are always out of everything here milk, bread, any random BASIC item if you come here you end up having to go to other stores to «finish» your shopping. THEY NEVER HAVE YELLOW BANANAS ONLY GREEN. They recently closed down FOUR other local grocery stores so management knows that and that more people will be shopping here but they dont even bother to ORDER MORE FOOD. They had problems even before the 4 other stores closed but you would think that common sense would have told them that they have to be better at ordering more and STOCKING more. PLEASE dear lord tell me why they dont have over night stock people you cant even more in here there are so many people then add the stockers and it’s a total mess. This place is an utter nightmare over crowded, understaffed and under supplied. I would rather drive 6 miles to another store.

This is my Publix of the north now…‘cept not as good! BUt, it’s the store of choice and I ‘m always able to get what I need and find savings as well. This particular store has been upgraded as I’ve been coming here off and on for decades. It’s newer and brighter and front end lines are accommodated by the many lanes open. The staff is most helpful too!

Only one full serve checkout. The rest are self serve. If you have a full cart or are behind someone with a full cart it takes forever. Don’t go here unless you like long lines, no service, and high prices.

Just went today (Columbus Day) to pick up a few things. There was a HUGE problem at checkout. First, they only had a few cashiers on hand for a lot of federal holiday shoppers.
But even worse than that, there were 2 food stamp/​WIC/​whatever welfare bums in front of me. It took at least 10 – 12 minutes per welfare bum for their taxpayer-​provided food to be given to them.
At one point, the cashier had to run a paper check through some 1987-​esque dot matrix looking printer, sign it, etc. – for a single item of food. This was repeated three times for the welfare bum in question.
Considering my tax dollars pay for these welfare bums to get free food on my dime, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that I not be trapped in line behind them for 10 – 12 minutes each. Giant, fix this. Either do something to your computers or, as would make more sense, make the welfare bums go to their own damned line so the productive people of the world can get on with our damned day.

Its several grocery stores on King Street and as far as Giant’s go this is the best one. Its clean, well lit, they have variety and are always well stocked. They actually have a seafood department and a meat department which is GREAT for me! Self-​checkout lines the only downside is the parking sometimes it can be a hassle due to the high traffic and also the fact it shares a parking lot with other high volume stores (Tjmaxx, Burlington, Home Goods, Auto Parts store etc.) Very good location, the staffs friendly and its CLEAN!

Thanks to Giant’s gas rewards points this is my go-​to grocery store, but I do cheat on them from time to time as competitors often have better weekly sales on items.
They just completed a complete overhaul of the store. While sections such as produce and bakery are a lot more inviting, the center of the store is a mess with odd length aisles, poor signage and just general disorganization. The store is always amazingly clean though.
It also pays to check shelf pricing here. I buy a number of items that are shelved in both the organic aisle and in the general grocery aisle for the same item. I’ve noticed often that the shelf pricing says one thing in one place and something entirely different in the other — so you don’t know which is actually in the computer and there are none of those free standing price check scanners.
I love my weekly exchanges with the gentleman who takes care of the produce section. The stocking staff is very accommodating and has frequently checked to see if they have anymore of an item for me or helped get things off the top shelf when you need to be talk enough to reach all the way to the back (which I’m definitely not). Cashiers are hit and miss and I definitely have my favorites who understand that a can of coconut milk doesn’t belong in the same bag as fresh tomatoes. Store management is very good though and responsive when customers raise issues.
They must be doing something right — I’m here nearly every week despite 5 closer grocery stores to my home.

This Giant is fantastic. It’s always clean and the layout is consistent. I live walking distance and do all my shopping here. Good deals, nice employees, and the lines in self check out are almost always clear. Overall I’d say this is the place to get groceries I the Skyline area

At first, I thought Giant’s handheld grocery scanners were an unnecessary gimmick (the idea is that you scan your groceries as you go, then use the data on the scanner to checkout in under a minute).
Enter Harris Teeter: after Mr. QWERTY and I had quite a case of sticker shock at checkout, I realized that the handheld scanners are quite, well, handy. We know exactly how we’re doing, how much the bill is rising, and whether we’re within budget. I can’t go for groceries without them now.
I don’t know if other Giant stores have these scanners; FWIW I’ve never seen them at any of Giant’s competitors.

On Saturday I needed to go to the grocery store. Not your average quick trip, more of a full blown I need everything because my refrigerator looks like it’s in eastern Germany pre-​1989. My usual method is to grab my cart and walk down to the store, but it was raining on Saturday. And it was cold. I hatched a brilliant plan.
I have no car and not much more money, so I know how to get around this town for cheaper. After midnight, all Zipcars are half off. This is when I decided that my roommate and I should spend our Saturday evening (more like late night) grocery shopping. After convincing her that my wild idea could work we booked our car (if you are willing to walk further to a car you can get an even better deal! Hello $ 3.88 per hour!).
We set out towards McLean to the «24 Hour» Giant. Epic fail. They aren’t open 24 hours. Then we accomplished probably our greatest fête: We got ourselves over to Bailey’s Crossroads to the other 24 hour Giant. That took skill.
After an hour delay we finally arrived to get our shop on at 1 am. Grocery store was huge which was nice and we had a good time filling up the cart even though my mental list of what I was spending got too high to keep track of. When we finally went up to check out we let everyone go ahead of us because we knew that we would take a while and most people only had one item to purchase. This is where the experience went downhill.
One overweight lady who we let go in front of us ask if all we were buying was junk food. First off, no, just because you see a lot of cereal doesn’t mean its all unhealthy. Secondly, who are you to talk? Right after she said this she starts talking to her friend about her recent weight gain of 30 lbs and how she is now at 248. Please don’t make me feel guilty for my package of chips ahoy.
After getting rung up, I hand over the coupons that I clip out (yes, I really am that cheap) and apply for a Giant card to get those savings. It still rang up for $ 250, not good at all, but I figured it was enough food to last for a long time so it was alright. When I get home I looked at my savings that they print at the bottom. Usually when I spend $ 100 I have over $ 25 in savings. At Giant, I only had $ 15. Say what? That is no good. They need to have better deals and discounts to keep me as a customer.
To sum up my long long review:
Nice store, friendly staff, unfriendly patrons, and terrible deals. At least the car was cheap.