Key Food

What a horror it is to shop here. Milk was rancid, eggs broken, shelves a mess, service despicable, prices far too high for the terrible quality of the food, and the worst part is that management doesn’t give a damn. The AM manager on Saturday lost his temper when I tried to exchange a rancid Key Food milk for a fresh one. Just imagine if you were on the receiving end of his viperous disrespect for a customer.

It is disappointing to find out there is no decent supermarket in the Rego park forest hills area. Crowded, not clean and nothing looked appetizing. The meat department was very disappointing. I will use fresh direct and pea pod. Thank god for these two grocery delivery businesses.
I think one of the better supermarket companies would find this area a good place to open.

Yup, no changes since my last review. Their prices still frequently scan higher than marked and their sale items don’t register. There are a lot of older customers who shop here and they may not be so keen on observing these discrepancies and who are getting ripped off as a result. This makes it all the more shameful that they have not corrected these issues.

I don’t know why I’m so lazy, but Key Food is my go to supermarket when I don’t have a car to go to Trader Joe’s instead. The long and short — it’s dirty, the produce rots the day you get it and while the meat selection is fine, you don’t get the feeling it’s the freshest or best quality you can get. For boxed items, drinks, etc, it’s fine, but also much more expensive than other nearby groceries. If it’s an emergency, go for it. Otherwise I’d head over to Natural on Austin or Trader Joe’s on Metropolitan.

I only come here because I live across the street. The prices are pretty high (unless it’s on sale). The produce is the worst I’ve seen, in both selection and freshness. You regularly see rotting fruit and vegetables. The store is pretty big for a neighborhood store. I just wish the store give up and close, and bring in a real supermarket with people that knows how to run it.

Since Key Food has taken over where Walbaums was on 35^th avenue, it’s been a much better experience shopping. It’s cleaner, shelves are stocked and they have much more of a variety of products.

Attention Unilocalers, Watch out when they ring up your items always ringing higher price than what it is marked, never fails so far
First of all I go here for walking convenient :’(
fruit selection is OK, definitely can improve on vegetables
Decent beer selections but I don’t really drink beer.
I just do light shopping here like cereals milk fruits bacon yes bacon I love bacon
I’m giving three stars because seems to be better then few small stores around here and definitely better than C town!

I shop at this store regularly because it’s the only show in town that carries some of the items I need. But that doesn’t mean I like it. The aisles are cramped, the people stocking the shelves are often rude and the selection and prices are by no means the best.
But what really bothers me is how they try to get customers to buy expired items. You really have to look close at the dates. This is true of packaged produce, meats and dairy products. They’ll push all the expired items to the front and have the fresher ones way in the back. There’s no excuse for this. It’s just says that management doesn’t give a damn about the customer.

A little bigger than the average ones I’ve gone to but they did try selling long expired salad dressing on the shelf. That is a safety hazard & a lawsuit waiting to happen. It’s one thing to use that stuff if it’s been sitting in your house & you got it before the expired date; it’s quite another to offer it up for full price on the grocery store shelf. Quality control, anyone?

A supermarket fitting the standard mold of a Key Food. Larger than independent markets in the area but not spacious like the big box markets. While aisles are on the narrow side, very high ceilings open up the space. Items are always stocked neat and organized.
Merchandise is likewise standard for outer borough NYC. There’s more than sufficient representation for anything one might want from a neighborhood supermarket. More exotic ingredients and produce won’t likely be found here. There’s a small stock of higher end options for some items, reflecting more affluent tastes in the neighborhood (eg, Kensington condiments). Organic produce is limited while fresh bread selection is slightly better. There is no particular ethnic focus, with a small selection each of Asian and Hispanic foods.
For myself, the surprisingly good craft beer choices keeps my refrigerator stocked. There are plenty of mainstream beers, but also a good rotating selection of domestic craft beers (e.g., Founders, Bell’s, Lagunitas, Avery, Rogue) along with some classic imports (e.g., Chimay, La Chouffe), many Eastern European beers, and occasional oddities like an Icelandic brew. Ommegang’s are very well represented and they always carry the newest releases.
The deli is fine for meats and cheeses, stocking Boar’s Head, but the prepared food selection can vary in quality, and has been mostly disappointing, including an inexplicably and inedibly sour potato salad and bland broccoli salad.
The shopping experience is generally good but best to avoid when crowded as navigation gets difficult, and check-​out, as with most of these types of markets, tends to be slow. Staff do their job. Prices as expected for the area; not cheap but not unreasonably high. This Key Food has become a routine stop because of proximity to home and a decent shopping experience.

The horrid reviews go back many years — and obviously the owner/​management cares NOT. Besides the things brought up in many of the other reviews — you must look at the labels — almost half of what I pick off the shelf has expired, the «organic» section usually consists of rotted veggies; incorrect prices ring up all the time; the store is just old and dirty — but the worst thing of all is the nasty attitudes of the staff. Even the management is disrespectful — you know, young nasty punks who work in an aging neighborhood — they think they are cute being mean to elderly people — mocking them — and the fact is if I had to rely on this place to eat, I would starve. Todays nastiness was the last I would want to witness — it is sad that people who cannot get to other better food stores, rely on this place and have to take this staff abuse. Pretty much for the milk & cheese i buy here, I can go to CVS for the same thing — and the staff is much nicer. And for a real week’s worth of shopping — I will just drive somewhere else.

I haven’t had a bad experience here, so three stars for an average Key Food. No reason to go here unless it’s convenient.

Fair variety of foods, and good prices

I only come here when I’m in the area and absolutely desperate. The layout is just impossible to navigate. Do not browse here. Do not linger. You need to know what you want, know where it is, and get out. Aisles are uncomfortably narrow since the space is really more appropriate for a convenience store– not a supermarket. Coming after work hours is a flat out clusterfuck as a result of them packing merchandise into every feasible space. For instance, there isn’t an aisle for potato chips– instead all the chips are on end caps spanning 3 different aisles, because that’s where they fit. This places makes the Trader Joe’s locations in Manhattan feel downright luxurious in their roominess.
On the plus side they carry Boars Head meats and pickles, as well as Garden of Eatin Chips, Naked Juice, Raos sauces, a decent selection of Asian condiments, and perogies.

I understand there are limits on how much an urban grocery store can stock, but often I can’t seem to get simple things (cocoa powder?!) at Key Food. In addition, I have had meat and produce spoil within a day of bringing it home, I have bought expired canned products without realizing it, and I have opened canned foods that appeared to have been stored in poor conditions (I’m guessing too warm), causing noticeable problems in texture.
Finally, the staff (and management) seem not to care. I once had two checkers carry on a conversation throughout ringing up my order and the guy in the other lane’s order. Normally, as a chatty person myself, I wouldn’t mind this as long as it was a conversation for everyone. Unfortunately, it was in a foreign language. This basically left me and the other guy standing there helplessly waiting for them to wrap-​up and finish our orders. I have lost count of how many times I have bagged my entire order myself — I’m happy to help, but isn’t bagging part of the checker’s job description? And I have had multiple male workers wink at me, something I’m not normally sensitive to (in fact, I kind of appreciate the acknowledgement), but their attempts give me the creeps. Management is often walking back and forth yelling at employees, at each other, and generally making a racket. Somehow I, the customer, always seem to be in their way. Although it’s the closer store to me, I will be trying out Met Food up the street for a few trips to assess a permanent switch.

An old-​fashioned, pre-​World War Two urban-​type supermarket which means that it’s built into an urban fabric so it doesn’t have any off-​street parking so you’d better bring your granny cart.
Still, I enjoy coming here because unlike a bigger, airplane-​hanger sized market, I can shop here with greater succinctness, also, since this is an urban market they tend to carry smaller sizes of products that are geared more towards single adults rather than families and yes, the staff is always helpful and professional.
The prices on the frozen «Golden» brand blintzes and potato pancakes are a real-​rip off however the Key Food brand frozen vegetables do represent good value and often enough go on special.
Also, for the money, I consistently get the best avocados here of any other place I’ve ever shopped at. Overall the produce section, especially for vegetables (summer fruits such as plums, peaches and nectarines could be better) while a bit small is very, very good; this is rather amazing since the middle of the block was torn down and one of the merchants was a green-​grocer so you’d think that the supermarket would be more likely to «take advantage» of such a situation by being more of a rip-​off but to their credit they’ve actually improved.
I also like the deli counter; the clerks here always nail my requested portion size, unlike another place that I shop at where they always go over (sometimes really significantly) my requested weight. I also like that they carry German-​style potato salad (oil & vinegar) but a lot of the other prepared deli-​foods are so-​so however, for the money, they are, I would suppose, still a good value.
The also have a good selection of high-​quality jams and jellies and some very good packaged specialty breads that I enjoy but they don’t carry any really good natural peanut butter; if you’re a beer lover they have a pretty good selection of imported and domestic «craft» beer.
The meat department seems to have gotten better; I just got a steak that was, for supermarket meat, very, very good.
My one big complaint is that there is TONS of out-​of-​date food on the shelves; you’ve really got to watch for this; I have, more than once, picked up a cottage cheese that was around a WEEK out-​of-​date!!!
If it weren’t for this, I’d give this market four stars.

My wife and I have lived in Forest Hills for 15 years. Every time we go to this grocery store we wish we hadn’t. Then we swear we won’t go back again, but sometimes when we’re out, and passing by for convenience we go in, and then once again we wish we didn’t. today was one of those times. We bought groceries at 3:15pm. We asked to have them delivered. By 4:30pm the groceries still had not arrived. I called the store to ask where the delivery was. The store manager rather than handling my inquiry himself gives me the delivery man’s phone number. We call him, he doesn’t answer — of course. So I call the store manager back and simply ask him what the delivery policy is for the store. He speaks gibberish and then says «30 minutes and 60 minutes» I tell him that makes no sense and to clarify, upon which he hangs up on me. I call back again he picks the phone up and hangs up right away. I call back again and get a gum chewing teenager who explains to me that they are not my «slaves». I simply want to know where my groceries are now that an hour and 45 minutes has transpired from the time of purchase, and still can’t get a mature answer from anybody. Finally my wife and I decide to go back to the store and get a credit since we purchased on a credit card. When we went to the store I asked to speak to the store manager who refused to come out and speak to me. But I don’t blame him after hanging up on me three times i would act like a coward too. Avoid this store. There prices are often mis marked — to the stores advantage of course, poor attitude from the cashiers, management that obviously doesn’t care and extremely poor delivery service. Go to Met food up the block. Their manager treats you great. This Key Food is simply awful!!! I would give them zero stars but that appears not to be an option.
Thomas Forest Hills

Two stars because its slightly better than its other branch down the road, but i bought chicken and beef from there on a monday night, came home from work tuesday night to make dinner and the beef had begun to turn grey brown and stink and the chicken reaked and smelled bad.
Never never never buying meat here again! Between Time Warner Cable and Key Food, I am constantly reminded how much i miss living on Long Island. Please give me Pathmark!
Now i have to trek to Whole Foods and haul it all back to the Hills because of this. Or waste my whole day off waiting for Peapod or Fresh Direct to bring fresh groceries to my apartment. GRRRR
Edit: also wanted to add that this place has no rhyme or reason to the order of the aisles and the layout is completely counter cognitive. I swear i have paced this stupid place for 20 minutes looking for freaking risotto. Sometimes some of us just wanna come home from a long day at work and make some damn risotto with mushrooms and truffle oil.

Very limited selection on most items, like one or two brands max. The cashiers and «customer service» desk staff are all surly, and tend to throw my purchases into the bag rather than placing them.
Unless you’re into existential angst go somewhere else.

Recently renovated to expand the interior which makes Key Food appear more modern and updated. Its image is almost a knock-​off from Stop & Shop. However, this location does not have any parking for its patrons.
The selection of brand names is somewhat limiting for lack thereof choices. However, they have a fairly decent selection for their international food aisle which is important as this is the Big Apple where diversity is great. I rate it three stars for it does not have the same vibe as Stop & Shop.
They recently have a rewards club card program modeled by other retailers. This location sits directly on «The Boulevard of Death» (aka Queens Boulevard).