C S.
Yelp
It's a good idea, but we're not impressed with this place after numerous, numerous visits. Final nail in the coffin -- I just rounded up the glass milk bottles to return. I paid a deposit of $2 on each bottle when I bought the milk. Well, the cashier guy told me they don't give cash back for the bottle deposits -- ONLY STORE CREDIT. Period. I had to find items that added up to the amount of cash deposits. He made a big deal out of giving me the 2 pennies that were due to me when the amount of my stuff was 2 cents short, because the product prices didn't add up exactly to the amount due to me. Really?! It was just ridiculous. I've never heard of such a policy, and felt totally ripped off and frankly, kind of harrassed. I felt like he was trying to get me to buy more stuff in the store, and was irritated when I didn't purchase enough. At that point, I didn't want anything - just wanted to see this place in my rearview mirror. In the end, I exchanged the bottles for some prepared bean dip and some prepared pesto sauce, which I don't want or need. (Did not need any produce at the time).
I will never buy milk (or anything else) from them again. If you're going to take cash deposits for glass milk bottles, provide cash deposits back. This BS about only giving store credit for the cash deposits is desperate, and most likely against Oregon state law.
This brings me to my second complaint about this place -- the prepared foods have no expiration dates or "sell-by" or "made on" dates on them. Once, when I asked a clerk about this, she just seemed to guess at how long the product had been in the cooler. Totally unprofessional operation. She told me to be sympathetic b/c they're "figuring all this out" and they "had to start from scratch and figure out EVERYTHING ourselves." She seemed to have fallen right off the truck of total idealism and naivete -- 'hey, let's plant some stuff and make it organic and then make some stuff with it in the kitchen and sell it! And how in the world do we sell it? Let's invent the wheel! Yeah, isn't that so cool?!'
When referring to 'figuring out everything ourselves' the clerk seemed to be talking about the straightforward act of setting up a shop to sell things, which hundreds of thousands of people do every year and have for thousands of years. It's not rocket science and guess what? Others have done it so you just find out how it's done and do it.
Sell by or made on or expiration dates aren't a new innovation. And they're required by law, no?
And beyond just missing important date stamps, the pesto sauce I was forced to exchange for my bottles doesn't even have a label of any sort on it - no ingredients list, product name, nothing. Just a cheap plastic container with green stuff in it.
I've given up on buying anything from here because interactions revealed such cluelessness it was painful. And the products, like this dumb pesto sauce, aren't labeled appropriately. If you're going to try to run a simple store, get someone who has at least a small clue. Who owns this place? They need to get their act together and put a professional staff in place, and fix their various flawed systems.
And for god's sake - if you're taking cash deposits on glass bottles, give cash back when they're returned. Read the Oregon Bottle Bill for starters.