Chops Meat Market

I don’t normally do reviews, but I felt the need to stem the tide on this page because this isn’t right.
Chops is one of a few places that sell discounted fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat in Dartmouth. Their prices are a little higher than Gateway, however their location is vastly more convenient. It’s not uncommon to be able to save 50% or more off conventional grocery store prices on their big sales of the week, and they have a huge selection of frozen vegetables (Frozen Edamame is a personal favorite). With the way the Canadian Dollar is — this place is a sort of price oasis — their prices haven’t really been impacted nearly as much as say, Walmart, Superstore or Sobeys. Their meat prices as well can be incredible.
I definitely agree with one of the reviews — the layout feels… off. The space was never designed to be a retail store and you can very much sense that. Aisles are narrow and the entire place has a sort of linear layout to it that can throw you off. You start on the right and work your way to the left — returning to a previous section to grab something can be difficult.
Their regular grocery items (chicken broth, canned goods) can range from decent to convenience store markup. It’s clear these items are not what the store is about, which is why it is surprising to see they chose to make them the first thing you see walking into the store. You have to walk past them to get to the best deals.
The staff are very kind and do their best, but it’s clear they suffer from a Point of Sale system that is either not user friendly, or not something they are trained extensively on. At one point, buying a gift card involved:
A) Asking the womans coworker
B) Asking the supervisor on shift
C) Calling who I presume to be the owner who walked them through the process over the phone
I chose to rate it 5 stars because for what it is, it is a great deal. It’s all about mindset — if you go in expecting Sobeys style aisle layout and selection, you will be disappointed. You don’t go grocery shopping for the ambiance however, you go grocery shopping because you need groceries, and the deals here are well worth the minor issues one might encounter.

Chops has some half decent prices and I’m glad that they carry fairly cheap gluten free bread on a regular basis. However, the staff there have no clue what they’re doing. My husband was getting groceries there and the computer froze at the check out as he was making a payment with his credit card. The employee insisted that the transaction didn’t go through, and rather than doing a hard boot (forced reboot), the employee didn’t know what to do so my husband was taken to another till and repeated the process.
Well, we got our credit card bill, and low and behold, we were charged two identical transactions. Normally, this isn’t a problem. Every single merchant that I have ever dealt with in my life just sees the double bill and refunds the money for one of them. Not so with Chops. My husband spoke with them, and I drove down and spoke with them myself, and they flat out refused to refund the money. They said that it’s not how they handle double billing. They said that we’re «supposed» to report it to our credit card as a disputed transaction and that they can’t do a refund to our card themselves.
THIS IS CRAZY.
This is why I love Gateway and Dave’s. They have employees that know what they’re doing, and good prices to go along with it.
Smarten up, Chops.

You know how sometimes you step into a store and the whole place just feels … off? Like it’s just a front for something? That was the feeling I experienced walking into Chops.
I don’t understand this place. It’s like someone robs random delivery trucks and brings whatever they find to Chops to sell. A small selection of canned vegetables, tampons, canned lunch meat, bags of pizza sauce … it’s such a mish-​mash of stuff, and 90% of it is from Quebec.
The meat? Just as strange a selection as their processed goods. Pork tongues, chicken gizzards, sick-​looking sausages. I wouldn’t touch anything from their meat section.
Produce? Is all shrink-​wrapped. They do have bags of potatoes, but guess what? They’re also from Quebec. This is a sketchy place and I see no reason to shop here with Gateway and Dave’s as well-​priced and legit options.