Giant Food

Unfortunately another Giant bites the dust and this particular Giant was my most frequent location! This store was only one stop light away from my condo and provided everything. It was particularly helpful for last minute cooking ingredients and stress relief aka beer. I never had a bad experience here. Hopefully another grocery chain will locate here!

If my other review for this location still shows up, I must apologize as my sense of direction was skewed. That review was for the Duke Street location. Not this one.
This location gets 3 stars because it’s not huge, it’s not amazing, and it’s in desperate need of a makeover.
This is one of those stores you might find on a vacation up in Wisconsin where they have the staples and some extras which are nice, but they don’t carry everything you need. I would have liked to visit this location more frequently since it was down the street, but I was never sure if they’d have what I needed (usually something specific for baking) so I didn’t want to waste my time.

Neighborhood Grocery store! Its a hit or miss sometimes they have what you need sometimes they dont! Nothing amazing about this place

My husband and I visit this Giant usually to pick up certain items, but over the weekend we went there to do our weekly grocery shopping, which in hindsight was a bad idea. As others have mentioned this particular store is quite small and looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while (70s/​80s). The produce left much to be desired as I was able to find the basics (i.e.: potatoes, yams, bananas, etc.) but was unable to find other things (i.e.: squash – it’s in season! and brussel sprouts). The meat section was sparse to say the least as they did not have much variety as far as the steaks were concerned, but they had plenty of chicken breasts and ground turkey. Overall, I would say this Giant would fit the bill as far as picking up some last minute staples, but for a family grocery trip I would definitely go elsewhere.

This is THE smallest Giant store I’ve ever stepped foot into. The aisles were tight and organization was strange. Some of the meat didn’t look fresh. I feel fortunate this isn’t my local grocery store.

Some facts about this Giant:
This Giant is in Bradlee shopping center. Parking can be a pain in the bum the lot is full lots of times. It has not been painted/​updated since the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, so it looks well warn. Despite its old looks it is clean. It is tiny. It will most likely have food stuff you can’t find any were else, and did not know you needed it until you see it. This is not likely to be your weekly shopping trip store; however I have seen people here doing there weekly shopping. There is no bakery counter. There is no pharmacy. There is a small deli counter, they do sell rotisserie chicken in the evening sometimes. the fruit and veg. is small but mostly fresh.
My review:
When I’m at Bradlee and need to grab something or just feeling like seeing whats cheap in Giant I drop in this store. I find lots of reduced meat for super cheap, and most of it is local. I’m not a regular Giant shopper I think its pricey over Safeway and Harris Teeter, but then I tend to buy whats on sale. Checking out here can be slow or fast just depends on who is working. Its been a long time sense I have encountered a rude employee at this store. Variety wise I find this giant to have what I want mostly, and somethings I didn’t know I needed like cool seasonal food stuff most big stores don’t carry, ex Martinelli’s spiced cider pouches (little tea bags of spices it add to your cup of hot cider). I always feel like i have stepped back in time at this store and I like that, it ‘s nice to go in to a grocery store and not feel like its a walmart; Giant is locally owned once more and this store fells that.

I use this Giant to pick up last minute items after work. It’s nearby and a far better alternative to McGruder’s, but I do not do my grocery shopping here. The store is much smaller than any others in the immediate area, and the selection is smaller. It hasn’t been renovated seemingly in a long time, as contrasted with the Giant on S Jefferson Street or on Duke Street, both of which are fantastic. It does just fine, though, for picking up a few items from time to time.
I will say that the one time I stopped in to pick up some lunch meat from the deli, the lady damn near sliced me ham steaks rather than deli meat. I’m not one of those super picky, «it must be shaved so thin you can see through it» types, but the ham was legitimately between 1/​16″ and 1/​8″ thick. Pull out a ruler and look at that. That’s ridiculous.
More recently I wen to pick up a couple of those Butterball pre-​packaged lunch meat containers, and was surprised to find they were past their sell-​by dates. 11 days past. About half of the packages on the shelf. I carried a few of them up to the front with me and told the manager, «Hey, I’m not mad or anything, but these are well past their sell-​by date and are still on the shelves. You need to do something about this.» He looked at it, agreed, and went off to rectify the situation, presumably yelling at someone. It looked like he handled the situation correctly after the fact, but meat, of all things, should never be on the shelves after the sell-​by date.
So, while this isn’t nearly as bad as McGruder’s, I limit my shopping here to minor visits, and I always make sure I check the freshness dates.

PROS: Clean
CONS: Slow non-​existent checkers — sparse stocking, small
This store feels like it belongs in South Philly or Manhattan somewhere … it has that old, musty, belongs in a crowded downtown area where real-​estate is expensive and hard to come by … not in a shopping center strip-​mall along I-​395 … Bradlee Center is one of the more underdeveloped and underachieving strip-​malls in Alexandria (outside maybe Landmark area) … but for what it is worth, this place has groceries … if you need the basics, they are all here, they try to occasionally traverse the larger chain status by having a deli and fresh made soups/​chili but fail miserably and usually cancel any foray before it lasts longer than a week or two.
Oh and the checker people are slow and sparsely staffed, plan for 20 – 30 minutes just to check out.

This location is small. Think half the size of your typical Giant grocery store.
No RedBox here either. At least it has a PNC ATM.

I went to this Giant for the first time last night and was pretty impressed. I was told it was old and dirty but had a recent renovation. I walked in and the place was quite clean and spaced out.
The produce was great and the isles were stocked. I didn’t have a problem getting everything I needed which is hard to say for other Giants and Safeways in the Arlington/​Alexandria area.
Parking wasn’t a problem either as the store was pretty empty. There were only 3 isles open for checking out (and no self-​checkout) but I didn’t have to wait very long. The workers are also extremely nice which was extremely refreshing!