The Giant in Bartonsville opened about a month ago and I have stopped by twice to check the place out. Many of the supermarkets in the Stroudsburg-ish area are older, smaller and have narrow isles. The new Giant has large isles, a wide selection of food(I picked up some tasty healthy frozen soups that I haven’t seen at other local supermarkets), and is overall just more modern, as you would expect with any new store.
As much as I dislike the expansion of the area in the past few years, I secretly applaud the competition that new stores bring. Case-in-Point, the new Giant has a gas station and offers you a certain amount off your gas purchase depending on the amount you spend in the store. It’s available in a lot of areas, it’s similiar to the turkey discounts near the holidays or the % off your total bill. Prior to the Giant being built none of the supermarkets in the area offered discounted gas, the only place I knew of was the Giant down in Wind Gap.
Over the summer Weis (which has recently dropped the Mr. Z’s it seems) started requiring you to sign up for a new discount card saying that the old cards will no longer be available to use for discounts. That alone I thought was pretty untechnology-friendly on their part, how they couldn’t transfer old users to the ‘new cards’ without requiring everyone to resign up is beyond me. I went and was able to get my Giant card that was still on file from 7+ years ago when I lived in an area that had them.
So Weis new card went hand in hand with their promotion to get discounts off gas (the same way Giant and other supermarkets have for years). The only problem…there was no gas stations near those supermarkets, at least not within a good 30 minutes of the ones I shop at. The Giant was being built, with a gas station and I guess Weis finally started to get their act in gear and opened up a gas station on 611 near the Weis that is located near the Stroud mall. Up in Mount Pocono I noticed they also opened a Shop Rite gas station right up the street from the Shop Rite.
In the case of supermarkets the competition of Giant coming into the Stroudsburg area looks like it has made it’s competitors step up their game. Hopefully the prices stay competitive(it seems the Giant is a bit more expensive), there needs to be some type of trade off as the “natural” parts of the Poconos get run over with new businesses the least it can do is provide the area with some discounts!
Change is inevitable and growth at a time when the economy is slow and people are losing their jobs (or struggling to find new ones), to know that we live in an area that is actually EXPANDING and providing new jobs is slightly comforting.
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