Carrefour - Horrible Food Quality

[hawthorne]

Barfoo is not only going down hill in LOS but we have noticed the downfall in Middle East countries as well. Our fresh meats are all frozen and not worth buying. The veggies seem to come from the bottom of the box.

They seem more interested in selling non-food products around here.

We have Lulu Hypermarket that is taking most of Barfoos business not sure if they have hit Thailand yet. Great Quality and very good pricing.

[culicine]

Food quality generally depends on turnover. Very busy shops will invariably have better quality food. I've shopped at all shops on Chanegwattana with no problems at any of them - carrefour, tesco, big c, tops, villa, foodland. I go to carrefour as its closest. Obviously they target different markets so the range of products varies between shops.

The food at the villa, Nichada Thani, with a lower turnover, had more out of date food, bread verging on stale etc.

[dttk0009]

I'm definitely going to snap some photos and send off those letters. From my experiences, as of right now, I would rank the supermarkets in this order:

1. Villa Market

2. Foodland

3. Tops

4. Tesco

5. Carrefour

My experiences with Villa Market have been very good, but then again the nearest Villa Market for me is in a "high-so" zone with houses starting at 100 million Baht all around it, so that might also be why. At Tesco I buy maybe bottled water and toilet paper, that's about it.

It doesn't matter what country a certain supermarket chain is from, there should be at least some basic quality (no expired foods, no "mushrooms" where they don't belong, no rotten food, etc).

If Tesco and Carrefour were to swap this would be my list too. The only villa I ever really go to is the one in Nichada Thani in Nonthaburi and they have only very fresh fruits and vegetables there. Other than that it's all import goods, which is great if you feel like splurging a bit and getting the good stuff.

[basjke]

then just go to the local market outside town were you will get all the pork and fesh beef you want , problem solved !

You mean the one that's been laying there without cooling all day long? With flies sitting on top?

You are right about that,never could imagine why people can buy food at the market here.The hygiene is completely nowhere and from the other side prices are even higher then at any supermarket.

For me fresh foods only from foodland,canned foods and brick products at Carrefour and as some other poster already said Tesco and Big C maybe for toilet paper and detergents but even that is a maybe as tesco seems to be one of the most expensive hyper markets in Thailand lately.Don't know if this has anything to do with the Gbp exchange rate but might be.Villa I don't see a reason to walk in there as they must have "rip off" included in their business plan.

[kurnell]

rotting spam!

You are claiming it came out of the can like this, or does Carrefour sell 'fresh' Spam?

[Jingthing]

rotting spam!

You are claiming it came out of the can like this, or does Carrefour sell 'fresh' Spam?

OMG, just as I was reading this the Monty Python "Spam Song" came on the Monty Python marathon I am watching. Time to go shopping.

[KKvampire]

Carrefour garbage food along with Lotus crap. Only Tops/Central and Makro is anygood for fresh produce most of the other food retailers is full of stuff you barely feed to the dog

[NADTATIDA1]

rotting spam!

You are claiming it came out of the can like this, or does Carrefour sell 'fresh' Spam?

I am not claiming anything,and carrefour does sell fresh spam yes!

[kurnell]

rotting spam!

You are claiming it came out of the can like this, or does Carrefour sell 'fresh' Spam?

I am not claiming anything,and carrefour does sell fresh spam yes!

So you bought a can of spam, left it out on the kitchen bench for a week, waited for the fuzz to grow and then claim that carrefour sell old produce? Strange behaviour.

[NADTATIDA1]

rotting spam!

You are claiming it came out of the can like this, or does Carrefour sell 'fresh' Spam?

I am not claiming anything,and carrefour does sell fresh spam yes!

So you bought a can of spam, left it out on the kitchen bench for a week, waited for the fuzz to grow and then claim that carrefour sell old produce? Strange behaviour.

No i"m a student!

[canuckamuck]

Please stop!!! reposting the spam picture

Edited January 20, 2010 by canuckamuck

[flemmie]

I completely agree. I no longer buy any produce or fresh meat from Carrefour. Everytime I bought meat (after carefully checking the expiration date), I opened it up at home the same day and it smelled rotten. The fruits and veggies looked ok in the store, but they always turned brown within a day. I had to throw away so much food from Carrefour. Now it's Carrefour to stock up on basics, and Tops/local markets for fresh products!

We should let the french butchery know, they are the one's supplying the meat to Carrefour. Just wondering if carrefour is letting it go stale or if it arrives that way...

[Travel2003]

Carrefour. French. Duh!

Yes the main company is.

But is it the same with the stores around the world?

I mean, just like the local McDonald. Its just some sort of frenchize (probably misspelled that word), so it is actually locals that run it.

The same with Carrefour maybe?

[gvallee2]

cant agree more with everyone

Used to live right next to TOPS in bangkok, i would cook delicious meals every day with fresh delightfull mean, sometimes i would take a long taxi ride to villa for more specific stuff.

Now i live next to Tesco and i have not cooked in 2months. Tops a little too far and villa is very far.

Teso and carrefour are only good to give me food poisoning or diarrhea (same same as salad in subway mcdonalds and KFC, that stuff might be the most nasty in thailand im out of my last 20 times i have had salad in those items, i have been sick for 3 days 13 times)

[Birdman]

Please stop!!! reposting the spam picture

[kurnell]

Please stop!!! reposting the spam picture

You could have spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it

[basjke]

Did they charge extra for the mushrooms on the spam?

[canuckamuck]

Please stop!!! reposting the spam picture

You could have spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it

For the last time, I don't like Spam!!!

[lemel]

what about spam & Eggs

[IanForbes]

Of course it's horrible quality. You are in Thailand where everything is horrible.

[Insight]

Villa is worse for expired stuff.

I used to buy meat there; often their frozen hamburgers. Then one day i grabbed a package of them and noticed that the expiration date stickers looked different than they had 2 weeks ago (different font/format), and i noticed the plastic packaging had been sliced open and resealed. So it seems they have a policy of cutting open packaging and replacing the expired stickers with newly printed stickers...pretty gross

I never buy meat products from Villa any more, unless i'm 100% it wasn't on the shelf last time i was there.

I also bought a loaf of bread there once which had been "baked that day" according to the expiration label. It had mold all over it the next day.

Missus has heard the staff in Villa openly talking about rolling the sell by dates forward for the items on the shelves they were currently looking at. This was about two years ago, but personally doubt things have changed much.

[poldebol]

"I'm seriously thinking about taking my camera there in the coming days, taking photos of all the rotten food and sending it to Carrefour HQ in Thailand, with a copy to Carrefour HQ in France."

Do it and keep on doing it. the longer this stuff is left out, the more serious a problem it is.

You might like to know that in all Carrefour shops in France it is strictly forbidden to take pictures.

[poldebol]

then just go to the local market outside town were you will get all the pork and fesh beef you want , problem solved !

You mean the one that's been laying there without cooling all day long? With flies sitting on top?

At our market you can buy fresh rats, skinned and cleaned. Some days they even have smoked rats.

[geriatrickid]

Although nowhere near as bad as the situation described, the carrefour in Jungceylon Patong has had a deterioration in quality over the past year. It's gone from European quality to small town variety. The hydroponic vegetables from the grower in Phuket are a rarity (they were super clean) as are a lot of my favourite vegetables. Maybe it is a seasonal issue. Recently disappeared are soome of my favourite imports from Australia like the low fat cream cheese. The smoked salmon is a rarity. I have a feeling that slow moving expensive items were the first casualties in the cost containment battle. Maybe Tesco Lotus has eaten into the profits.

[wintermute]

Home Fresh Mart is the best but all the other stores are far inferior. Then again Home Fresh Mart targets hi-so Thais so they are pretty picky..whereas Villa is mostly targeted towards expats and Thai management knows they can screw over Expats at will and there's nothing to be done about it. I would love to see what their profit margins are on some imported products. I remember seeing some Oscar Meyer hotdogs for sale at 350 baht. with obviously no takers at that price. It seems to me they arbitrarily mark things up 70%+ or more and then just remark the expiration to try and sell it.

Even Villa is barely passable in quality where I live and I only go there to pick up a few rare condiments. Tesco is really terrible as well but they are OK for some local produce but you have to shop when they first refresh their stock which is usually on Sundays. The one close by sells ground beef which is OK quality and cheaper than all the other places i've seen.

Supermarkets in Thailand are just really into shady business practices like shifting expiration dates (Villa) and other shenanigans. There's nothing to be done about this because the memos come from up top and the head management asks the employees to carry it out and they don't really care what people think.

Edited January 21, 2010 by wintermute

[gvallee2]

home fresh mart, is that the markets on top of paragon/emporium?

Always impressed, everything fresh. Their deli soups are soooo tasty

[wintermute]

home fresh mart, is that the markets on top of paragon/emporium?

Always impressed, everything fresh. Their deli soups are soooo tasty

Yep they also have HFM supermarkets in The Mall. The same group owns paragon/emporium. Whenever I go to HFM it's 99% Thais shopping there.

[basjke]

Home Fresh Mart is the best but all the other stores are far inferior. Then again Home Fresh Mart targets hi-so Thais so they are pretty picky..whereas Villa is mostly targeted towards expats and Thai management knows they can screw over Expats at will and there's nothing to be done about it. I would love to see what their profit margins are on some imported products. I remember seeing some Oscar Meyer hotdogs for sale at 350 baht. with obviously no takers at that price. It seems to me they arbitrarily mark things up 70%+ or more and then just remark the expiration to try and sell it.

Even Villa is barely passable in quality where I live and I only go there to pick up a few rare condiments. Tesco is really terrible as well but they are OK for some local produce but you have to shop when they first refresh their stock which is usually on Sundays. The one close by sells ground beef which is OK quality and cheaper than all the other places i've seen.

Supermarkets in Thailand are just really into shady business practices like shifting expiration dates (Villa) and other shenanigans. There's nothing to be done about this because the memos come from up top and the head management asks the employees to carry it out and they don't really care what people think.

What surprises me the most is that when i go shopping at Carrefour after 8 pm i will many times see that the staff at the seafood department is repacking items in public view which were on display earlier.And I'm not talking about a few amount.

Another thing what I find strange is that the whole fried chicken with milk can so much differ from branch to branch.It is one of the very few food items I ever buy at lotus but for example at the South Pattaya branch they look like pigeons and weigh around 600 grams while at the North Pattaya branch the same item at the same price will be between 950 an 1100 grams.This is so for at least the past 6 months so it can't be a coincidence.

[nasajsc]

Take pictures with time and date stamps, email them to newspapers and the head

office, both here and overseas. Lodge a customer complaint with the head office

in France, they should get back to you.

I have done it before, two Starbucks in Calcutta where I worked were very filthy, I took

photos and sent it to Starbucks HQ in Seattle. I respect Howard Schultz and how he

has built up the company, so I thought HQ should know that standards are terrible in

India. They contacted me and I corresponded with a VP, and changes were made

very quickly to Starbucks in Calcutta.

It works, do it!

[warni]

I used to shop at Rama IV Carrefour until we discovered cockroaches in the vegetable section (in the veggies). They were never fresh anyway, but that was too much for me. We shop at Foodland now and it's remarkably better. Very fresh fruits and veggies and excellent choice of meat. Carrefour is still good for small knick knack stuff though, but I certainly wouldn't recommend buying any food there lest it's packaged.

I still remember my first time in 1995 visiting Foodland on Sukhumvit Soi 5 full of bugs but for selling covered on plastic plates.1 year ago I did not see any.When they gave up selling this kind?Do I mention this, you could buy your beer at any time at that time(1995). That was exiting.