Being the first of several reviews of grocery stores in the Kingston, New York area.

Adams Fairacre Farms is a three-store chain in the Hudson Valley of New York.  It’s really more of a “Super Farm Market,” as they advertise themselves, than a grocery store.

The good

When you walk into Adams, you walk into the store’s best department:  the fruits and vegetables.  Adams works with local farms to stock as much local produce as possible.  In general, they have higher-quality produce than any of the chain stores at any given time of year, even if it isn’t local.  If you care about quality veg, one trip to Adams will convince you to make it a regular weekly stop.

Adams’ meat department is no comparison to the local competition; it rivals any dedicated butcher shop for variety and quality.  They stock both quality “store brand” meat—typically better than the premium national brands found at other stores—and high-end brands like Bell and Evans.  They typically stock a selection of USDA Prime beef, as well as local beef.  The meat department is well-staffed, and they will gladly handle special requests.  There’s also a full-service seafood department.

The delicatessen carries Boar’s Head products as their value line. Again, the quality, the selection, and the service beat the chain stores hands down.  They will make sandwiches to order.  There’s a selection of hot and cold foods.

There’s a cheese department with a wide range of gourmet cheeses.  A very good salad bar.  An on-site bakery.

The rest of Adams’ “grocery store” is relatively small, but they carry most items that a serious chef would need, if not with so much variety as a large chain store.  Typically, what they do carry are premium, local, or otherwise hard-to-find brands.  If you’re making a recipe that calls for an unusual ingredient, Adams should be your first stop.

Kitchen Store

The Kingston Adams has a small kitchen-goods store.  It’s a mixed bag; they carry some decent items, a fair amount of overpriced items (like CIA cookware), and a good dose of high-hype, low-quality items (Food Network branded stuff).  It’s neither as cheap as Bed Bath and Beyond, nor does it cater to the serious cook like local favorite Warren Cutlery.

Garden Center

The other half of Adams is the garden center.  The greenhouse and nursery stock a wide range of plants, all healthier than what you’ll find at the big-box home centers. They carry a range of other garden products, again emphasizing the premium lines such as Droll Yankees bird feeders and the upper end of the Weber grill range.

Checkout

Adams really shines at the checkout.  Although there are fewer lanes than the big stores, they’re well staffed, and the clerks know what they’re doing. It’s rare for lines to get more than two deep, and there’s usually little delay from checking out.  Like much of the store, the checkout is cramped, so bagging can be a challenge.  Many lines offer bagging staff, but you’re welcome to bag your own, and it may speed things up even more.  Adams offers a 5¢ discount for each reusable bag you use.

Unlike the chain stores, Adams doesn’t offer automated self-checkout.  You won’t miss it.

The Bad

Adams day-to-day prices are generally higher for identical items than any other local store.  Many of their products simply aren’t available at other local stores because they are premium or ultra-premium brands, and those products are usually considerably more expensive than what you’ll find at Hannaford or ShopRite.

While Adams has excellent vegetables, the small size of the chain means that they sometimes don’t have all the vegetables you might need for your menu.

The hot foods available range from good to merely edible.  This has gotten better over time, but it’s still a very hit-or-miss proposition.  The cold prepared foods are likewise highly variable.

Adams has a longstanding habit of not complying with the Ulster County retail pricing law.  It’s not unusual to find products that have no marked price, and no price on the shelf.  This is especially true in the frozen-foods and dairy areas.

The store gets very busy on weekends, when it draws a lot of traffic from New York City weekenders.  Unfortunately, that crowd has a… different standard of grocery-store etiquette.  This can make it frustrating to navigate the store and the parking lot.  The store’s parking lot becomes overcrowded at certain times on the weekends, around holidays, and most especially when the store runs special events like their annual garden show.

There is no dedicated bottle-return area.

Suggestions

Here’s what I’d like to see Adams change:

• Try to negotiate more competitive prices on some commodity items, like soda.  Work with vendors to ensure those items are consistently stocked.
• Improve the signage in the parking lot, to ease the traffic flow issues at peak times.
• Build a more consistent quality in the hot foods, perhaps preparing less at one time so it doesn’t dry out in the steam case.  (Go tour the Wegmans store in Pittsford, N.Y.; that’s how you do it.)
• Consider installing WiFi in the store.  Adams appeals to affluent buyers—the type that have iPhones and iPads and such, and WiFi appeals to them.
• Tell the folks at the deli counter that some people are hard of hearing, and they should push the button to advance the “take a ticket” number before they call it out.

Having lived in Rochester, I can’t help but judge every grocery store against Wegmans.  Wegmans isn’t perfect, but they’re better than everyone else.  In many ways, Adams comes close, albeit on a smaller scale.  That’s especially true in the vegetable department; not surprising, since both companies started as farm stands.  For me, saying a store is “like a small Wegmans” is high praise indeed.

I like to grill in the summer.  If it’s not raining, I’m more likely than not making dinner on the grill.  So, a few years ago, my birthday present to myself was a top-of-the-line Weber Summit Platinum D gas grill.

It’s a great grill.  It grills evenly, it has predicable heat, it can sear like nobody’s business and give you beautiful grill marks.

And yes, it cost a lot of money.

Last year, one of the burners no longer wanted to light.  Weber’s instructions include detailed annual-maintenance tear-down instructions.  I found that one of the ignitors had a cracked insulator.  This happens with gas grills; I expected that I just needed an inexpensive part.  It’s the sort of thing that one would consider a “wear item.”

Now, Weber doesn’t have an online store for their spare parts.  You have to email customer service.  Normally, I’d complain about this.

In Weber’s case, though, it seems that customer service usually replies with “that’s covered under warranty.”

They sent me a new ignitor at no charge.

I love this grill.  I do a maintenance every year, taking it apart and cleaning out the burners.  Even with this, two of the burner tubes have clogged up so that they don’t burn evenly any more.  Once again, I emailed Weber to get the price for two new burner tubes.

I didn’t include a serial number or anything.  I just said I needed the price for a burner tube part number such-and-so.

Paraphrasing: Well, Mr. Levandowski, our records show your grill is still under warranty.  How many do you need, and are you still at the same address?  We’ll ship them right out.

Wow.

There are a lot of companies that are willing to charge you tons of money for a product that’s top-notch when you buy it.  Sadly, it seems like few of those companies are interested in doing anything after they have your money.

Weber isn’t like that.  They understand: I paid top dollar for a top-of-the-line grill.  Even though this is a very durable grill with an impressive warranty, some day I will be in the market for another grill.  Or I will know someone who wants a grill.

When that day comes, I’ll be remembering that Weber didn’t nickel-and-dime me with spare parts — they went out of their way to save me money and keep me happy.

If you’re looking for a gas grill, buy as much Weber as you can.  It will be a good investment.

In 2003, I wrote the following blog entry:

I’ve recently inherited a house. The air conditioner, a jumbo window model from Carrier, is operable, but the mode selector knob is broken. Although it can still be used with judicious use of a pair of pliers, I wanted to get a replacement knob.

It turns out that Carrier understands a key tenet in customer service: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Even though this air conditioner was made over a decade ago, it won’t be a problem for me to get the knob. In fact, Carrier will send one to me at no charge. They make replacement knobs for all their room air conditioners available for free, just for the asking. Their web site offers instructions for requesting new knobs online.

This is how you make customers happy. A small, inexpensive part that would be hard for service centers to stock, creating a logistics nightmare… is instead centralized and turned into something that makes customers feel “taken care of.” This kind of small gesture is what leads to repeat customers.

Sadly, since the original blog entry was written, Carrier has taken down the web page that allowed you to order replacement knobs for their air conditioners. I suspect that the short-sighted bean-counters won out over those who understand that the little things—like knobs—are what help you retain customers when you offer a premium product during hard economic times.

A commenter, dm, added the following:

You know, I had a very similar experience with Bose … I have a pair of Bose 201 Series II bookshelf speakers circa 1987 or so. About a year and a half ago, I blew out the fuses inside the speakers themselves (uhm, oops. Pearl Jam’s “Ten” warrants Excessively Loud Volumes!) Anyway, the fuses are a custom job — hardwired & encased in glass. So I called up Bose, explained the situation to the customer service rep, and all he could say was “Wow, I’m really sorry that happened. This shouldn’t happen. I’m going to overnight FedEx you a pair of fuses, and a few extra too, just in case. Is that OK?”

I asked “How much are the fuses” and he laughed and said “Oh, no charge at all. We’re just sorry you had this problem with our speakers! If you have any problems at all after replacing the fuses, please, give me a call back and we’ll see what we can do from there. (He gave me his name, which I’ve forgotten by now)”

Now *THAT* is customer service!

I wish more companies would take that lead!

(Not that I can personally recommend Bose. In my opinion, most of their products are overhyped and overpriced.  Have you ever noticed that Bose displays in stores are usually set well apart from the competition’s products?)

Since that blog was published, I can add another example of a company that understands customer service.

A few years ago, I purchased a set of Klipsch Synergy speakers for my home theater. I found that they were a good balance of sound quality and price, and they are readily available at the neighborhood big-box electronics retailer. I was very happy with them…

Until I realized, after just a few months over two years of enjoyment, that the bass seemed awfully weak.  In fact, the Sub-10 subwoofer had stopped functioning almost entirely.  With the volume cranked, I could barely perceive any vibration of the woofer cone with my fingers.  Checking my receipt, I found that the subwoofer’s amplifier had a two-year warranty.  It had expired a few months before I realized the problem existed.

Checking Klipsch’s customer-support forums online, I found that many other Sub-10 owners had experienced a failure of the sub’s built-in amplifier. It seems that there was a run of Sub-10s, shipped to big-box retailers on or near a Black Friday sale, that were turning out to be faulty.

I e-mailed Klipsch support, expecting that I would have to pay to have the unit repaired, and hoping that there would be a local repair depot—shipping a big, heavy subwoofer module back for repair would obviously be costly!

Steve Phillips from Klipsch replied:

Hi Rob,
If you can provide use with a receipt and you are handy with a screw driver, we should be able to help.

I got Steve the information he requested, and he shipped me a new amplifier module at no charge.  They provided instructions for replacing the module—not “easy,” but within the grasp of a do-it-yourselfer. Klipsch didn’t even want the old module back.

The new amplifier has a very different design, making it obvious that Klipsch believes in continuous improvement.  This is reassuring—I’m not so worried that this amp will have the same failure two years down the road.

I had a good opinion of Klipsch based on their product. After this, I have an excellent opinion of them based on their customer service. I know that if I buy or recommend a Klipsch product, they will stand behind it—even if it’s one of their inexpensive mass-market lines, instead of the high-end audiophile stuff.

Policy vs. “Policy”

In the case of Klipsch, we see an enlightened attitude toward customer-service policies.  Many companies would stop at the “Warranty Policy:” “We warrant this speaker for two years from the date of purchase as indicated on the original sales receipt.”  If you had a speaker fail after two years and one month, you’d be out of luck with such a company.

Of course, then you’d need to go buy a new speaker… and it almost certainly wouldn’t be another one from that company!

Too many companies stick to “policy” even when the result is losing a customer, and all their potential future purchases. Companies that hold to “policy” in every circumstance wind up being perceived as heartless, uncaring, and out to rip off the consumer.

Enlightened companies, like Klipsch, have a higher form of policy. They have a policy that customer satisfaction can be more important than the “warranty policy.” 

Klipsch isn’t required by warranty to replace an expensive faulty amplifier at no charge—not even shipping costs!—when it dies after 27 months, but they understand that it just isn’t right to do that to a customer.  Better to implicitly acknowledge that the amplifier was a bit flakey, eat the cost of the replacement, and keep the customer.  Then, when the customer decides they need a bigger, better system, they’ll look first at Klipsch’s bigger, better, more expensive lines… instead of the competition.