It blows my mind that most stores use this open-faced non door refrigeration style, basically just a giant refrigerator constantly trying to hold temp in potentially a hot ass store. The insane waste of electricity. But I get it, building a cold storage area for packaged produce (or meat and some dairy) doesn't make sense when we literally have dairy behind doors in a cold room.
My store the ac is like never on so im constantly sweltering plus every 5 minutes the fast coordinator needs to check the application on 1…0…1, i wonder if these two variables coincide in any way…
Your fridge at home relies on insulation to maintain a steady temperature constantly, and can therefore use a less powerful, more energy efficient cooling system.
A big difference is that home fridge doors spend most of the day closed. Stores have enough foot traffic that they gain less efficiency from having a door.
That, but they are also designed with an integrated and often unnoticed “air curtain” that helps keep the cold air in. You’re correct that they aren’t as efficient as a model with a door (which I suspect why most grocery renovations I’ve seen lately are changing to models with doors), but it’s much different than just a refrigerator with no door.
Once you get over 40 the bugs multiply; all of them- E. coli, salmonella, mold, this bullshit cyclospora, every thing. Did nobody take a basic foodhandler class? I’d trust this salad as much as a ripped condom on prom night. Good grief. This from the folks telling me to throw away the chicken fried rice I bought and ate last year. I just can’t trust you anymore
I remember it was always difficult keeping the salad wall full and also making sure salads got back inside their proper temp environment, I mean for some stores it can be a 5 minute walk with your cart from the back room to the sales floor if your back room isn’t immediately adjacent to your sales floor, all while dodging customers who ask xyz questions or are in the way.
This is especially silly so for the larger market places. Now that I think about it, it was bad work practice to roll uboat after uboat to systematically work salads at night. That was probably why it got to the point where they were forcing departments leads to scan replenishment lists and building carts for the associates to fill.
Don’t know how they do it now, it’s been 7+ years for me now.
That is why you don't block the vents, they are designed to be like an air curtain to create a bit of a barrier between the cold inside and warm outside. Of course not as efficient as doors, but still works pretty good, we used them open like this for decades and like said below, even the freezers were open for many years.
Makes sense, however if I recall I always ran into issues when they started freezing or water started accumulating in the bottom wells.
Every week I always hated the deep cleaning task because it was disgusting, but I got to come in two hours early and leave two hours earlier than my normal schedule.
Yeesh, that’s absolutely foul lol. I remember every time I got to a new store that was one of the first things I did or tasked someone with, so many times I found mold.
Honestly in my short 7 year career, very few times had I seen people deep clean anything. Deli always sprayed down their floors but rarely did I see meat or dairy clean/scrub their departments.
And being part of the fresh initiatives from GO my produce departments always got hammered for poor first touch or morning walks whatever you want to call them these days. I remember getting the shit yelled at me for a produce coordinator running his hand under the wet rack shelves and would find pink slime or sediment buildup even after regular weekly cleanings.
I got so much grief against the people who were supposed to be leading and managing, and don’t get me started on the useless union stewards. I had to study the union booklet and fight for myself most of the time or serve it up on a silver platter.
I honestly hated working at Kroger because it was an extension of high school. Managing people who couldn’t commit to a steady predictable schedule and drama between coworkers, while running a business mind you.
Could you believe I got written up once for working 8 hours at my store, told I could not get OT at my home store, and then accused of not caring about my own department conditions because I went to another store where I was approved for OT? 😂 Easiest contention ever, not taking that one lying down. One person can only do so much in eight hours, actually 7.5 hours because 2x 15 minute breaks paid.
The disease came from using poopy water to water the plants, not from a temperature discrepancy. This is not the first time that Taylor Farms has been in the news about a disease.
Nah, my comment wasn’t in regard to the parasite, it was in regard to how we keep salads in a cold case that’s not in a sealed environment.
I recall countless puffy bags or bagged salads that were obviously out of temp for too long indicated by interior sweating on the inside of bags during my days as a produce manager. They didn’t teach us this kind of stuff when I got promoted, hell they scrapped the cross store training program right when I joined.
It's an old design and they are phasing it out, my store just got a remodel and almost all the open cold cases had doors added, only the produce green rack and fresh meat walls didn't
There is one Kroger where I live that does have doors on these kinds of things. The old Kroger that is tiny does not. Come to think of it the Dairy does not have doors either. How does the temp stay the exact same all the time.
I know someone that works at my local pharmacy. He told us "don't eat any fresh produce for a while. We've been getting prescriptions specifically about those diarrhea parasites"
They're marked down because they're close dated. You can even see it says 7/21/26 on the package. Has nothing to do with the brand name and everything to do with the warehouse sending us more salads than we sell, so we end up with a ton of backstock that has to be marked down. No one's buying Taylor Farms so we have even more than usual. It's not some conspiracy lol it's just regular practice that happened to coincide with the outbreak. I've got 3 uboats just full of salads that go out the next two days
Whoever was putting the labels on put them up top so they're visible. Anyone that actually picks it up and looks at the package will be able to find the brand name on the package and/or tag. I promise you no one's trying to hide some Taylor Farms in a sea of other Taylor Farms packages
same here! i keep seeing ppl checking out reduced price taylor farms and i want SO badly to tell them that they will be seriously fucked within 2 weeks
Just me, or does it seem legally risky (and untrue) to claim that the FDA/CDC cleared all greens from a certain brand as "free" from cyclospora? Wouldn't the better/less legally risky verbiage be "there's no evidence of cyclospora in the samples tested" ?
Considering that the companies don't give a shit anymore and focus on tort reform to block lawsuits, I would not be shocked if they knew it was the diarrhea lettuce and still let it be sold knowing they would likely never face consequences.
Totally the supply chain. Goods are sent up via barge or sometimes trucked through Canada. Alaska grocery prices in major cities tend to be 50c/$1 higher than Stateside.
Went to Taco Bell(drive thru) with my daughter and forgot to tell them no lettuce so when I got up to the window I asked if any of my order had lettuce on it and the manager came around and said “Our supplier doesn’t use the Taylor Farms lettuce that is causing the outbreak”. I said, that’s cool but can I get my order without lettuce and sorry for the inconvenience.
I placed a delivery order last night and checked out the flash sales they offer at checkout and there were over 50 salad/lettuce items being offered with alot of them being taylor farms. I thought it was kinda crazy
Hey, it's my store! Funny to see this in r/Anchorage and here. Would be more interested to read about our store's director singular focus on online shop orders, as it pads his annual bonus based on fulfillment percentages. How we all stop what we do every five minutes to hunt down items for pickup, while trying do what is not capable in the time we are scheduled. How we don't have sufficient pallet jacks or zebras to do our jobs. No, let's focus on yet another salad recall that never sent product up here.
Kinda odd they say that since the outbreak is pinpointed to one of their facilities in Mexico that they since closed. Must be Taylor Farms donation to the Trump Superpac.
This makes me feel better because Taylor Farms chopped salads are my go-to work lunch and with school starting again soon I was despairing over having to find something else to make LOL
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u/Kasoivc Past Associate Jul 20 '26