While one company competing for the neighborhood’s grocery dollars is enjoying its Capitol Hill honeymoon on Broadway, a chain with a longer running connection here is experiencing a few bumps in the relationship.
In its latest move alienating customers here, QFC is suddenly putting its most sought after merchandise behind lock and key. With new security systems on the Broadway Market store’s freezers, frozen goods including ice cream and sweets now require a employee to access much like the locked-down liquor aisles at area groceries.
It has not been a popular development with customers and is only the latest in the company’s not very customer friendly approach to the neighborhood and the city after things started going really south in 2021 when Kroger shut down one of the neighborhood’s three QFCs in a tiff with the city council over COVID hazard pay. A few years back, QFC also acted to restrict access to its Capitol Hill stores with shuttered entrances along the Harvard Ave side of the buildings.
The company says another recent security change on north Broadway was a mistake blaming “new store leader” for the daytime deployment of security rollups added to cover the grocery’s glass windows. “He wasn’t aware of the protocol,” a spokesperson tells CHS adding that the “shutters were installed at a couple Seattle locations to be used during closed store hours.”
But local representatives from Ohio-based QFC parent Kroger have not yet responded to CHS about how the need to lock down $5 to $7 frozen treats came about.
Get ready for more security at the Broadway Market store and its sister grocery at Broadway and Pike. Permits filed with the city show plans for new construction soon to add “fixture and case changes” and “secure liquor sales” at the north Broadway store. The setup will likely be similar to the E John Safeway where liquor is purchased in a separate section of the store. Meanwhile, the Broadway Market QFC is also getting new “access control gates” at its main Broadway entry, according to the plans.
