Reliance Fresh

I have been waiting to see how Reliance forays in to retail and my curiosity has only aroused due to the recent media coverage. Eager to check out the store, I headed to the nearest Fresh store in Vivekananda nagar (on the main strip about a kilometer from Bombay highway) today along with my mom for weekly veggie shopping.

Of course, there were lots of people in there and I went in with a positive outlook. The vegetables were neatly stacked along with with US style plastic bag dispensers and digital weighing scales. Some highlights:

• I noticed about 7 types of Brinjal: green, round, long and thin etc etc
• There were 3-4 types of Capsicum (red, green and yellow)
• All varieties of fruits (including 3 types of Banana, pears, US type melons, Avacados!, Sapota, Guava)
• Accepts Ticket coupons :)
• Limited number of packaged foods including pickles, cheese and wafers

Lowlights:

• There were not many varieties of vegetables (the security guard was mentioning that they ran out of stock)
• There were very loooooong queues..I waited for almost an hr in the queue just be greeted by a very unpolished/never-used-computer clerk who took more than 15mts to finish my billing. I understand that this being Sunday and all but 1 hr?
• Most of them were prohibitively prices (1 roll of Spinach Rs4, coriander Rs3, Sugar Rs24)

Overall, it surely left a bad taste in my mouth (my mom already hates it :( ) and I guess I would probably take a few weeks before returning to the store :)