Americans Were Asked to Rate Their Favorite Retail Chains — the Top Choice Came as a Big Surprise

In 2019, Neal Taparia & Darshan Somashekar, long-time friends and young entrepreneurs behind Imagine Easy Solutions, encountered a dilemma that soon materialized into a project idea. Somashekar noticed that his mother-in-law was obsessed with playing Solitaire, however, the version she was familiar with was no longer available online. So the two of them created their own library of digital games, a company now known as Solitaired. A few years later, they came across another mystery, which too, materialized into a project idea. When they asked their gaming users where they play most of their games, like Solitaire, Spider, or Freecells, the majority gave the most unusual answer: grocery stores. 

Curious to find which grocery stores offer the best experience all across America, they plunged into a project analysing the best and the worst stores across the country. In early May this year, they published the detailed findings of this research in a report. To conduct this quirky research, Taparia, Somashekar, and their team dived into a database of over 7 million Google reviews from 3,000 individual grocery stores across 100 cities to scour insights about which stores stand out in customer service, food, quality, prices, and even the speed of checkout lines. The glowing stars in the ratings were meticulously tapped by the users were collected, combined, and condensed into aggregate star ratings that revealed where each grocery store fell on the rankings ladder.

Trader Joe’s, America’s beloved grocery chain, swept other candidates by grabbing the top spot on the list, which also came as a surprise. Of the 118 locations that the Solitaired team explored, this one seemed to have won the majority of shoppers’ hearts, receiving an overall rating of 4.65 stars. The second spot was pulled off with a rating of 4.50 stars by Publix, known for its locations across Florida and the Southeast. With a rating just close enough to Publix, the employee-owned WinCo scrambled up the ranking ladder, proving itself to be the third most favorite grocery chain in America.

“On the list of the best grocery stores, you will frequently see smaller market-style stores with more positive consumer reviews. We even had farmers markets at the top of the best grocery stores list,” Taparia told Food & Wine. “Trader Joe’s was the only chain store to buck the trend. We believe this is because these smaller stores, including Trader Joe’s, focus on curating a better selection of food and emphasize customer service.” For some of the small-scale Italian grocery stores, the stars glittered a little brighter. Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg, Florida, for instance, boasted a 4.8-star rating, becoming the “best overall grocery store.” The other two Italian stores that scaled to the hot place in the rankings chart were Freshfields Farm in Orlando and Glorioso’s Italian Market.

While these grocery outlets emerged from the circle of research with sparkling stars, others just appeared with dim lighting. For example, King Soopers, a chain of stores in Colorado and Wyoming, received an average of 3.84 stars from the Google review analysis. And Walmart, with stores tucked across thousands of locations in America, snagged only 3.95. This is unsurprising given that every other day, a Walmart customer comes up with a complaint against products like orange juice, soda, milk, broccoli, and whatnot.

Assuming that this research succeeded in satisfying the entrepreneurial curiosity of Taparia and Somashekar, it also acted as an eye-opening piece of intelligence for the customers, who can now think wisely before choosing a grocery store to shop for their essentials. “Right now, many people are looking to be careful when spending, so these rankings can show where you can expect to get the best quality food for your dollar and where you will have a pleasant experience locally,” Taparia told Food & Wine. And if the goal is not shopping but simply to get away from home and play Solitaire, then every store is just as good as the other.