Scandals That Shook The Biggest Grocery Stores

For the convenience of their customers, many large grocery chains include a pharmacy. Kroger is one supermarket that goes the extra mile by also offering an in-store walk-in clinic at select locations. The idea behind The Little Clinic, which The Kroger Co. acquired in 2010, was to make healthcare more accessible by offering extended hours and being placed in locations people are already going to on a regular basis, like a grocery store.

Unfortunately, both pharmacies and medical offices retain a lot of private patient information that could easily be put to nefarious use, something that approximately 3.82 million Kroger pharmacy and The Little Clinic patients discovered on February 19 2021. In December 2020 and January 2021, hackers gained access to patients' names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, insurance information, medical information, and social security numbers.

By July of that same year, Kroger had agreed to pay $5 million in a class action settlement. Kroger also agreed to provide credit monitoring free of charge to those affected as well as strengthen its patient information protection practices. We're really hoping that a lesson was learned here and Kroger followed through.

In the summer of 2020, a petition called into question Trader Joe's practice of branding many Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and southern European–themed products under different, albeit often equivalent, names. These names include Trader Ming, Trader Joe San, Trader José, Arabian Joe, and Trader Giotto.

A spokesperson for Trader Joe's, Kenya Friend-Daniel, told NPR, "We made the decision several years ago to use only the Trader Joe's name on our products moving forward," adding that these changes were in place before the creation of the petition and not in response to it. She also admitted that while the original intention behind the branding was probably "lighthearted ... we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect — one that is contrary to the welcoming, rewarding customer experience we strive to create every day."

However, per The New York Times, a company statement made a few days after Friend-Daniel's said, "We thought then — and still do — that this naming of products could be fun and show appreciation for other cultures." As of 2023, branding like Trader Ming's can still be found on Trader Joe's shelves.

Supermarkets experience product recalls on an increasingly common basis. Sometimes it's due to e. coli or salmonella contamination. Other times unsafe objects such as broken glass have been found mixed in with the food. But, finding worms inside Kirkland brand filets of halibut is definitely memorable (and scarring).

In 2022, Dr. Vahid Berdjis, his wife, and two children sued Costco Wholesale Corp. asking for $200,000 in damages. Roughly one year prior, the family had purchased a package of Kirkland Fresh Wild Pacific Halibut Fillet from a Costco store in San Dimas, California. After cooking and consuming some of the fish, the family was shocked to see live worms wriggle out of the filet.

To no one's surprise, the two children swore off seafood from that moment on, which might be a good idea considering finding parasitic worms in fresh seafood is not uncommon. If the fish is cooked thoroughly, the worms pose no danger when eaten. The family charged that Costco failed to adequately educate staff and customers about the possible presence of parasites.

California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, better known as Prop 65, was designed to protect sources of drinking water from chemical contamination that might result in increased risks of cancer, birth defects, or forms of reproductive toxicity. Businesses are required to inform the public if their products may contain such chemicals.

This has resulted in some amusing situations, such as the Prop 65 warning sign posted outside of Disneyland. But, it has also been used many times to protect public health, such as in 2022 when Kroger was sued by for-profit environmental activist group Ecological Alliance LLC. The group tested 25 Kroger brand items purchased from a Kroger-owned grocery store located in Southern California. Of those, 15 tested positive for an unhealthy amount of lead.

These products included organic diced peaches and pears, with 11.7 micrograms of lead per serving (the legal limit is 0.5 micrograms per serving), and a spinach salad kit with 70.1 micrograms per serving. Also named were frozen vegetables, fresh fruit, and breakfast cereals.

Misrepresenting its beef products wasn't Whole Foods' first time the company incorrectly labeled its products. Back in 2012, Whole Foods was penalized nearly $800,000 when price discrepancies were uncovered in certain Southern California stores. Then, in 2015, New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) discovered evidence that Whole Foods locations within the city had been mislabeling the weights of pre-packaged meat, dairy, and baked goods, leading to the massive overcharging of customers.

A DCA commissioner, Julie Menin, said at the time, "Our inspectors tell me this is the worst case of mislabeling they have seen in their careers, which DCA and New Yorkers will not tolerate" (via ABC). While at first Whole Foods denied the DCA's accusations, its co-CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb quickly apologized to customers in a video. The pair promised that if a customer was ever again overcharged for an item, they would be given that item for free. The DCA also vowed to keep an eye on the situation.

In 2019, after a three-year battle, a lawsuit filed against Whole Foods by customer Sean John over the mischarges was thrown out of court by a Manhattan federal judge.

In 2022, grocery customers in the U.K. were outraged to learn that their supermarkets were allowing over 200,000 tons of food to go to waste, the estimated equivalent of 190 million meals, every year. Companies like Tesco and Alda have tight restrictions on to whom their surplus food can be donated. If these restrictions were altered, far more food could go to people in need rather than being used as animal feed or being tossed into the trash. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many more people rely on food banks than they used to. The U.K. is also not exempt from post-pandemic inflation and rising grocery prices.

Labour Party Member of Parliament Daniel Zeichner said, "The amount of food that goes to waste is a scandal when millions of children in this country are going hungry" (via The Independent). He also expressed a belief that the government needed to step in to help correct this travesty. The fact that supermarkets self-report their food waste has also been cause for concern.

Over 300 pounds of cocaine showed up in boxes of bananas sent to Aldi stores in Germany in 2014. This would not be an isolated incident. Not even a year and a half later, just over 850 pounds of cocaine, €15 million worth, popped up in another shipment of Aldi bananas that had made its way from Colombia to Germany.

In 2019, yet another shipment of cocaine was found mixed in with Aldi bananas, this time over 1,100 pounds. The discovery was made by employees at six different German stores as well as a warehouse. Because the quantity was record high, German police searched other stores, but no more drugs were found.

It turns out that finding cocaine in shipments of fruit from Latin America is not all that uncommon. As recently as August 2023, Spanish police discovered 9.5 tons of cocaine hidden inside banana boxes, one of the largest seizures in that country. However, there was no word on if this shipment was intended for Aldi stores or not.