Why does my grocery store suddenly smell?

I've been patronizing my local grocery store for >8 years and am one of their biggest boosters (this is a Certisaver store with a Latin-American orientation). I've gone to the mat for this place and have even converted naysayers who now count themselves fans.

The only problem is that a fairly rank odor has started to emanate from the meat/fish counter of the store. I've noticed it for a couple of weeks. This isn't exactly a meat smell and isn't exactly a fish smell. It's a strong, musky smell that hints, at least to my nose, at spoilage.

Here's what I'm hoping: Someone more versed in meat departments will tell me this is the way a real butcher shop should smell. No funk means someone's taken pains to sanitize the space. This place must be the real deal.

Here's what I fear: That this, especially as a sudden development, is a bad sign, and I'm probably going to have to talk to the manager and assume that awful Mrs. Kravitz persona I despise.

I'd be grateful for any guidance the group can offer. Thanks in advance for your wisdom.

I have no advice, but I'd love to hear how this turns out.

Any area of the store with refrigeration has drainage troughs built into the floor (meat & dairy coolers and freezer sections). Entirely possible that there's a clog in the system and you're smelling stagnant water - or worse. If the store's management isn't noticing it, then that's a problem right there.

Someone more versed in meat departments will tell me this is the way a real butcher shop should smell. No funk means someone's taken pains to sanitize the space. This place must be the real deal.

So sanitation is a bad thing?

I've never been in a butcher shop that smelled bad.

Call the health department.

My Jewel in Hoffman Estates (Palatine Road) has had a stink problem on and off for a few years...
It appears to be a drainage problem that they treat on a regular basis. But maybe only when people point it out to the counter help.

I posted about a smell that I noticed at Harvestime last year (and have subsequently smelled at a few other places). The post is viewtopic.php?p=211768#p211768

Obviously, we might be smelling different things, but my guess is that we are both smelling a cleaning product. I still smell it periodically at Harvestime. It was a new smell for me last year when I began to shop there. Being a new smell, and in a meat department, I was very worried. But I'm quite used to it now and, while I wouldn't say it is a pleasant smell, I am sure it is not the smell of food that has spoiled.

In short: I wouldn't worry about it, or I'd ask a person at the meat counter if this is a cleaning product that you smell.

Darren72 wrote:Obviously, we might be smelling different things, but my guess is that we are both smelling a cleaning product.

Hi,

There is no confusing an offensive chemical smell from a cleaning product and the organic, mature to highly offensive smell of spoiling meat product.

Tim

Just a shot in the dark - has your grocery recently started carrying durian? Sometimes I've seen it in a freezer case near the raw fish; if it thaws even a little, it would have the smell you describe (it's supposed to smell that way.)

Otherwise, I'd definitely call it to store manager's attention (or possibly even so.) If they don't have a reasonable explanation or things don't change, then call the health department. Having worked in retail food, you'd be surprised how quickly your nose becomes deadened to what's around you unless you're right where the smell is localized; they may not have noticed there's a problem.

Just a shot in the dark - has your grocery recently started carrying durian? Sometimes I've seen it in a freezer case near the raw fish; if it thaws even a little, it would have the smell you describe (it's supposed to smell that way.)

I don't know, I've seen a lot of previously frozen (thawed but still whole) durian at Marketplace on Oakton and Fresh Farms and never gotten a whiff of a bad odor.

Like I said, a shot in the dark - usually you don't smell it (I wonder how they do that?) but I've been in stores where you can (sometimes at H-Mart, always at the Max's Mini Mart on Howard.)

Tim wrote:

Darren72 wrote:Obviously, we might be smelling different things, but my guess is that we are both smelling a cleaning product.

Hi,

There is no confusing an offensive chemical smell from a cleaning product and the organic, mature to highly offensive smell of spoiling meat product.

Tim

Well, the smell I described was neither an offensive chemical smell or a highly offensive smell of spoiling meat. If that's an accurate description of what the OP smelled, then the OP and I may be smelling different things (we can run up our post counts all you want by repeating this over and over...). But the fact that the smell that I encountered occurred in multiple, unaffiliated stores and only periodically leads me to suspect a cleaning product that I had previously not encountered.

Has your grocer recently procured a band saw? When I worked for a meat distributor I had to leave the cutting floor every time that puppy was fired up during my training. The smell of bones being cut with a high speed band saw is pretty strong.

Flip

Thanks for all the valuable advice/insight. I was in the store last night, and I can happily (though guardedly) report that the smell was less pronounced.

I probably won't have reason to go again before leaving for the holidays, but I'll check back in early 2010, hoping for the best. Here's hoping an olfactory tune-up is their New Year's Resolution.

ChristyP wrote:I'm probably going to have to talk to the manager

Seriously, if you value this store, that's what you should do. They will either put your mind at rest with an explanation, or cause you to decide to find somewhere else to shop.

I went to Harrison's Poultry in Glenview just before New Years to get some chicken wings, a duck, and turkey to smoke on New Years Day.

Low and behold, I smelled the same smell there that I've encountered at Harvestime, Cermak Produce, and a few other local grocery stores. Again, this strengthens my view that it is a cleaning product that I wasn't previously familiar with.