Price Chopper Headquarters Tour and Conference Announcement

On Wednesday, May 5, Beth from The Angel Forever and I were invited for a private tour of the new corporate headquarters for Price Chopper Supermarkets in Schenectady, New York. Beth has done her own amazing post about our Price Chopper tour, and I will try not to repeat too many of the same details here.

The Price Chopper Headquarters Tour

I will start by saying that I got very lost on the way there, but I was assured that they will be placing the Price Chopper logo on the building soon. The building was still too new for everything to have been finished when we visited. In fact, the employees had only started moving in a week or so previously, and the official traditional media tour had not taken place yet. We were the first!

For security purposes, Beth and I had to present our drivers licenses at the front desk, and we got special visitor badges with our names and photos on them. All of the employees wore name tags as well, and we learned that this was because many of them had worked at different offices in the area before moving into the new building, so they didn’t know each other. It was certainly helpful for us!

We were greeted by Heidi, Liz, and Maureen shortly after our badges were printed for us. We’ve been in contact with them since the Cook’s Ham event back in March, and they have been very receptive to working with us. Price Chopper is going all out in the world of social media – from @PriceChopperNY on Twitter to the Price Chopper Supermarkets page on Facebook – and they are happy to work with bloggers like Beth and me. Since I have a bit of a phone phobia, Beth had been staying  in touch by phone to work out the details of our tour, and I stuck with Twitter and Facebook. I think we work well as a team. 🙂

During our tour, we got to check out the studio where they do all of the food photography for their weekly circulars. (You know, the supermarket ads that show up in the Sunday newspaper.) It was a bit of a mess in there, since half of the room was still under construction, but we got to see the setup for some grilled shrimp that was going to be in the flyer, and it looked just beautiful as the woman worked on the photo on her computer screen. Very cool! We learned that the room would also be used for their Kids Cooking Club sessions, which I think our sons might get a kick out of sometime.

We got a private sampling  – a taste test – to compare four Price Chopper products with their national brand counterparts. The products we tried were quite appropriate for a pair of mommy bloggers: white grape juice, applesauce, crisped rice cereal, and chocolate chip cookies with chocolate candy pieces. Here’s a quick video of my plates:

I tried everything, and I liked everything. I have to admit that they all tasted pretty mmuch the same except for the applesauce. I had a clear preference for the applesauce. Here’s a video of how Jane from Quality Assurance did our big reveal:

I definitely liked the Price Chopper applesauce better, and now I know why. Mott’s grinds up the entire apple – core, stem, and all – but Price Chopper cores and peels the apples first, so you get a stronger apple flavor, with only the parts of the apple you would normally eat. And they are planning on fortifying the applesauce with more Vitamin C in the future! I had no preference for either brand of whitee grape juice. I did slightly prefer the Rice Krispies and the Chips Ahoy cookies, but they were based on very slight variations in texture. And if I hadn’t been trying them together, I would never recognize a difference between the store brand and the national brand. They tasted the same, and I can confidently say I would choose the Price Chopper brand to purchase because of the better value. (I do prefer Price Chopper purple grape juice over the Welch’s by far, and I buy many other Price Chopper brand products every week. The most noticeable differences I’ve found so far are in their sodas, which just aren’t the same as Coke or Pepsi products.)

We got to have lunch at their cafe before we left, and we were pleasantly surprised with the selection and the taste. They made sandwiches and salads to order. You could order something off the grill. They had pizza. There were chips and desserts and a fully stocked beverage case. Beth got a salad, and I wanted to try the chicken salad sandwich. It was some of the best chicken salad I’d ever tasted. I think they used rotisserie chicken to make it, although I could be wrong.

I’m going out of order here, but we also got a look at their conference room. The walls can be closed off to turn it into three separate rooms, and that’s how it was set up during our visit, but Beth and I definitely got a feel for how it would look once the walls were opened up. Here’s a quick video tour of one third of the space:

Conference Announcement

So it’s official now. We’d originally announced a July conference date, but the months got away from us. We’re still working on a name for the conference, but here are the important details for our upcoming Upstate New York Blogger Conference:

• Date: Saturday, October 2, 2010
• Time: 9:00 am until after dinner
• Location: Price Chopper Headquarters, 461 Nott St., Schenectady, NY 12308
• Who: Bloggers like you!

Beth and I have been planning this because there really haven’t been any blogging conference in our area. We are getting BlogHer ’10 in New York City this August, but it will be elsewhere in the country next year. We wanted a conference for those of us in the Northeast who can’t always make the trek to southern conferences like Blissdom and Type-A Mom. And we wanted to make sure that everyone has time to meet and network while they’re here, so you won’t go home wishing you’d gotten a chance to meet [insert name of attendee you never saw].

We’re also working on getting a taste test set up for all attendees like the one we got to do, so you can compare Price Chopper brand products with national brand products. And even if you don’t have a Price Chopper in your area, it may give you a new perspective about the quality of store brand products. We may get a cooking demonstration, as well, and we’re still working on a keynote speaker.

For your part, you want to know about registration. We need to meet with the caterers who run the cafe in order to determine our menu, which will determine the pricing for the conference. We hope to get that taken care of soon, and we will set up the registration on Eventbrite as soon as we can. We’ll also let you know when we get a block of rooms set up at a nearby hotel if you’re not within driving distance.

We want to thank Price Chopper for making this conference a reality. I hope this is just the start of a long and happy relationship for all of us.

Disclosure: I was invited to the Price Chopper Headquarters for a tour and lunch while we discussed plans for our conference. We were surprised to receive a bag of Price Chopper brand groceries to take home with us. No blog post was expected, and no monetary compensation exchanged hands.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.