Rich’s Foods & Liquors

Rich’s is a great store with lots of quality specialty foods that are hard to find elsewhere. After a dozen visits I’ve never had an issue with communication as an English speaker.
The deli counter is usually very busy, which is directly related to the high quality and variety of meats and prepared foods. If you don’t have time to wait, there are a couple islands across from the counter that are well stocked with lots of the same items, just pre-​packaged. Highlights include kabanosy, mysliwska, smoked kielbasa, bigos, flaczki, gypsy ham and bacon, smoked ribs, packzi, etc. Here’s a helpful guide to Polish sausage:
The aisle signs are in English, and the store isn’t huge, so it’s pretty easy to get around and find things. Produce is ok, but the deli counter and bakery goods are the main attraction. Pretty good import selection in the liquor dept. also. Kasia’s pierogis in the frozen section.
Sadly there’s an undercurrent of xenophobia in a lot of these negative reviews. It may be intimidating going to a store where many people speak Polish, but it’s sad that people resort to condescending trash-​talking on Unilocal based on their own insecurities or ignorance. It’s petty and transparent to the rest of us.

An elderly Polish neighbor asked if I would go to Rich’s for her and pick up some deli items because she is unable to go out.
I saw the hot food area and decided to order a couple of dinners for her as a surprise. The woman behind the counter spoke no English. I spent five minutes playing charades and pointing in an attempt to place an order. Another employee walked over and spoke English to me, I told her that I wanted two dinners with two different meats. She nodded and kept saying ‘yes’, and «translated» to the first woman. The first woman proceeded to place both orders in one container, everything piled on top of everything else. Then, she began to prepare an identical order in a separate container. I told her no, just one, she seemed angry and confused. The second employee came back and proceeded to scold me about how the hot food bar worked (small dinner vs. large). Obviously the confusion was my fault. I have no business shopping in this store if I don’t speak their language. I paid for the food and said thank you, in an attempt to keep my own peace. The woman slammed the bag on the counter, scowled at me and walked away.
The deli lady understood my order and that went smoothly.
There are very, very, few English translations in this store. The aisle makers are all in Polish so if you’re looking for something specific, you have to walk up and down each aisle.
The check-​out people don’t speak English either. If I couldn’t see the total on the register, I guess I would have to just hand her money and hope it was enough.
Overall, the staff is rude and unhelpful.
I fully understand that this is a Polish market, but it’s a larger store, located in the United States. This business should acclimate to it’s location and hire bi-​lingual employee’s and make accommodations for it’s potential non Polish speaking customers. I for one won’t be one of them.
One other HUGE problem is that the employee’s are stocking shelves and there are carts and empty boxes all over the place, blocking the way and access to the aisles. They empty a box and literally toss it out of their way. Shoppers are forced to maneuver and/​or move the boxes just to get through. This seems like a public safety issue to me, if there were an emergency, people would be tripping over the debris in the aisles.

We mainly buy deli meats, cheese and meat from here. Since the store has a ton of customers especially on weekends, everything has been fresh so far. I love their pirogi and dinner specials. You cannot beat $ 3.99 for meat and two sides. However, I wish they would translate most of their products since everything is in Polish.

This place is run by Polish people. The signs are in Polish, the cashiers greet you in Polish, and most of the brands are Polish. It’s an interesting store to visit but the service is horrible and it’s extremely overpriced. I went in to buy beer with my wife and they asked for both of our IDs even though I was the only one buying the beer. The stupidity of this is incomprehensible. I didn’t even bother arguing with them about it because they barely understand English. Next time I go in, I’m going to buy some beer while I’m carrying my baby boy just to see if they ask for his ID. The cashiers are unbelievably slow too. It’s a horrible store but they certainly fulfill a need because there are so many Polish people in the area. They’ll all flock there even if it’s a total dump just because it’s so unique.

i had a terrible exsperience when i bought fresh taco meat home from there and found a piece of brown rubber. like a man made rubber plug of some sort. god no s what or where they get there meat. called manager of store and told him what i found he lol and hung up on me. well forget this gross place back to marionos for me and my friends i will tell everyone about this place

My go-​to spot for everything that reminds me of home. Fantastic deli, awesome made-​in-​house dishes (the soups are especially phenomenal), and a great selection of polskie słodycze, all in a huge supermarket. Never encountered poor service but then again, I’m not exactly American.

uuuugh, shame on you… Just bought a pack of Ser Krolewski, (0.8 pound!) .At least that’s what I thought. After I opened it it turned out that only 5! slices were actually of that brand. The rest underneath looks like leftovers of some other cheap cheese.
Highly NOT recommended place to do the shopping.

I used to shop there. Nice place and great food. They need some improvement in order to expand. They need to focus more on keeping the place clean. Their employees never smile which is very strange. The most important why I stopped shopping there is that they don’t care about «fixing problems». Once, I saw a girl about 15 years old opening a plastic container with a cake and eating the cake by using her fingers. She ate a little bit, closed the container and put the cake back on the shelf. I was very shocked and I went to manager to tell him about it. You know what he did? He told me that he will take care about this — so I followed him (he didn’t know that I was following him — I was just very interested what he is going to do?) He didn’t do anything!!! Montrose Deli or Deli4You use special plastic containers for food which you can’t open and close without notice.

Must-​shop place for preparing a traditional Polish Christmas Eve supper. I stopped in here to pick up a few essentials for our meal. Rich’s has a huge deli, which is probably its biggest draw, but there’s plenty more to see up and down the aisles. Need potato or kraut pierogi? How about more obscure things like large pearled barley for making kutia, or mushroom filled uszka? You’ll find it all here. They got items in the freezer section too, so you can save your pierogi for another day, defrost and cook them as you like.
The other imported Polish and eastern European foods are as good as any Polish joint on Milwaukee Avenue in the heart of Chicago’s Polish community, but this place serves the Polish enclaves in Norridge and Harwood Heights. You’ll find your Polish cookies, candy, chocolates, magazines and so much more than just a deli. I’m not a Polish booze expert, but they got plenty of that too.
Best to avoid this place on Fridays or Saturdays, seems it gets craziest then.

Rich’s has an excellent deli as well as a hot food counter with home cooked meals at great prices. I gave it only 3 stars because of their need to improve their service/​advertising for non-​Polish speaking people. The numbers at the deli are called out ONLY in Polish and most of the signs are written ONLY in Polish. When you ask what they say most of the employees get impatient. This tends to get annoying when trying to shop there. If the management remedied the language barrier, Rich’s would definitely get 5 stars from me.

I was here an hour ago, I had a lady cut in front of me to join the person before me and thought it was her daughter but she paid separate. The bread shelves (reason I came) were nearly empty and the cahier acted like she was mad at me. I understand this is a polish store but HEY your store is in my Country, the United States of America and if you don’t want to deal with English speaking people go back to Poland. It is also illegal here to discriminate.

My whole family got FOOD POISONING from their goulash in the hot foods section. Besides that, we have been shopping there for years. Be watchful of your cart though. They use the quarter system and there is a lady that likes to steal your cart for the quarter.

Great deli and awesome hot prepared foods! However they call the numbers out in Polish and I missed my number several times. :-)
This store has more produce and dairy than Andy’s Deli, plus a huge selection of imported beers. There’s tons of fresh bread, aisles of imported Polish food, and a cold case of pierogies, cabbage rolls, fresh salads, etc.
All the food we got was really delicious and I will definitely go back again. However the parking situation is AWFUL and the place is always a crowded, fast-​paced madhouse.

On the cheap side: recommending ‘homemade’ plum jam/​marmalade ($ 2 for approx. 1 lb, sold in plastic containers). On Monday mornings, the leftover bread loafs («Rich’s bread») from the weekend sale are sold at $.99.
On the complainers’ side: non-​Polish speakers might feel bit lost: clerks at the deli counter usually don’t call numbers in English. Some items & prices behind the counter could be more clearly marked and in English too.

It is a well known secret in Rich’s neck of the woods that they have best Polish sausages in the area. All the little old polish people are buying, so you know its good.
The only downside is that not speaking polish may get a shank in your ribs if you arent to careful — the locals are shifty!
Seriously though, if you are having a barb-​e-​que and want the BEST polishes grab them from here and you’ll be a hero.

I concur with the other comments about cleanliness needs to improve and the items blocking the aisles. I concur with the clerks being somewhat rude — but, the preceding 2 statements are true of Wally’s Market, and several others.
After going for about 2 years every 1 – 3 weeks, I still find this is the largest selection, most reasonably priced and best open hours of any Polish grocery store in the area.

I smell Polish sausage, this will be your first thought after you enter Rich’s keep walking straight and you’ll soon be seeing Polish sausage, a whole wall of it. Stick to the fresh stuff; meat, bread and deli and you’ll be fine.
The rest of the store could use an update and a good cleaning, the produce section isn’t that large nor is the liquor section.
The liquor section is what brought me here, or really I was just driving my mom here. Apparently in the City of Chicago, you can’t by Spiritus, or at least the full strength version of it which is something around 96% pure alcohol. Other than that, I can’t see why I’d make tracks up here.
Damn you City of Chicago!

Rich’s has a very impressive array of European breads (check out the French rolls; while nothing special, they arrive still warm from being baked); cheeses; premade soups;and various dairy products. I didn’t even really check out the deli, the packaged desserts or the produce.
Check out the candy aisle (prunes in chocolate — lovely; chocolate covered agar-​based — vegetarian — marshmallows). By the registers they have individual packs of Mamba (vegetarian Starbust equivalents) and rolls of Mentos. Pure horseradish is easily available, as are various aseptically packed juices (more of them 100% juice than in most ethnic groceries I frequent) — handy for road trips. Bottles of raspberry syrup are $ 5 and adventurous non-​Poles can check out drinks such as birch water or aloe juice. Beer can be bought by the bottle and the closeout liquor section featured some interesting discards.
The stock is really packed in and you’ll have to deposit a quarter to get a cart. Next time I will; my arms hurt after carting a handbasket through this place. Aisles are labeled in Polish only.

Just 3 stars for you Rich’s! 3 stars due to pretty OK prices on deli and meat freshness. However the items on the shelves needs to have their expiration dates checked often! I recently bought some cookies that had an expiration date of 1/​10, 7 months past, no one ever buys them, no one ever checks? I’ll tell you why this is. Polish stores all get their canned/​bagged items from the same distributor Lowells. Rich’s wants items cheaper and purchases the «half off» lot that is set to expire within 2 weeks, and thinks they can unload them on immigrants that will not speak up. They’ve received a violation from Harwood hts on this once that I know of, once causing them to close and clean up and toss old stuff.
The staff has an attitude and looks like they very much dont want to be there. I’m not surprised, most make $ 5−6/hr (yes I know how much minimum wage is — none here are paid it!), and live in the basement of the butcher. Sort of sounds like a sweatshop to me.
But in the end, I still come here for the deli.
A word to the wise. Look at the prices on the labels or shelves and check out what they ring up at, I find that about 30% of the items ring up $ 0.30-$ 1 more than they should. Sneaky.

This grocery store is in a strip mall on Harlem Avenue near Lawrence. There are lots of Polish and European specialties inside, which make it popular with the ethnic families and the adventurous shoppers.