5 Giant Eagle Policies Pennsylvanians Argue About and Get Wrong

Kroger’s 2026 Giant Eagle deal costs $1.65 billion.

Some Pennsylvanians now assume the Pittsburgh chain already runs like a Kroger store.

It doesn’t yet. Giant Eagle still runs its myPerks rewards program, which added more than 53,000 new loyalty households in the nine months after its 2024 relaunch, trade publication Grocery Dive found.

These are the Giant Eagle policies Pennsylvanians argue about and get wrong.

1. No More Doubled Coupons

Giant Eagle shoppers still swap tips about doubling a coupon at the register.

The argument comes up in checkout lines and Facebook groups alike.

One side insists it still works somewhere in the state.

That side stopped being right.

Giant Eagle stopped doubling manufacturer coupons chainwide in March 2020, ending a policy that had applied only under a dollar in coupon value.

A company spokesperson blamed a simple trend: Fewer shoppers were clipping manufacturer coupons in the first place, at Giant Eagle and across the grocery industry generally.

So the perk went away, and the coupon math changed with it.

2. Wine and Beer, Store by Store

Giant Eagle doesn’t get to decide who sells wine or beer.

Pennsylvania does, store by store.

Shoppers standing in the aisle with a bottle in hand still argue that every location carries it now.

State law says otherwise.

A Giant Eagle location has to hold a restaurant or hotel liquor license already, before the state Liquor Control Board will grant a wine-to-go permit on top of that.

That permit caps a wine-to-go transaction at three liters, and sales only run 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

No Sunday wine runs under that permit, no matter how badly a dinner party needs one.

The Liquor Control Board approves beer sales the same way, one store at a time.

That’s why a Giant Eagle two towns over might pour craft beer while the Giant Eagle down the road never picked up the license.

3. myPerks, Not Fuelperks+

Giant Eagle’s Fuelperks+ loyalists still do the math in a currency that doesn’t exist anymore.

Ten cents a gallon for every 50 points, expiring in 60 days.

Some longtime shoppers call the switch a downgrade outright.

Giant Eagle finished moving every account over to myPerks in January 2024, and the new program runs on dollars, not gallons.

Fifty perks now equal a dollar reward, and a shopper can put that dollar toward gas, groceries, or a gift card instead of being locked into a per-gallon discount.

Other shoppers call that flexibility the whole point.

The numbers back them: More than 53,000 new loyalty households joined myPerks in the nine months after its 2024 relaunch, according to trade publication Grocery Dive.

Kroger, which agreed to buy Giant Eagle for $1.65 billion in a deal not expected to close until 2027, has already said myPerks stays as it is for now.

The perks bank didn’t shrink.

It just changed currencies, and the two sides still haven’t agreed on whether that’s a win.

4. Scan Pay & Go’s Disappearing Act

Giant Eagle built Scan Pay & Go so shoppers could skip the checkout line.

Shoppers whose store still has the scanner insist Giant Eagle would never pull it chainwide.

Regulars at a store that lost it insist the whole program is fading out.

The answer varies by store.

Giant Eagle pulled the feature from five stores in May 2024, four of them in the Pittsburgh area and one in Columbus, Ohio.

The company’s reasoning was blunt: Shoppers weren’t using the scanner enough at those locations to keep it running.

Giant Eagle said it’s still evaluating which services stay where.

That leaves room for the scanner to disappear from one store while staying put at the next.

That’s why two Giant Eagle regulars ten minutes apart can swear opposite things are true.

5. Home Delivery's Hidden Fee

Giant Eagle waives the Curbside Express delivery fee on a shopper's very first order, and many shoppers assume that free ride keeps going.

Regular delivery customers insist the price never budges after that.

It budges to $12.95.

That fee starts with the second order, according to Giant Eagle's posted delivery terms.

It's the kind of charge a shopper only notices once the total looks different than they remember.

Other shoppers figure curbside pickup costs the same by now, since delivery no longer comes free.

Curbside pickup has skipped that fee since at least 2020, when it applied to orders of $35 or more, according to trade publication Grocery Dive.

Giant Eagle hasn't published a curbside fee page to confirm that threshold still holds, so a shopper's safest bet is asking at pickup before assuming the math hasn't changed.