When I was visiting Express Avenue, I also visited Big Bazaar which is located in the basement of the Express Avenue Mall.  This is the fourth store of Big Bazaar in Chennai.  It was opened to public only this week and seems to be a huge attraction due to their publicity and popularity.  Big bazaar attracted huge crowd during the day I went on the opening weekend (Sunday)!  The Big Bazaar store was brimming with people, almost the 75% of the crowd which visited Express Avenue was inside Big Bazaar I thought.  The one word which can describe the Big Bazaar during that day was “chaos” due to the huge crowd which wandered around it.  My first impression was that this is a very typical Big Bazaar store with all in once place especially in one floor which makes it even chaotic!

Store:

Anyway, as advertised or claimed, this Big Bazaar seems to be the biggest of their stores in Chennai, all spread across a single floor in the basement of Express Avenue.  Just like any other stores, all that you want for your home is available at Big Bazaar.  At the entrance of the store is the clothing section of the store, i.e., the Fashion Bazaar with men’s section welcoming us afterwards with the women’s clothing and kid’s section with exclusive kids’ range of clothes and toys and books for kids.  This store has huge collection  of apparels than any other Big Bazaar Store in Chennai.  And after that I was lost inside the store, literally with the chaos and the whole lot of products found and aisles found inside the store.

I then lost hold of the sections I was wandering insider in order.  Then I saw Furniture Bazaar spread across in a small place and likewise the Electronics store was stacked with major brands of TVs, washing machines, laptops, mobiles, sound systems, home theatres, etc.  Then there was the Home Bazaar.  And then finally the major attraction of Big Bazaar, the Food Bazaar which occupied the major chunk of space in Big Bazaar in Express Avenue.  With exclusive food and daily needs and vegetables occupying the entire place.  There were also exclusive bakery and sweets section in this store which I suppose is a new for Big Bazaar at least in Chennai.

Service:

One thing I was also surprised to see is that the store salesmen were indeed trying to help or easily accessible for help in this store unlike the Pondy Bazaar store where you will need to walk the entire stretch to find a sales assistant to seek help and even if they were around you, you could see them chatting between them, as far as I have seen in the other Big Bazaar, whenever I visit it.

I regretted that I should have visited the store during a weekday to go through the whole store at a leisurely pace as I had to go through each store in a hurry due to the rush in crowd that was only increasing every minute.

Billing:

Although there were nearly 25 to 30 cash tills, but still almost all of them welcomed everyone with a huge queue right in front.  This is where the entire chaotic crowd got bottle necked at the end with each one of them holding their very own shopping cart and thus leaving no space to stand for the rest of us.  Had to wait for nearly 30 minutes to get through the billing!

Overall, this store of Big Bazaar seems to be a huge hit, just like any of their branches like the Pondy Bazaar, T. Nagar Big Bazaar, Vadapalani and the Royapuram stores.

Apart from shopping, this Big Bazaar is a great place to pass (or waste) your time doing window shopping but the irony is that you will not come out of Big Bazaar with empty hand even if you have intended for the same at the first place!