Sorry to hear that, but maybe it is your location? I haven't seen too many issues with produce where I am from, outside the price. Farmers markets are the best still and normally cost less than stores, so it is beneficial to try and go to them. It's still the same crappy hours, though, haha.

I remember the town I was living in around 2011-2014. They had a privately owned franchise of a regional grocery store. That grocery chain was also starting to roll out a new, affiliated store with a different name that was designed to a more "luxury* store. They only opened a handful, and they were usually much larger and much more expensive, with TONS of options. Like whole aisles dedicated to just fancy olives. Trying to compete with Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

When I first moved to that town, there was a nearby strip mall being built from the ground up. At that time, the local old grocery store was perfectly fine. As soon as the strip mall with the big premium location opened up, I immediately noticed that the produce in the local store declined. Same price, much lower quality. The good quality stuff was being shuffled to the premium store and sold for 2-3x the price.

Hopefully the machines in charge of the matrix make it taste like chicken.