San Francisco Premium Outlets

Reviews 5

MI

Michael Kruse

If you were to ask me what hell looks like, this would be it. Coming to the outlet mall on the weekend or a public holiday is pointless. Unless you plan to arrive early in the morning or near closing time you will not find parking. Instead, you will drive around the parking lot with fifty other cars waiting to pounce on the one spot that becomes available every 3-5 minutes. Sounds like fun doesnt it? But suppose you got lucky and you did find parking. Once you are inside the mall you will discover that those thousands of cars outside means that there are thousands of people inside. Yes, its over crowded. Badly. Oh, but its an "open" mall with fresh air and sunshine. Not so fast. In winter, this place can get real cold in the evenings; in summer you will be unpleasantly hot. But dont worry, in summer all the stores turn up their AC to the point that once you are inside a store you will need one of their trendy jackets to stay warm. Need to go to the restroom? Good luck. I have never seen a place where the line for the mens restroom is outside the door. And high traffic restrooms means the place is in a rather bad shape in terms of being clean. You finally made it to your designer store of choice. Want some shoes? No, you will only find one of the shoes to the pair because hundreds of people before you ravaged through the store and discarded the items willy-nilly when they didnt want them. Oh, you want to ask a store assistant for help? No, dont even bother. You will generally not be helped and if you do it will be ask quickly as possible so that you can stop bothering them. Ever walked around a mall all day and wanted to grab something to eat? Yeah, youve probably been disappointed by mall options before. But wait until you see what the food court offers. This food court will make other malls look good. I swear the best thing you could order here is a subway sandwich; anything else just looks horrible and is way overpriced. Do you enjoy standing while eating? Be prepared to. But dont let me stop you from enjoying suburban hell. Its open 10:00 am to 9 pm everyday, 7 days a week.

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KA

Karen V Chin

Has every popular or upscale store here. No need to drive down to Gilroy or Vacaville anymore. But its at least 1 hr away from SF in the East Bay city, Livermore. You will need a lot of patience to shop here. Parking and getting a table at the Food Court (plenty to choose: Chinese, Japanese, Subway, Italian, Salad place, Chicken, Häagen-Dazs, etc.) are difficult to find on the weekends because this place is packed. It can get frustrating to walk forward and stroll because of the amount of people walking, strollers, window shopping, etc. There is a Starbucks and other snack places scattered around the outlet, but again the lines are LONG to get a beverage during the weekends. For some stores, they only let a certain number of people enter and shop at one time, such as True Religion, Michael Kors, Gucci, Tory Burch, Prada during the Sunday we went. This is much better than being in the free-for- all zoo called Coach, where there are very few salespeople on the floor to get any help and the wait to pay line is long. You cannot simply find what you want, pay and get out of the store quickly because of the crowd in the store. In terms of finding bargains, its all relative when you think of the price of gas to drive to Livermore, your stress level dealing with the crowds and finding any assistance at the stores, and the time it takes to find a parking space or shelling out money to pay for valet parking because youve circled around the outlet complex looking for parking. My tip: Hate crowds, shop during the week only. Parking is much easier to find and being in the Food Court is much more pleasant experience if you want to eat, sit and relax.

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LI

Lisa G

Lets start off with the fact that parking is awful and good luck to you on finding parking. There just arent enough spaces. I recently went on a non-busy, rainy weekend (aka no special sale or holiday weekend), and we circled for 10 minutes (Im going to guess that Stoneridge was doing better business this weekend). My tip is to carpool if you are going with a group. We also went when it rained, and this is a outdoor shopping area, so if you come during the few rainy days on California, remember to bring your umbrella. You could still feel some sprinkles even in the covered portions of the outlets. Next there are a lot of stores. This outlet has a great selection all in one place. I like it better than the Gilroy outlets (where they are divided into 4 separate areas and its hard to walk to each store and better to drive). If you are looking for a particular store, I suggest looking at a directory if you can or googling the website and finding the location. This outlet is pretty big to walk around, like a big oval. There are hallways you can cut through in some areas, but if you miss a store, it could be a bit of a walk away because this place has a lot of square footage (you could say the same about any large mall). I have found some good finds, and there are a lot of great brands. Overall these outlets are worth the drive and parking if you are in the buying mood or looking for an item. If you are only interested in window shopping or browsing, I would suggest going to Stoneridge instead.

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WA

Walter Macalma

San Francisco Premium outlets are not in San Francisco, they are 1hour+ to the east in Livermore/Dublin. I can understand Bay Area Premium Outlets, but ease up on the SF piggy back. I would have taken East Bay Premium Outlets, but you guys let a Magazine based out of Wisconsin beat you to that trademark. Probably the biggest outlet shopping mall center I’ve seen, easily beats anything in Southern California as far as size, as well as variety. Parking and entrances are a joke with not nearly enough entrances/exits and the rows become Disneyland long. Heck just the inside building island would be small for an outlet, let alone completely enclosed by the rest of it. Being the latest and greatest it’s pretty clean and well maintained. Food options are very ethnic and I even saw food trucks posted on one of the alley ways, so obviously they mis calculated the food situation. I get that you will have a large tourist attraction, but you couldn’t lure any substantial food offerings? Bathrooms are few and far between, as are the maps. The selection is cool, but I do lots of my shopping online. Besides this there is nothing that would draw me back here. Apparently ladies like the Bloomingdales outlet which is rare apparently. I was hoping for more entertainment offerings like a public square as well as better prices within. You’re a sucker if you think I’m paying full price for anything. Reception is spotty within its bowels.

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SU

Susan Jamieson

SF Outlets are off Hwy 580 in Livermore/Pleasanton, east of Hwy 680, and quite a distance from San Francisco (1+ hr drive across the Bay and over the Hills with normal traffic), so the name is VERY deceiving. IMHO whoever named it is an idiot, since every shopper in the Bay Area associates SF with traffic and difficulty parking, and people NOT from the Bay Area will go to SF and not find it. The large semi-outdoor mall is fairly new, not crowded, and nice. Food Court was austere, with just a bunch of tables in an echoing hall with food booths around the perimeter. Service was slow. Not a place one would want to hang out and eat with friends, but it does the job if you are starving and have 30+ minutes to spare. There is no place to contain or entertain rambunctious kids there, so I dont consider it family-friendly. As a Premium Outlet, this is NOT a Discount outlet, no more than the regular brand-name stores are. High end brands sell lower-quality lines in these stores for less money than their flagship stores (from what the salesclerks told me), so you basically get what you pay for at the lower price. One can still find last seasons goods, overstocked items, and odd sizes on sale in the back of the shops.

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