Retail Watchers

On Monday, the County will vote whether or not to move forward with the project. If approved, construction will begin and the store will open later this year:

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/p ... t-june-10/

I'm not disagreeing about your general argument that Ralphs doesn't need to have it's own brand names but I think the remaining Ralphs stores are probably among the highest performing in the company, especially the core stores in metro L.A. that often do twice the volume of competing Vons and Alber...

There is no sign of a milk label change at Smiths... what are the labels changing to at Fred Meyer? Milk is the LAST private label item left that actually says Smiths. Eggs went to Kroger label last year and bread to Kroger label this year. What about water? Ralph's has a hodgepodge of Ralph's and ...

Regarding the items you commented on: lighter cupcakes with whipped frosting Lousy thaw and sell product from Smiths frozen plant I suspect, same trash Smiths sold pre-Kroger , introduction of legacy Kroger cakes like the “sognature” Carmel Oddly that cake hasn't been seen at Smiths much so I guess...

The legacy Ralph’s/VDK bakery products survived until the early 2010s, so relatively recently. Various Kroger divisions maintained their own baked goods, with minimal convergence... IDK if this is still true, but Ralph’s definitely has the legacy Midwestern product - maybe Kroger closed local manufa...

I think those flavored Kroger donuts came from the Columbus Bakery that they closed a few months ago... I wonder if they transferred that to another plant or just went to a third party vendor. The VDK Bakery made its own donuts... I wonder if they were a common formula to the other Kroger ones or d...

It’s official. I noticed this afternoon that all the Van de Kamp’s-branded doughnuts are now Kroger-branded, in the familiar blue boxes the rest of the chain uses. I’m not certain when the change was made, but they were definitely using the Van de Kamp’s brand as recently as earlier in the month. It...

That Farmer Jack purchase was always a head-scratcher for me. Kroger selectively chose which FJ stores to purchase, so it's not like they were stuck with it. It's obvious it's closing because the lease is finally up, but not obvious at all why they took over the lease to begin with, unless it was t...

For the past twelve years, Kroger has operated a pair of supermarkets directly across the highway from each other in Dearborn, MI. The location they're closing is the older of the two and was acquired in 2007 from Farmer Jack. It's really not surprising -- the store they're retaining opened up circa...

The Albertsons in Lake Forest has a huge sign on the door, providing notice of a public hearing on the proposed change in ownership. I ponder if this is park of the package of stores Albertsons agreed to sell last year, or if it continues to sell off its real estate (hello, Sears). Would be a shame ...