Retail Watchers

The Kroger/Shell partnership has now expanded to Los Angeles. My local Ralphs doesn't seem to have anything posted about the promotion -- I just happened to see "insert your Ralphs Rewards card" on the pump display at a Shell where I'd stopped to fill up.

storewanderer wrote:I think Ralphs closed some or all of their Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf kiosks.

Definitely not "all"; can't comment on "some" (since I don't know the status of every single one).

I assume that at some stores, Target can expand their stores into the former garden centers. This already happened a couple years ago as the result of a renovation at "my" Target (Victory and Vineland in North Hollywood, CA). The garden center space was taken up by an expanded grocery dep...

Along my commute, at Victory Blvd. and Tujunga Ave. in North Hollywood, an independent grocery store closed, was partially demolished (basically everything but the roof was torn down), and rebuilt. With this thread in mind, I was somewhat surprised to see that the new tenant is Rite Aid -- guess, de...

Effective 01 March 2010, Safeway is discontinuing it's long-running airline miles program. In a letter mailed to cardholders, Safeway expressed their intention to focus on lower prices, and this would be one way to do it. This move has already been bemoaned on the flyertalk.com message boards. I wa...

Looked it up to see what I could find out, and ran across this blog of photos of the humorous signs they put up in front of the store. Last post was August 2008, though -- and it explains nothing about the logo.

The aisle sign above is in the Kroger decor that resembles the old Ralphs decor. There are already three sided Ralphs aisle signs in some of their stores: http://www.flickr.com/photos/socalretail/2384865946/in/photostream/ For a data point, my usual Ralphs (in Sherman Oaks, but it's considered the ...

Sad, but I hadn't even noticed they were gone. It might have had more of an impact on me if Twinkies had disappeared, but they never went away.