Retail Watchers

I really don't see them selling Vons. It just doesn't make sense, it is strong and a lot of well located stores. There are some weak "pieces" of Vons. Las Vegas and Fresno seem to be weak, but they have closed the majority of the stores in those markets and I expect two more closures in Fr...

Vons, I just don't see it...

Denver....

There is an oddly placed Conoco in Brookings, OR. I wonder if there is one sitting in some remote part of WA closer to the ocean...

We have one 24 hour CVS in Sparks. Typically, at night, there are two clerks in pharmacy and two clerks on front end. It is a fairly busy place and this staffing is similar to how it was staffed as Sav-On. There have been times when the pharmacy is closed overnight due to lack of a graveyard shift p...

I noticed those signs in SoCal a few weeks ago. I was at first not sure what they were covering. Then after a day of driving around I realized what the signs were covering. The other "covered" object in SoCal was the "part of BP" on Arco signs. Those got covered up here in Reno w...

I was looking through the envelope of ValPak Coupons that came to me last week. I noticed buried toward the bottom of the pile were a couple of JCP coupons with that old JCPenney logo. The entire coupon format, language, etc. all had an odd 1990's vibe. The colors, the font choices, it just all scre...

Also regarding closing a third of the stores, I think that creates issues for Safeway spreading its "overhead" costs among the stores. Safeway is very top heavy with a lot of management above the store level. Safeway also routinely sends out larger print ads than any competitors. So they m...

The high price scale and poor customer service reputation Safeway has rightfully earned is unfortunate. My view of their sites in AZ was a "busy" SWY store had 3 checkstands open on a weekend afternoon. Any WMT or Frys within sight of these stores had a full parking lot and so, so many mor...

Many of the AZ locations are redundant. In that I mean, you can see a (Frys, WMT, ABS, Bashas, or some other grocer) from SWY's parking lot. Maybe 40 of the locations are not redundant. My observation in AZ is SWY has more traffic than Bashas, but a little to significantly less traffic than all of t...

This one opened in 1988. Must be the end of a 25 year lease.