Retail Watchers

No more copying of the "shops" of the San Francisco Union Square Macys? That's a shame.

Perhaps that was the only department store Ron ever visited prior to assuming his former post at JCP.

I went to Wendys last night and the bag had this new logo. Fries that did not taste about 30 minutes old would have been more important to me than a new logo. Self serve drinks would have been nice, too, but no such luck. Oh, and they had to walk my credit card over to the drive through to run it th...

Smiths just changed its program. Smiths old program was quarterly accumulation of "points" and 100 points yielded a .10 off up to $2 off at Smiths, Shell, or Quik Stop. Or if you did not use points, at least 500 points got you a $5 off Smiths coupon good on any purchase. The new program is...

Supervalu managed to take everything Albertsons was doing wrong and do it even more wrong. Albertsons at the time of the purchase had the highest prices in its markets. What did Supervalu do? Made the prices even higher. Safeway prices were just as high for a while but Safeway started to make some a...

Oh I think they will operate stores on an ongoing basis, the Albertsons LLC, there is no question in my mind about that. With how they are operating the 200 stores they have, it is clear to me they are in the business to operate stores. I am just not sure how many stores they will keep operating... ...

I was in a couple of Save Marts today and noticed they shuttered the hot chinese food kitchens in the stores. The stores are the former Safeway in Tracy on 11th Street and the former Lucky on Marsh in Stockton acquired in 1997 from ASC. Both hot chinese food kitchens are remnants of the prior operat...

I hope they can pull it off. But I see a lot of store closures and a lot of asset sales. It is not going to be an easy road. Albertsons Stores in a lot of places have just been run into the ground. I believe the damage has been done at this point in a lot of different places to a point that short of...

Lowes does that too, but at Lowes the customer signature is on the customer copy of the receipt and the store retains the signature image electronically. Raleys system has the ability to "display the signature" on the cashier's screen for the cashier to "accept" or "reject&q...

Another reason to take signatures on a paper slip still is if you have heavy chargebacks. "Illegible signature" is a reason a store can lose a chargeback and those screens capture a lot of illegible signatures. I think Rite Aid still has you sign a paper slip despite having equipment that ...

I have not seen any of the oil companies go to the signature on screen yet (7-Eleven has done it for years). Shell and Chevron both have those readers, but you sign a paper slip. Same for BP (or the rare Arcos that take Credit under BP's network). Most of the time the gas stations send their slips i...