Retail Watchers

I think that timeline supports what I saw at the time. It was in the late 1970s through the 1980s. One store was in the SW area of Miami and the other was in the Denver area. I wish I could remember more about their exact locations but they were very well run and very busy, Food selection was like ...

I had a store that shared a wall with a Safeway and their grease traps were near the air intakes for our HVAC. We were having sudden odor problems and the facilities folks traced it to their failure to clean their grease traps regularly. Ralphs probably just had them cleaned properly. The Reno Sam'...

At this point I would assume they're not going to fully recover at the store level until Christmas. At this point, I don't think they will make it until Christmas. I sure hope they make it but going into these stores as much as I did the past two months in CA and seeing the empty shelves and ongoin...

They need to make the coupons work on every damn thing in the store without exception or excuses. Yes! I'm in need of new sneakers and I know a few years ago, coupons would apply to pretty much every brand except for maybe Nike. Now, the coupons only seem to work on the Kohl's house brands (which a...

Logistically, Northwest has not integrated CULS into their operation from what I can tell. Maybe administratively they have integrated. They have kept all previous logistics arrangements CULS had before it became owned by them. CULS was publicly traded but that was back in the 2000's. https://www.ma...

Sometimes simple is the best solution. Way back in time no one was allowed to bring in any receptacle that could accommodate store products (at least in the stores I worked in or shopped. If it was a huge purse type thing they were followed around the store. But no one was allowed to "shop&quo...

My Mexican-American in-laws moved from Eastside San Jose to Modesto last September. Bought a house. When visiting, I stay in a hotel just blocks from the Pelandale/Sisk location. Is not a Hispanic heavy area but is busy with lots of retail. The west side of the 99 freeway is a much more Latino heav...

Another big merger that probably shouldn't happen. Maybe it is a good fit. 66 and Marathon both have almost no corporate operated retail sites in the US at this point. What a mess of brands this merger ends up with. Maybe BP can get Arco back since they seem to love the brand so much that they keep ...

I believe SoCal, Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas are their own division. So maybe the improvement I'm seeing is just divisional. In fact I see more staffing than I have any time since the activist investors (Jana Funds) forced the sale to Amazon. There were at least a dozen employees working the...

95% of sewer smell issues are dried out floor drains. The P-trap needs water to be added regularly, ideally daily. If you simply mop the floor well with a bucket and water it will keep the P-trap full and prevent it from drying out and letting sewer gas in. When I walk into a restaurant with that s...