Retail Watchers

Can't say this is a big surprise, but Stop & Shop just announced the closure of the Jackson, NJ location (which I was just at in my last round of visits). The store was well-stocked and mostly clean, but absolutely deserted. Some thoughts: I am not the least bit surprised about that closure, es...

The price hikes are a complete joke in CA specifically. In SoCal there are SO many local/independent restaurants where you can get significantly more food for the same or less money than these fast food chains. In NorCal it isn't so much that way because the prices are so outrageously higher and th...

The Good -Better SKU level density in store, much broader assortment than other S&F locations. Example coffee syrups is same footage as other stores but SKU density was double with numerous flavors I've never seen there. Makes me wonder if they manage like Walmart and reduce SKUs in slower sell...

(All of these are with two sides. I tried to add Smokey Bones (a regional chain in the Southeast) but online ordering was unavailable on their website and I could only find prices with the added Grubhub delivery markup. Costco frequently sells discounted gift cards for Smokey Bones though, so the a...

Looking closely at pricing in your photos I think they have a pricing problem. While their pricing looks great to me since I am so used to the terrible Northern California prices I see most often, Market Basket is a very difficult competitor and I don't think they are competitive with them on mix o...

The one thing they are doing that I think will hurt their reputation is the store closing sales with the liquidators. These liquidators are filling the stores up with total junk. Well, filling 4-5 aisles up with this junk. One store had an entire aisle of scrubs in little plastic food storage bags....

Are any of those stores that look so bad ones that were on the potential closings list but then they worked out with the landlord to keep them? Thinking that the one in this area that has more of this issue (though it did have quite a bit of stuff in the seasonal section, so "new" stuff w...

Are any of those stores that look so bad ones that were on the potential closings list but then they worked out with the landlord to keep them? Thinking that the one in this area that has more of this issue (though it did have quite a bit of stuff in the seasonal section, so "new" stuff wa...

Reuters says C&S is buying 166 more stores, along with the Haggen banner, and the Signature and O Organics brands: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/kroger-albertsons-amend-asset-sale-agreement-with-cs-wholesale-2024-04-22/ Actually, in an article I saw it said that C&S would have ACCES...

Also no self checkout. I guess if you only have one employee up front that can't work. They have added self-checkout to many of their stores (especially new ones) in this area, and it works fine no matter how many employees are working on regular registers. The only issue is that they made them all...