Retail Watchers

Chase has actually done some pretty significant remodeling of the Fred Meyer store branches they took over from WaMu earlier this year. They also took over the ATMs in Washington Target stores. When I went to Disney World last year, thanks to the Chase takeover of WaMu I was also able to use the Cha...

I think it's pretty much standard practice for grocery stores to be selling gift cards these days (QFC has basically the same selection of gift cards as Fred Meyer does,) but keep in mind that Fred Meyer is something of a "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none" retailer, and their selections ...

And just as quickly as this dispute began, it's over:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-new ... orced=true

I don't know what Costco is doing, but oftentimes equipment like soda fountains is leased from Coca-Cola or Pepsico. If I recall the last time this happened, the Coke products were only gone for a couple of months before they returned. I'm guessing Costco expects the situation to be temporary here t...

I doubt it. Coca Cola and Costco have had disagreements like this on pricing before, but even though they stopped selling canned soda inside the warehouses at the time, the fountains remained. I suspect it would be too expensive to change everything over to Pepsi in the food courts just to prove a p...

There are some older Target stores (smaller unremodeled late 80s/ early 90s stores) that don't have conveyors on their checkstands at all. All of the checkstands are in the express lane format. The Target store in Redmond (which originally opened as a Target Greatland in 1995 or so) always had conve...

The checkstands that were put in at one of the two local QFCs during the last remodel actually removed the first conveyor completely, and have only one conveyor after the scanner. If you're using a cart this is more convenient because it means you don't need to unload anything, but if you're using a...

I read somewhere at one point that Target has a policy of only opening new stores during three particular months of the year (If I recall correctly, it was something like April, August and October, but I'm probably wrong about that,) which means that oftentimes a bunch of new stores in locations thr...

While going back and reading a thread on Chowhound that I contributed to some time ago, one of the posts on that thread complained about the use of seemingly random cheesy thunder sound effects in the produce aisle at a Publix store. These sound effects come from an automatic misting system that spr...

I'm not familiar enough with the area to be able to answer that question, but it appeared that the store had moved somewhat recently, as there was a vacant store nearby with clear labelscars of old Smith's signage. Then again, the strip mall the store is in seems to be relatively new, so I'm guessin...