Retail Watchers

Walmart changed the role of the people greeter a few months ago. Instead of being the door guard, they are now supposed to roam near the cash registers steering customers in different directions and answering questions. Not the brightest move, if you ask me. The whole reason behind the PG position w...

Here's a picture of the store; indeed a single entry store. The carts are stored under the close up area of the overhang.

The reason I mention the Pink/Gray interior is that we have five Albertsons in Lafayette. The other four stores have had massive renovations and investments, including one that we really thought shouldn't have. One of the remodels removed the pink/gray interior. This store has never been remodeled i...

I can't speak for the other four stores, but the Lafayette store closing is a relatively small store, built in 1998. It replaced a corner of an older mall where a JC Penney store once stood. It was only about 40,000 square feet, which was small for an Albertsons at that time. It still has the Pink a...

Retailers (including grocery stores and mass merchandisers) use gas sales as a way of driving up store sales. Kroger and others use their rewards cards to either give away or (where gas giveaways aren't allowed) significantly reduce the price of gas. Most companies refer to these gas stations as los...

In D/FW, you have a long list of choices: Of course, you have Kroger, and they're fairly well entrenched in the area. Albertsons still has a decent presence, though not as big as before. Tom Thumb has a good number of stores as well, most of which are now adorned in Safeway's Lifestyle format. Also,...

This is part of Target's pFresh program. It's supposed to eventually hit all their stores, minus the Super Targets, of course.

I've seen Walmart expand several stores. This is a really unusual step, unless they are demolishing the entire store. Normally, the stores are numbered sequentially, though they skipped the 3000 and 4000 stores and went straight to 5000. 6000 and 8000 are reserved for Sam's.

CVS would probably be interested in Rite Aid's Colorado stores as an entry into the Denver market. I'm not so sure about this. When CVS bought their share of the Eckerd stores, they passed up on several stores in Colorado, including some under construction. Where I feel Rite Aid went wrong was twof...

From what most of the discussions have been, most of the closing stores were marginal stores, or at the far reaches of the distribution areas of the company. A case in point were the two stores in Meridian, MS. One was a Marketplace, the other a Save Rite. Both ar at the far reach of the Hammond, LA...