Retail Watchers

I am thinking that the sale has not closed yet. I suspect that Albertsons is waiting until the properties with the closed stores have been sold. Perhaps Albertsons wants nothing to do with shedding those properties? Speaking of Haggen, I heard the first Haggen radio that I've heard in years! I was ...

Ranch 99 doesn't seem to run real clean stores, but they are high foot traffic and with the heavy amount of seafood being sold I think that leads to some cleanliness issues. I have found Seafood City seems to run cleaner stores despite having even more seafood so I am not sure what they are doing d...

I saw similar lighting "enhancements" at the Windmill store in Henderson, Nevada, this week. Just like in your pictures, they had bolted bare fluorescent strips on to the end of the Lifestyle lights at some places, had added a row of fluorescent strips across the rear perimeter, had added...

... I guess I am biased to large format supermarkets. I had hoped that the european hypermarket format would have become extremely popular (it did not). As a shopper, I'm one of the "one stop shop" type. I need to get everything I want in one place with room to buy and a fast check out. T...

...But sadly, I think the trend in California has been moving away from those large footprints. I am a huge fan of the super big palace size stores and wish they would come back! You might get your wish. Kroger acquired Roundy's, which owned Mariano's. Built-from-the-ground-up Mariano's are huge. T...

But you'd never know they were in trouble by looking at a lot of their stores which are really good operations and high volume. That's because they're not in trouble. They've been letting go of marginal stores as their leases come up. That's all there is to it. Ralphs is in very good shape and has ...

Apologies for arriving so late to the party. I somehow missed this thread when it started. That said... I grew up and lived in Chicago until 2000 when I moved to Southern California. When I lived there I was a Jewel shopper. Virtually every shopping trip to Dominick's resulted in returning something...

Honestly, I think part of the problem is the events that transpired about 10 years ago when they converted all those department store names to Macy's and generally downscaled them. Sears and Penney's at least have the benefit of being legacy names and at one time really meant something. Not so much...

The Mission Valley Ralphs has the promotion going, but like others have mentioned it is pretty poorly executed. There is a cardboard kiosk near the Starbucks that announces the promo. The other Spanish items are strewn throughout the store but the only thing linking it to the promo is a sign reading...

... SoCal seems to be more integrated than the Arizona stores, last year they consolidated the offices (the Vons HQ in the old department store is no more) and put the Vons DCs up for sale. The Southwest division I'm not sure, prior to the merger announcement, they moved the Safeway Phoenix divisio...