Retail Watchers

The Stephanie St. Vons is still open according to the website and online weekly ad.

Some stores have a system where labor is allocated by the amount of sales. The more sales that a store has, the more employee hours are allocated. If a store does very little business, very few employee hours will be given. This will result in understaffing. If the stores are busy, then the stores will have more staff available.

Based on the stories of the low quality stores, it probably means that Fresh and Easy doesn't have a secret shopper program.

Alpha8472 wrote:The Stephanie St. Vons is still open according to the website and online weekly ad.

Some stores have a system where labor is allocated by the amount of sales. The more sales that a store has, the more employee hours are allocated. If a store does very little business, very few employee hours will be given. This will result in understaffing. If the stores are busy, then the stores will have more staff available.

Based on the stories of the low quality stores, it probably means that Fresh and Easy doesn't have a secret shopper program.

I don't doubt that the Stephanie store is still open, however when the Eastern/Desert Inn store was closed, it still showed up on Vons's site as open for many months and even a year after it closed and was converted to La Bonita...

storewanderer wrote:I thought the Henderson Vons on Stephanie closed. It is still open? That place looked done to me; no traffic, dated interior...

Interestingly I went into that location just last Friday night. It's still open with no signs of closing. It does not have the lifestyle interior and seems to be very low volume.

"Based on the stories of the low quality stores, it probably means that Fresh and Easy doesn't have a secret shopper program."

Incorrect.

I would think that a secret shopper program would ensure some attempt to keep the store tidy.

Alpha8472 wrote:I would think that a secret shopper program would ensure some attempt to keep the store tidy.

It depends on what the secret shopper is looking for. They usually have a questionaire that they fill out after the shop. You would be surprised at what information management is trying to collect. Some managers just want to look good in the reports and ask questions they know are easy to get right. Others have a more demanding program. Safeway's secret shopper program places a big emphasis on service but very little on store cleanliness and stock levels. As a result they generally have very fast checkout (at least at Vons stores here in L.A.) and more out of stocks than I've seen at other stores.

I know what you mean. Safeway stores in my area are notorious for empty shelves. They do a terrible job of restocking.

After 10PM, secret shoppers do not come into the stores. At that time, employee levels drop and very few cashiers are on duty. The lines at stores can be ridiculously long with only one cashier.

I've had some issues with line lengths at Smiths after 10 PM and I've pretty much been told point blunt by the division management that they really don't care what happens in the store late at night. They consider traffic to be unstable and come in waves; if there is only one lane open at 10 or 11 PM and the line is 10 people long, they really don't care. They say they could have a 2nd cashier until midnight but that cashier would be standing idle much of the time between 10 and midnight, which is actually true. Further, while they have a closing manager, the closing manager is typically doing the cash tasks between 10 and midnight and it is very difficult for this manager to break from those tasks to open a second register. I have found Safeway to be much better with this as they typically have a cashier, a closing manager, then a booth clerk doing the closing cash tasks. Therefore, the closing manager can open a 2nd lane even late at night.

If we could steer this back on-topic...

Here are a lot of editorials on Fresh and Sleaz.. I mean Fresh and Easy.

Most recent:

http://www.perishablepundit.com/index.p ... 9&pundit=1

List:

http://producepundit.com/index.php?hot=tesco