ClownLoach wrote: ↑January 9th, 2024, 11:52 am
The giant Ralphs by UCLA is supposedly the highest volume store, which is why they expanded it so dramatically. It is also supposedly one of the top 10 stores in the entire Kroger company and the only top 10 store in California.
I agree that if Kroger does not start to increase the investment in proper upkeep and remodeling schedule for Ralphs then they're going to wind up in a Kmart type situation with a fleet of dilapidated stores. Especially in recent years they feel more like Walmart in their minimal remodeling efforts, failure to replace display cases and fixtures, and generally minimal effort aside from wall paint and graphics changes. Finding many Ralphs stores with bad odor problems especially the meat and seafood areas; this bad sanitation is not present at any Albertsons or Stater Bros stores even old ones. Meat and seafood cases eventually do get corrosion and other damage that allows for odor forming bacteria to develop in crevices and other hard to reach places which is why most other chains have a regular schedule for complete refurbishment or replacements, but under Kroger Ralphs seems to no longer update any of these cases. Very unpleasant and deters customers. An even larger concern is that I have determined that refrigerated goods including milk and bagged salads purchased at Ralphs generally are either bad immediately at sell-by date or sometimes even before - alarming since Ralphs is my closest grocery store so I know that travel in the car isn't causing spoilage. I suspect Ralphs keeps cooler temperatures at whatever the maximum allowable setting is to save energy expense, which is really unacceptable considering their competitors are putting solar on the roof instead so they don't have to worry about energy use as much.
One area of great concern recently however are restrooms. I do not believe Albertsons is even touching restrooms during remodels anymore, was in a very bad restroom the other day in a recent "Florida decor" remodel that had received the higher end version of the package. It clearly had seen no remodel work with graffiti oldest dated 2018 by the taggers. Ralphs restrooms used to be better than average but now they reek from lack of cleaning. One of the worst problems I will find is the noxious sewer gas odor in a restroom coming from the floor drain which indicates it has been weeks or even months since they were adequately mopped so the water in the p-trap has dried up allowing sewer gas to rise. Whenever I detect this odor in a store or restaurant I leave because clearly there are major sanitation issues in the facility.
The problem is Kroger isn't maintaining things. For instance last year Smiths did a remodel of the bathrooms in the Sparks unit. This remodel also occurred some years prior when they remodeled the store, as well as some years prior to that when they remodeled a previous time. The restrooms are not cleaned properly so they are basically no different from before they remodeled (just different color tiles). On the restroom topic in the past with Smiths, any Smiths I went into, I would see a courtesy clerk cleaning restrooms in the evening for 1-2 hours. It was a pretty in depth cleaning; sometimes two of them were involved. I no longer see this happening. I see a really quick wipe down, trash empty, speedy mop, and restock occur that takes less than 20 minutes for both bathrooms.
As far as dairy products with a quick spoil go, do you ever go into the store when their refrigerated truck comes and notice what is happening to pallets of refrigerated product? Is it sitting out on the sales floor when it isn't actively being stocked?
Old cases/refrigeration are an odd thing with Kroger. There seem to be some stores, some departments, that keep getting new cases. Then other stores, other departments, never get anything unless it is a very major remodel.
I've noticed some odor issues with Smiths lately, in a couple of different locations, but it wasn't from around meat/seafood. They seemed to fix both issues. I've watched Smiths in Reno on South Meadows get a new case in seafood at least every 5-ish years. They've had 4 different seafood cases in there since the store opened. The store only had one remodel since it opened and one of those new cases was during the remodel. They have changed the display style in conjunction with new cases (off ice, on ice, 1/2 on ice, off ice again, some refrigerated self serve at waist level below the case now). When they install the new cases it is a big job, they jackhammer out the tile floor below the case and lay a new floor.
Also in the past few weeks with Smiths around Reno they've been replacing all of the self serve bakery cases (which did not need to be replaced) with new cases; the new cases are smaller/not as tall and do not hold as much product. I do not like these new cases; they may look nice enough but they cut variety.
It seems like Kroger is really running Ralphs at a level below the other divisions for some reason. This really makes me wonder why they want Safeway, and more California Stores, given how they have their California Stores Ralphs running poorly compared to the rest of Kroger, higher price scale, etc.
