Trader Joe's has some of the best values around and has increased its prices by far the least of any other store.Bagels wrote: ↑March 26th, 2023, 11:46 pm
I wonder who the heck is paying these prices, and when the bubble will burst. For $8 (shelf price) Albertsons sells lasagna trays from Rana. The portion is larger and quality better than the $12 Signature Select. And for $4, you can a frozen Shepard’s Lie entree at Trader Joe’s that’s similar to its $12 SS counterpart. Not to mention, most everybody lives near a pizza / Italian food joint that will sell you takeaway meal for less (or slightly more but include soup, salad, etc). No need to bake for 60 minutes…
When I was in Ralphs shortly before closing a few weeks ago, there were at least a dozen carts filled with deli and bakery items that were headed into the trash. My local Ralphs use to deeply discount deli and baked goods but awhile I noticed a giant sign in the employee area that said “it’s long been Kroger’s policy that the maximum mark down cannot exceed 50% of the item’s shelf price.” Of course, this meant that virtually everything being marked down was only a few coins less than something fresh, given that most everything is on sale at any given time. Now I notice that only a few loafs of bread are marked down daily. They still deeply discount other merchandise - I scored a few 4pack Fusion5 cartridges for $1.99 last week.
A dozen carts of bakery/deli outdates? So much for "zero hunger zero waste." I wonder if some of the bakery was going to the freezer to be given to a food bank, as that is what multiple chains around Reno do.
That is completely not true that Kroger has a policy that markdown cannot exceed 50%. Kroger has lately been changing how it prices markdowns. I am not sure what they are doing. The system is automatically coming up with odd prices that seem to usually be between about 40%-60% off. I think the system may be marking things down to cost. I have seen the same markdown on the same salad mix at 2 different stores on the same day, then a couple weeks later the same 2 stores and the same salad mix marked down again and the price is equal at the two stores but not the same price as 2 weeks ago.
What I have heard lately at Smiths is that the stores are supposed to follow whatever the system says for the markdown. They aren't supposed to manually change the markdown amounts anymore (but they still can, and still sometimes do). I am noticing what has happened on center store items is they do not sell at Kroger's "system markdown" amount and then the store goes along and does a second markdown to an appropriate price to blow the stuff out. This seems to be a waste of time and defeats the purpose of the markdown program to get rid of stuff quickly and efficiently.
This isn't like Wal Mart's system that seems to account for the quantity of a specific item being marked down on a given day and then adjusting the markdown price for the moment (literally) based on that.
What is funny is a few months ago Kroger was routinely marking bakery items 75% off in my area which was odd as in the past they had always gone 50% off. Then they switched to this weird program that has these weird/random markdown prices.