Retail Watchers

While traveling east of Wichita, KS this past week I came upon this interesting store.

It's a pretty well implemented mix of convenience store / supermarket / pharmacy. I didn't get a good chance to check the pricing. However, it's set up in Kroger's "standard" décor package. It was also very clean and appeared to do decent business.

I'm surprised Kroger hasn't rolled out this concept to more of its divisions as an interesting "small store" concept.

I think this Kansas location replaced a Dillions that was destroyed in some sort of weather related event.

There is something similar in Fountain, Colorado: Loaf N Jug Market. When I was there it had a service deli/bakery type thing on the side. Not real well executed. It appears that is now converted to a Subway. The rest of the store was a typical convenience store but heavy private label dry grocery/drug (all items prominently shown as selling at King Soopers prices) and a full dairy mix, with some produce too.

Looks like a Kroger, but the proportions are all wrong.

It appears there are similar locations in Maize, KS and Goddard, KS as well.

It is run by the convenience store division and those have separate distribution. They use an outside wholesaler for those, Coremark. So yes, the proportions will be different... Coremark distributes the Kroger product too.

I suspect in these larger convenience stores a few items are coming directly from Kroger distribution centers such as dairy and drug (those would be coming on different trucks than center store anyway).