Retail Watchers

It reminds me of when K-Mart remodeled a few stores into a new concept in the early 2000s: beautiful stores featuring a design K-Mart should've adapted a decade earlier (when it rolled out the "Big K" remodels)... but the chain knowingly lacked the capital to move forward with chainwide re...

Thought it was worth mentioning that the Pavilions I've visited recently have removed their hot bar. They've also cut back on the prepared foods offered within the deli case and completely removed the prepared "meal idea" section from the meat department (that carried stuffed bell peppers,...

It seems as if Kroger's moving away from the Fresh Fare branding. When a location near me was renovated a few years back, Kroger added the Fresh Fare concepts, and then some -- brick oven pizza cooker, high end wines and Murray's cheeses, the frozen prepared meals section, etc. -- but never added a...

Pharmacies are a difficult business to run. If a pharmacy takes low income Medicaid or Medi-Cal, you are going to lose a lot of money. Those are very unprofitable insurance plans. Walgreens and Rite Aid stopped taking the money losing Blue Cross Medi-Cal because the losses were toi great. The profi...

It seems as if Kroger's moving away from the Fresh Fare branding. When a location near me was renovated a few years back, Kroger added the Fresh Fare concepts, and then some -- brick oven pizza cooker, high end wines and Murray's cheeses, the frozen prepared meals section, etc. -- but never added an...

Also one Target here is being remodeled. This store in Carson City was unchanged from 1995 when it opened. The remodel is interesting. The biggest thing they are doing is adding a Starbucks where the old dated Food Avenue Express was. They also remodeled the bathrooms and took away the paper towel ...

Kroger could easily replicate what Publix Deli does. They have the same Boar's Head meats, cheeses, and condiments readily available. Things like lettuce and tomato are easily available from the produce area and again are easily replicated. The only thing they'd need to get down is the bread but ho...

Sandwich area was removed and there are only pre-made Boars head sandwiches now. Grab and Go was was expanded at the expense of hot foods getting smaller and sandwich prep being removed. Man... Ralphs had a great sandwich program over the years. I cannot believe Kroger took the custom sandwiches ou...

...but 40-something and 50-something are shuttering it, claiming the styles are dated and don't reflect modern women... Today's 40- and 50-somethings are a decade ago's 30- and 40-somethings. In 2007-2009 they were starting to sell more fashionable merchandise at decent prices. But then they had to...

Essentials was SHLD, but Grand wasn't. I'm not sure if Grand would've succeeded in the long run, their odd mix of hardlines and softlines without a major food component wasn't a good one. But then again, we would be talking about a well-moneyed company with the potential to hire decent people, so m...