Retail Watchers

Not to go too far down a rabbit hole here off topic but I was surprised that King's / Balducci's was not sold to C&S. That seemed like more of a non-core entity that also overlapped with Acme / Safeway / Harris Teeter in that same region. But Kings specifically was purchased, I believe, particu...

i wonder if C&S will ultimately have these stores ran by franchisees or not. If so, it may not be for awhile. Plus, any independent owner would have to keep it a union shop. My perception is that most small scale independent grocers are non-union shops. Would a single or two or three or four st...

Ten stores is not the entire fleet of Harris Teeter stores in the DC-Baltimore area. It will be interesting where the perceived overlap is at this point. Ahold-Delhaize still has Food Lion locations embedded within Giant-MD territories more so in Maryland than Virginia. If the merger goes through, I...

Still C&S doesn't do much on the West Coast that I'm aware of and previous transactions like this see C&S holding onto stores for a short time before selling them to someone else. This smells like Haggen all over again. This also sounds like what Ahold and Delhaize did during their merger w...

Here's the latest article on the situation at the Alabama Avenue Giant store. A local leader is calling for more security officers even though the store has spent $300,000 on security efforts. https://wtop.com/dc/2023/09/local-leader-sounds-off-on-pulling-national-brands-from-southeast-supermarket/ ...

It appears the retail store based pharmacy business is basically being destroyed by the insurers and drug companies working to bleed out the pharmacy. I am surprised that Pharmacy Benefit Manager companies have not mandated mail order for all maintenance prescriptions in all of their plans. The pre...

I am not convinced on Aldi being as successful in the US as it is made out to be. The majority of Aldi's recent expansion in my area has been going into more affluent areas. During times of high inflation or other economic troubles people appreciate the low prices that Aldi delivers. However, outsi...

This is an interesting question...every chain has its better stores and its lousier stores, but at what point can a chain go where conditions become so bad that it has to be cut from the chain? The lack of grocery options in DC east of the Anacostia River is what makes this newsworthy. Prior to thi...

Giant-MD is going to stop stocking name brands like Colgate, Tide and Advil at its Alabama Avenue SE store according to this article from WTOP.com . Only store or private brand equivalents will be offered. The Alabama Avenue SE store has been hit by large amounts of retail theft. The DC city council...

Best Buy should have been the "niche" store for premium products. The old Magnolia program before the 2008 recession felt like it was on the right track for the direction they needed to go to. It was clear already before the 2008 recession that these products were becoming more and more l...