OK, here's one out of left field. I've been commuting to and from downtown Seattle for a couple of days, and when I ride the bus, I see a little convenience store that seems to be using the name and logo of the Kroger-owned City Market chain as found in CO and UT. Obviously, this isn't a Kroger-owne...

I haven't seen any closures up here in this area, although I only know of a handful of them around here anyway (Kirkland/Totem Lake, Lynwood and Renton.) There used to be one in downtown Redmond but it closed quite some time ago, and sat vacant for quite a while before it (and the whole shopping cen...

Walgreens has recently applied to sell beer and wine at several stores in Washington state. There are many people who prefer smaller stores and like the convenience factor. As for drug stores being a general merchandise store, that was true for many years in Oregon and Washington as well, Payless h...

Yes, they have ads for Schuck's-O'Reilly in print and on the radio. There's been no visible rebranding of any stores yet though,

Around where I live (Seattle metro area) here's what the picture looks like: Major players: -Safeway (there have been Safeway stores in this area in one form or another going back to the 1920s) -Fred Meyer (Kroger owned multi-department format,found mostly in WA and OR) -QFC (Quality Food Centers. A...

Chase has actually done some pretty significant remodeling of the Fred Meyer store branches they took over from WaMu earlier this year. They also took over the ATMs in Washington Target stores. When I went to Disney World last year, thanks to the Chase takeover of WaMu I was also able to use the Cha...

I think it's pretty much standard practice for grocery stores to be selling gift cards these days (QFC has basically the same selection of gift cards as Fred Meyer does,) but keep in mind that Fred Meyer is something of a "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none" retailer, and their selections ...

And just as quickly as this dispute began, it's over:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-new ... orced=true

I don't know what Costco is doing, but oftentimes equipment like soda fountains is leased from Coca-Cola or Pepsico. If I recall the last time this happened, the Coke products were only gone for a couple of months before they returned. I'm guessing Costco expects the situation to be temporary here t...

I doubt it. Coca Cola and Costco have had disagreements like this on pricing before, but even though they stopped selling canned soda inside the warehouses at the time, the fountains remained. I suspect it would be too expensive to change everything over to Pepsi in the food courts just to prove a p...