Retail Watchers

The grocery industry tends to overreact with a big announcement like the ALDI/SEG marriage, will we see Lidl try to make some moves on the American market? We have gotten to the point that any time there's a merger announcement, folks start the "everybody's gonna lose their jobs" talk. In...

Costco installed a self checkout lane at their new Buckeye AZ store.. there is no customer used scan gun (Unlike Sam’s Club), you have to place your items on a table after scanning at the terminal, and a clerk has to scan large items in your basket. More inconvenient than Sam’s. That's the way that...

I have numerous Costcos near me and they all have different layouts. In some stores, diaper / formula / baby wipes are in the HBA area (near the pharmacy). In other stores they're co-located near the paper towels, toilet paper, trash bags, cleaning supplies (in the far back of the store). In some s...

Sorry if this is paywalled: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2023/08/05/arizonans-speak-out-proposed-kroger-albertsons-attorney-general-kris-mayes/70521366007/ The synopsis is that the Arizona AG has held several "listening sessions" about the merger and the overall p...

I'd disagree on the Costco and Hobby Lobby comparison. Costco has very consistent layouts except in the oldest locations. Shop one and you've basically shopped them all. Hobby Lobby intentionally lays out their stores in a manner that is not logical and forces the customer to walk around to find ev...

I used to go to the movies once in a while. However, ever since streaming services took off I have only gone once in the past 4 years. The movies seem to appear on streaming after a few months. Why pay more just to see it when it will be on streaming so quickly? The quality of movies has gone down....

Like the title reads. This one is only 4 miles from me. I'm surprised at this one, as the Janise family has worked hard to run this store. It seriously looks like Harps wants to move south, after a few other recent purchases (like The Markets of Natchez, MS which also took them into Mississippi and...

I noticed that this Heritage Grocers owns Cardenas as well as Tony's Fresh Market. If Heritage is in an acquisition spree I'm curious if we could see them making a play for some Mariano's locations as well as some Food4Less locations (as Mariano's / Tony's looks to be the best fit as does Food4Less ...

Another oddity I've mentioned before but will bring up again: Costco is expanding their rollout of a new lighting package that defies all logic. They paint over 90% of the skylights in the store then remove the existing LED "bucket" lights. They replace them with a thin rectangular light ...

Technically it isn't James Sinegal's company anymore. Sinegal retired in 2012 and I've noticed Costco started a slow decline soon after. Covid, for whatever reason, accelerated Costco's rate of decline (even though it seemed to be the timeframe where Sam's began to improve). Decline in what sense? ...