Retail Watchers

These are really great photos. I have seen photos of other false-fronted Marinas turned into Lifestyle stores. It is interesting that they seem to have even painted the ceiling a light brown color. This does seem to dim the store. However, I have noticed that more recent Lifestyle stores don't seem ...

An employee blamed the closure on competition from the WinCo Foods which opened in 2007. "The Vons supermarket in west Visalia also shut its doors over the past year, as have the Tulare Albertsons and the Dinuba Save Mart." This is unfortunate. So many supermarkets are being forced to clos...

Those are interesting photos. It looks like they have a mix of carpeting and tile.The aisles don't look too narrow. I find it interesting how many of their shelves light up the products. I think it looks nice.

Was this store supposed to open as a Longs or was it completely CVS's idea?

I have only eaten at the Baker's Square in Davis. The food was ok. That location will become a Black Bear Diner.

Where is the Longs Distribution Center? What will CVS do without it?

Strangely enough, it seems like each store is different. I went to Lucky today and they had a large selection of coffee from many brands. The prices were not higher than the local Safeway. The Lucky stores in the Bay Area seem to be run very differently from the Save Mart stores up in Nevada. Everyt...

Save Mart gives too much leeway to individual store managers. Under Lucky, managers were watched over closely by Lucky. Later when Save Mart took over, It was totally opposite. If the store manager is good, the store will be well run. If the store manager is only concerned about a paycheck and does ...

I heard a store manager talking to an employee. They were going over the changes to be made to their Longs Drugs store. The aisles will be narrowed to 5 feet. Lower shelves will be installed. The narrow aisles will compensate for the reduced capacity of the lower shelves. Merchandise will be rearran...

Walgreens is also union in San Francisco(and Chicago). Longs Drugs is non-union, but they only have one small store in San Francisco.

I believe the ads are still made by the people at the Longs Headquarters in Walnut Creek. Once, the stores switch over to the CVS name, the Walnut Creek people will be terminated and CVS ads will be used. This week they started to advertise CVS products in the Longs Ad. Slowly the CVS name will be s...