Retail Watchers

thrifty ice cream would be wise to become a standalone brand at this point, the best buyer for thrifty ice cream would probably be albertsons and would be a great partner to expand thrifty ice cream into new markets. I still wonder why they haven't tried expanding this in some existing store locati...

Fred Meyer is a very important component of the larger Kroger organization. Taking away Fred Meyer would be like cutting one of the 4 tires off of a car and expecting to drive it with 3 tires. And to that point the Kroger organization is very important to Fred Meyer as they provide the power and pr...

Where it gets REALLY annoying is when a sale price requires a card, app, AND a paper coupon for the sale price. Fred Meyer has done this from time to time. I usually can find the same price elsewhere though. The whole card thing has caused me to shift a lot of shopping to WinCo where they don't have...

I seem to remember reading in the last ten years that Fred Meyer's merchandise mix has been changed in the last ten years to resemble more of the Marketplace stores. They have definitely scaled back on the GM side. Departments like Sporting Goods and Automotive are smaller, as is hardware. Paint mi...

Coca-Cola Freestyle machines are a big source of soda waste. Customers mix up different flavors and then pour it all out to try another flavor combination. People just stand in front of the machine tasting different flavors and it really holds up the line. It is awful. The sodas from these machines...

Another pointless West Coast ban. I remember a couple years ago, Washington tried a law to make things like straws and utensils by request only and they could not keep these out in the open. That worked out poorly. Either the law went away, or it is not being enforced, or restaurants are simply igno...

A thought occurred to me today. I have seen some older shopping centers, which haven't really had much in the way of remodeling, where the signage of all of the major tenants is the most current logo. I have also seen some where a road sign will have a current logo, while the stores themselves have ...

I wonder if they're just a little over-expanded on the west coast--leading to not enough bargains and specials popping up to keep their channels full. Perhaps a more even distribution of locations (including expansion into NY/New England) will assist them with perishable closeouts (closer to manufa...

The thing that I have been wondering, is how long will it be before they attempt some kind of kiosk in the drive-thru? This seems to be the direction they want to go. So far, I haven't had issues ordering from an actual person inside, but will also say that I typically only visit McDonald's for brea...

This is not a smart move. Even before self-checkouts, Target was known for not having well-staffed front ends. A typical weekday would be maybe 1 or 2 cashiers, maybe 3 or 4 on weekends, and the expectation that all other employees in the store would come running every 5 or 10 minutes when they call...