Retail Watchers

Sorry to post the headline verbatim, but it's just too good to not reuse.
Interesting article from Bloomberg about grocery in the 'States.

I'll admit I never thought I'd shop Walmart for anything much, especially food... but they have really improved. I do wish my closest store had a deli counter or the grocery pickup service. I still have the old bias against "produce and meat" at Walmart although the produce one is now gone; they have basic but reasonable produce. I just prefer to buy meat from a butcher counter (or frozen in some cases).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... rocery-war

SamSpade wrote: ↑August 16th, 2018, 3:31 pm Sorry to post the headline verbatim, but it's just too good to not reuse.
Interesting article from Bloomberg about grocery in the 'States.

I'll admit I never thought I'd shop Walmart for anything much, especially food... but they have really improved. I do wish my closest store had a deli counter or the grocery pickup service. I still have the old bias against "produce and meat" at Walmart although the produce one is now gone; they have basic but reasonable produce. I just prefer to buy meat from a butcher counter (or frozen in some cases).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... rocery-war

Walmart is really embracing the omni-channel approach in a way that actually makes sense. I've been very happy every time I've used their "ship to store" or "pickup" options. Their prices on a lot of items I've bought recently are lower than Amazon's (I use walmart.com and amazon.com about equally for online items delivered to myself). They don't get all of my grocery dollars (or even most of them) but they generally are well stocked with competitive prices without all of the gimmicks and hoops that other chains such as Safeway and Fry's use (such as "in app" coupons or club cards). They also seem to have beefed up security at 2 of the stores in my area that don't have the best crowds hanging out in the parking lots.

My only complaint about them is that they've closed a decent number of stores this year (63 Sam's Clubs plus at least a dozen or so Walmart stores). Maybe this is setting them up for a better future where their slimmed down brick and mortar footprint will make them more competitive, but it leaves somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. Walmart also has drastically reduced its number of 24 hour stores over the last few years.

I too have had positive experiences with Wal Mart's website for pick up in store and ship to home. I find their variety on consumable goods seems to be great and pricing is routinely better than Amazon. Amazon is better for certain items/categories and obviously has a much wider overall selection but I think Wal Mart is definitely giving them a run for their money (not sure how profitable some of what they are doing is, but I guess that doesn't matter).

I have shifted a chunk of shopping for cleaning, pet, and similar goods from Kroger to Wal Mart due to issues with out of stocks and high prices at Kroger.