Stores Returning to Regular Hours

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Alpha8472
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area have installed separate Money Center areas to handle the insanely long lines for money services. They would not be able to handle the crazy number of people at the Returns line.

However, the Money Centers are so busy, that you could have them open until 11 PM at night and people would still be coming. Literally there could be 80 people in line at a time.

Walmart is even busier now with so many unemployed people. People who would never set foot in a Walmart are now coming to Walmart because they have no jobs and very little money left. It is crazy. Walmart has enough customers to stay open until Midnight again. In fact, if they were open 24 hours again there would be enough people to fill the stores. People are unemployed and they have nothing else to do. However, Walmart is too cheap to spend money on labor. Walmart never learns. They are just driving customers away to other stores.

Are Winco stores doing decent business after Midnight? If Winco is open 24 hours, Walmart can be too.
TW-Upstate NY
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Same old same old here with Wal-Mart store hours-still opening at 7:00 and closing at 8:30.
Alpha8472
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by Alpha8472 »

Are competing stores in your area open later?
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Alpha8472 wrote: August 6th, 2020, 11:29 am Are competing stores in your area open later?
The Target across the road from the local Wal-Mart by an hour and a half-they close at 10:00 but they open an hour later so it's really only nets out to a half hour extra per day. Also have a Kohl's adjacent to Target and their hours are 10:00-8:00. My area is primarily rural but where these stores are located are about as urban as it gets around here which isn't saying much in a two-county area with a population of maybe around 100,000+/-.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by pseudo3d »

Before coronavirus, both my H-E-B and Walmart used to be 24 hours. While H-E-B has expanded hours to 11pm and reopened its alternate exits, Walmart still has only one entrance open and is only open to 8:30. Not sure why it's still the case—from everything I read, supermarkets that open later are whittling away at Walmart's market share, and their non-foods (including school/office supplies) are probably also doing better too during that time.

The few times where I've really appreciated Walmart (in general, not just my local store) was emergency after-hours supplies like when I left most of my clothes at home one time (don't ask) or the decision that it would be far more worth my time and sleeping schedule to get a new pillow at Walmart after 10 pm rather than try to sleep on the flattened, worn-out piece I had before. Eliminating the few remaining reasons to even go to Walmart anymore—convenience—is not going to help out the company's longer term prospects.

I did pull up an article (posted in the last 24 hours) that they're extending hours to 10pm by August 17th but it might be too little, too late by this point (not even 11pm, much less 24/7) and I think that Neighborhood Market is in serious risk of another major closing round.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by Alpha8472 »

I took a look at many stores in Northern California. The stores in busy areas seem to be open until 10 PM such as the ones in the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area. There are some stores in very bad neighborhoods that close at 8:30 PM despite doing tons of business. Richmond has to close early due to it being very unsafe after sundown. There are some stores in the very crime ridden city of Stockton that close early as well even though they are Supercenters. The city is so impoverished that people have nothing better to do than shoplift from Walmart. There is so much unemployment and homelessness that Walmart attracts shoplifting like no other store. Then there are some distant suburban and rural Supercenters in good neighborhoods that close early, probably due to lack of customers. These suburban and rural towns seem to be lower volume stores. These cities seem to be ghost towns after dark.

I have noticed many Neighborhood Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area closing at 8:30 PM. These stores simply are not as busy as Safeway, Whole Foods, or other supermarkets. The prices at Walmart are good, but Walmart lacks service deli, service meat, and the selection is not that great. The produce and fruit at Walmart seems to be limited and the quality is quite bad. I don't know why, but it seems like many of the Walmart produce items seem to be old or turn moldy as soon as you bring it home. It is better to just pay a little more at Safeway than suffer from produce that you have to toss out after only a short period of time.

The Neighborhood Market stores were supposed to kill off the competing supermarkets. That did not work out. You cannot simply compete on price. Customers want quality, friendly helpful employees, a good selection, good variety, service meat, service deli, and better store hours. Safeway is getting many more customers despite higher prices. I believe that many of these Neighborhood Markets that close at 8:30 could be on the verge of closing down. They simply are not profitable enough to string along. They are doing miserably in many areas.

The limited hours are making it worse. If these stores were open later, then Walmart could attract back the customers that they lost to other stores. However, Walmart is too cheap to pay for more employees to run the store later. It is a catch 22 that causes this downward spiral that could lead to store closures. If Walmart opens these stores later, then maybe the customers will return and sales will go up. Then they can afford to add more employees.

I went to Walmart many times this week and the crowds during the day are intolerable. There is no way to stay 6 feet apart. If the stores were open until midnight, then maybe the crowds will thin out better. However, the packed stores are probably the main reason why COVID rates are going up.

I also noticed that the Auto Centers are still closed. It looks like Walmart does not want to be in the Auto care business any more. They may never reopen.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Good point about auto centers. I mean look at the infrastructure and equipment you need to operate even at the most basic level which is pretty much what all Wal-Mart auto service ever has been. Look at how many stores were in auto service and have gotten out of it. Just thinking about current stores, there was K-Mart (bad example I know but there are still a few stores left), JC Penney, Target, Macy's (scratch your heads over that one but they did operate auto service at their Colonie Center store-I found newspaper ads for it.) Only one left besides Wal-Mart (aside from the warehouse clubs) is Sears and they're essentially a non-factor. Of defunct chains, (and our Food Fair expert could confirm this), I believe Food Fair was even in the car care business for a while and Montgomery Ward was big on it as well along with WT Grant in some of their then newer locations in the early 70's. You can only do so many $20 some dollar oil changes and sell a few tires and batteries and throw in a state inspection or two but it just simply doesn't pay the bills. The money (and profitability) in auto repair is in the major mechanical work and none of these places have ever wanted to go near that aspect of the business. It really could be looked upon as a loss leader with rather expensive overhead.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by pseudo3d »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: August 15th, 2020, 10:09 am Good point about auto centers. I mean look at the infrastructure and equipment you need to operate even at the most basic level which is pretty much what all Wal-Mart auto service ever has been. Look at how many stores were in auto service and have gotten out of it. Just thinking about current stores, there was K-Mart (bad example I know but there are still a few stores left), JC Penney, Target, Macy's (scratch your heads over that one but they did operate auto service at their Colonie Center store-I found newspaper ads for it.) Only one left besides Wal-Mart (aside from the warehouse clubs) is Sears and they're essentially a non-factor. Of defunct chains, (and our Food Fair expert could confirm this), I believe Food Fair was even in the car care business for a while and Montgomery Ward was big on it as well along with WT Grant in some of their then newer locations in the early 70's. You can only do so many $20 some dollar oil changes and sell a few tires and batteries and throw in a state inspection or two but it just simply doesn't pay the bills. The money (and profitability) in auto repair is in the major mechanical work and none of these places have ever wanted to go near that aspect of the business. It really could be looked upon as a loss leader with rather expensive overhead.
Most of the examples cited for auto centers closed them around the time they had also cut a lot of hard goods out of their merchandise mix, with Sears, Walmart, and Montgomery Ward holding on because they kept most of their hard goods. Even Kmart I believe had actually got out of the auto center in the mid-1990s (part of an ongoing concern to cut down on costs in the company) but continued to sublease to Meineke even in new stores.

Meanwhile, it looks like all my local Walmart auto centers have reopened, but not the ones in the West Coast. The idea of Neighborhood Markets not going too well is an interesting question—because they lack several of the amenities that are expected in modern supermarkets, they can't just flip them to other operators like Albertsons did to its stores in the 2000s.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by Alpha8472 »

August 17 is the day that more Walmart stores will start closing at 10 PM. That makes more than 4,000 of the 4,700 stores in the U.S. open until 10 PM.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/20 ... 583575002/

Perhaps if this is successful it will spur more stores to close later. Target could close later and then more stores will follow.

When a Neighborhood Market closes, it seems like no other supermarket chain wants to take it over. Walmart would want the store to sit empty rather than have a competitor take over.
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Re: Stores Returning to Regular Hours

Post by cjd »

There is only one Walmart in my area that has an auto center and it's also the newest, built in 2007. From Google it hasn't reopened. I would think the auto center would be a hard thing to reopen at this point, given the employees wouldn't just be cross-trained work in another part of the store and come right back if auto reopened?

We'll see what happens on the hours. I did finally go back to Walmart last weekend because it was tax free weekend for clothes and I needed some socks and underwear.

Having to go in through the grocery side is annoying to me given that part of the parking lot always has the most traffic anyway. I rarely ever used that entrance in normal times and tried to always go through the garden center or health and beauty entrance.

I get the feeling Walmart is going to continue its decreased hours and offerings into the future. I don't know that having a single entrance all the time would help them security wise or not, assuming one can still use multiple doors for exits. I think the only benefit of that is to monitor mask wearing.
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