Target and Coronavirus

[storewanderer]

Went to Target tonight for the first time in the past few weeks.

This Target has doors on each end and both sets of doors were open for entry/exit. Inside the store self checkout was closed but they had 3 checkouts open and the lines were 3-4 customers each (so you stand in clothing waiting to pay with the distancing rules). No employees were wearing masks but some had gloves on. Lots of $100-$200 carts of home, toys, and clothing items were going through. It appears people are rushing to Target to spend their monopoly money signed by Fred Flintstone.

The Target Store consumables area is in unusual uneven shape. Their paper products aisles are 100% empty, that is like 4 little small aisles but with how they are set surrounded by clothing, food, cosmetics, and cleaning items these are very visible aisles and the out of stock situation is very obvious and is seen by many customers. Cleaning products are also very limited in supply. The grocery aisles I have not seen anything like this in any other store, for canned foods, dry pasta, pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, these categories were on average 75% empty. The baking goods aisles was about 95% empty (the entire cake mix/cookie mix/frosting shelving area was 100% empty). Next aisle was the coffee/tea aisle which is an area where Target has a lot of SKUs and this aisle mysteriously was fully stocked, I think it had less than a dozen out of stocks total on the entire aisle. Also the aisles for snacks/candy were very well stocked, as were all pet aisles. Hard to tell if they got completely wiped out and are just trying to recover one aisle at a time or what.

The Easter Department was stuffed to the brim with product, 1/2 of an aisle there was filled with soda/water and the other 4 aisles plus large wall space was stuffed to the brim with Easter product. It looks like Target had a terrible Easter. Interesting as Easter sold down very well at Smiths and Raleys in my area (Smiths had a lot too, now they have very little), and Walgreens and CVS also did pretty well with it.

[BillyGr]

The Easter Department was stuffed to the brim with product, 1/2 of an aisle there was filled with soda/water and the other 4 aisles plus large wall space was stuffed to the brim with Easter product. It looks like Target had a terrible Easter. Interesting as Easter sold down very well at Smiths and Raleys in my area (Smiths had a lot too, now they have very little), and Walgreens and CVS also did pretty well with it.

That makes some sense - people were probably grabbing whatever they wanted for Easter in those other stores as long as they were already there getting groceries/pharmacy items (and obviously going to Target wasn't a good option for those items, at least the grocery ones by what you saw).

Also probably not surprising that people were buying those other items, as there are less options available for those typer of items in most places, and people do still need at least some of them (for instance if they are getting toys, kids clothing would also be a likely item, as they tend not to be able to wear the same stuff many times from one year to another).

[pseudo3d]

Went to Target tonight for the first time in the past few weeks.

This Target has doors on each end and both sets of doors were open for entry/exit. Inside the store self checkout was closed but they had 3 checkouts open and the lines were 3-4 customers each (so you stand in clothing waiting to pay with the distancing rules). No employees were wearing masks but some had gloves on. Lots of $100-$200 carts of home, toys, and clothing items were going through. It appears people are rushing to Target to spend their monopoly money signed by Fred Flintstone.

The Target Store consumables area is in unusual uneven shape. Their paper products aisles are 100% empty, that is like 4 little small aisles but with how they are set surrounded by clothing, food, cosmetics, and cleaning items these are very visible aisles and the out of stock situation is very obvious and is seen by many customers. Cleaning products are also very limited in supply. The grocery aisles I have not seen anything like this in any other store, for canned foods, dry pasta, pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, these categories were on average 75% empty. The baking goods aisles was about 95% empty (the entire cake mix/cookie mix/frosting shelving area was 100% empty). Next aisle was the coffee/tea aisle which is an area where Target has a lot of SKUs and this aisle mysteriously was fully stocked, I think it had less than a dozen out of stocks total on the entire aisle. Also the aisles for snacks/candy were very well stocked, as were all pet aisles. Hard to tell if they got completely wiped out and are just trying to recover one aisle at a time or what.

The Easter Department was stuffed to the brim with product, 1/2 of an aisle there was filled with soda/water and the other 4 aisles plus large wall space was stuffed to the brim with Easter product. It looks like Target had a terrible Easter. Interesting as Easter sold down very well at Smiths and Raleys in my area (Smiths had a lot too, now they have very little), and Walgreens and CVS also did pretty well with it.

Paper products are still pretty empty in all stores, but most stores have recovered most of the grocery mix (canned foods, dry pasta, cake mix, etc.). For a store that has invested heavily into food and never kept late-night hours to begin with, there's little excuse.

[arizonaguy]

The Target Store consumables area is in unusual uneven shape. Their paper products aisles are 100% empty, that is like 4 little small aisles but with how they are set surrounded by clothing, food, cosmetics, and cleaning items these are very visible aisles and the out of stock situation is very obvious and is seen by many customers. Cleaning products are also very limited in supply. The grocery aisles I have not seen anything like this in any other store, for canned foods, dry pasta, pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, these categories were on average 75% empty. The baking goods aisles was about 95% empty (the entire cake mix/cookie mix/frosting shelving area was 100% empty). Next aisle was the coffee/tea aisle which is an area where Target has a lot of SKUs and this aisle mysteriously was fully stocked, I think it had less than a dozen out of stocks total on the entire aisle. Also the aisles for snacks/candy were very well stocked, as were all pet aisles. Hard to tell if they got completely wiped out and are just trying to recover one aisle at a time or what.

My local Target has looked like this for at least 3 weeks. Most other retailers in my area have somewhat to mostly recovered from the initial rush but Target hasn't.

[storewanderer]

My local Target has looked like this for at least 3 weeks. Most other retailers in my area have somewhat to mostly recovered from the initial rush but Target hasn't.

In my area the only stores that look remotely like this anymore are Target and Safeway. Other stores have returned to pretty normal conditions at this point. I expect Safeway would have returned to normal too had it not been for the outbreak at their NorCal distribution center.

[babs]

Target has always struggled with being in-stock. They struggled when I worked there many years ago and they still do. I used to sell to them and we had to go through a distributor and they were slow in issuing POs so we would also go out of stock. Not sure what the solution is but they have struggled for decades being in-stock.

As for Easter, I was there tonight and most of Easter was gone. But the food area was pretty well stocked, even in Pasta, Rice and canned foods.

[arizonaguy]

Target has always struggled with being in-stock. They struggled when I worked there many years ago and they still do. I used to sell to them and we had to go through a distributor and they were slow in issuing POs so we would also go out of stock. Not sure what the solution is but they have struggled for decades being in-stock.

As for Easter, I was there tonight and most of Easter was gone. But the food area was pretty well stocked, even in Pasta, Rice and canned foods.

I used to think in-stock set Target and Walmart apart from Kmart.

Kmart was notorious for items being out of stock. Walmart seems to be more hit or miss now then they had been in the past. Target tends to do decently well during non-peak shopping times but during busier times of the year (including COVID) they seem to be more of a miss.

[storewanderer]

Target has always struggled with being in-stock. They struggled when I worked there many years ago and they still do. I used to sell to them and we had to go through a distributor and they were slow in issuing POs so we would also go out of stock. Not sure what the solution is but they have struggled for decades being in-stock.

As for Easter, I was there tonight and most of Easter was gone. But the food area was pretty well stocked, even in Pasta, Rice and canned foods.

The Reno Target has so much Easter left that they marked all of the Easter Food to 70% off. It only scans at 30% off so every single item needs a price override. They have a wall and two full grocery-length aisles of Easter Food (candy, cake mix, frosting, cookies, cupcakes, etc.).

I suppose OR is doing better from this Coronavirus thing than Reno is... so maybe more people bought stuff. Unemployment here is probably 25% right now if not more so buying Easter stuff at Target was probably not first on most people's minds. I went to Wal Mart tonight and they also had a ton of Easter stuff left (more non food than Target but less food than Target). I suspect they would have sold way more, had the stimulus check money gone out last week. But since there was so much bickering among the politicians about the whole thing it didn't go out as fast as it could have.

But Kroger sold down its Easter very well up here despite the situation. And for some odd reason CVS and Walgreens did well with it too.

[BillyGr]

The Reno Target has so much Easter left that they marked all of the Easter Food to 70% off. It only scans at 30% off so every single item needs a price override. They have a wall and two full grocery-length aisles of Easter Food (candy, cake mix, frosting, cookies, cupcakes, etc.).

Sounds like if they need the spot for something else, they should just move all the Easter stuff into the regular food aisles and fill those in a bit - after all, if someone wants to bake a cake, will they really care what the packaging looks like?

[storewanderer]

The Reno Target has so much Easter left that they marked all of the Easter Food to 70% off. It only scans at 30% off so every single item needs a price override. They have a wall and two full grocery-length aisles of Easter Food (candy, cake mix, frosting, cookies, cupcakes, etc.).

Sounds like if they need the spot for something else, they should just move all the Easter stuff into the regular food aisles and fill those in a bit - after all, if someone wants to bake a cake, will they really care what the packaging looks like?

This is a very large store (Greatland model) and the seasonal area is very good sized (though I am not sure if it is larger than the seasonal areas in the newer build Targets, it is configured a little differently on an L shape set up so it feels a bit larger). I don't think they have much summer product to put out yet, hence putting the space filling basics in the 1/2 aisle of Easter that sold down.