Target 2021

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
storewanderer
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Re: Target 2021

Post by storewanderer »

Target is currently remodeling the Reno Store. Not a great process.

They have all of the equipment at the back of the parking lot near the entry to the lot so you cannot just drive straight into the lot, you have to drive around all of the equipment. You can ultimately park near the building you just have to go in a bit of a circle to get to it. Once inside the store it isn't really clear what they are even doing but the store is a mess and one thing they have stopped doing is cleaning anything- the floors are filthy. Maybe they will be replacing the floors. There are empty aisles throughout the softlines and hardlines areas (so far food and drug are untouched). They seem to have a ton of staffing and despite the mess most of the staff is just standing around up front talking to one another and not working. The only ones working are the cashiers and the ones walking around picking orders. They have no bathrooms in the store (hopefully they will re-work the vents in the bathrooms during the remodel) at present and have the bathrooms outside on the side of the store in a back driveway and it isn't exactly well lit at night to walk over there.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by Alpha8472 »

I have seen Target use portable trailer restrooms during construction. They were very fancy with faux wood floors and antique style lamps. You could live in luxury if you were homeless.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: September 9th, 2021, 7:30 pm I have seen Target use portable trailer restrooms during construction. They were very fancy with faux wood floors and antique style lamps. You could live in luxury if you were homeless.
That would be a real upgrade from the typical Target restrooms I have dealt with over the years.

This wouldn't be an issue for them if they had two sets of restrooms in the store for customer use like Wal Mart typically does. Sure, the restrooms at the front of Wal Mart are generally pretty awful, but if you go to the ones in the back where layaway was, you have larger cleaner facilities (due to less traffic than the front ones I think).
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Re: Target 2021

Post by Romr123 »

Live relatively equidistant from two Target stores in metro Detroit; one more isolated with a larger selection including Kosher foods/more upscale, the other a relocated unit tucked between two other similarly smaller locations which is smaller/somewhat downscale (though with both a Starbucks and Pizza Hut Express). I buy a fair bit of food at Target (often marked down), but the larger store has an awful grocery department, and the smaller has a really good department, with excellent freshness, rotation (they use the he## out of their discount coupon stickers as opposed to the other store) and staff (I always compliment them--department looks great, fresh and full). Only problem at the store was pushback at the checkout if there were 2-$1 stickers on a single item...it wouldn't work. Ran into the leader of the better store who was stacking, and complimented him on his good department and lamented the other store's situation. He laughed knowingly, said the other store had been without a food manager for months and that he just finished training a new manager, so I should see a difference. (I mentioned finding 3 year-expired nutmeats, among other things). He also explained the trick for the 2-$1 stickers (the checker has to do a manual price change for the extra $1...I'll just not bother, thanks.). I still think an outsourcing/JV between Target and Trader Joe's for pFresh would have been the "killer app" for both...synergistic customer bases/offerings/selections; though come to think about it, it would jeopardize the economics for SuperTarget (which clearly relies on pFresh volume to create the pretty solid private label program which they DO have).
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Re: Target 2021

Post by Lynnie30 »

The reason they have the high profile chairs for some of the cashiers is that some of them have health problems that requires them to have to sit during their shift.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by ClownLoach »

On another note, how widespread is the expansion of Target stores with open warehouse ceilings and painted concrete floors? Yesterday I visited a newer small format in La Canada Flintridge, a upscale community near Glendale in the LA foothills. This was the flagship Sports Chalet store, newly built and closed a couple of years later. This store has 95% open warehouse ceiling painted medium gray. Only drop ceiling was drywall painted red over checkout and a soffit along the back wall presumably for upstairs offices. It was fine, but just doesn't feel like Target with the dark open ceiling. Encinitas had the ceiling ripped out over the front end and checkout last year. Where else have they gone away from ceiling tiles?
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Re: Target 2021

Post by babs »

ClownLoach wrote: January 3rd, 2022, 10:34 am On another note, how widespread is the expansion of Target stores with open warehouse ceilings and painted concrete floors? Yesterday I visited a newer small format in La Canada Flintridge, a upscale community near Glendale in the LA foothills. This was the flagship Sports Chalet store, newly built and closed a couple of years later. This store has 95% open warehouse ceiling painted medium gray. Only drop ceiling was drywall painted red over checkout and a soffit along the back wall presumably for upstairs offices. It was fine, but just doesn't feel like Target with the dark open ceiling. Encinitas had the ceiling ripped out over the front end and checkout last year. Where else have they gone away from ceiling tiles?
From what I have seen, many if not most of the small format Target stores are going with the open warehouse ceiling. I do not know of any full line Target that had a warehouse ceiling. I suspect it might a ploy to try and make the smaller stores feel larger with the higher ceiling that the warehouse style ceiling provides. Concrete floors don't seem to be following the same pattern.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by storewanderer »

Target is still "remodeling" in Reno. Old Greatland Store. Very large and spacious. I thought they were done but they still have trailers blocking 1/3 of the parking lot. Not sure what they are doing or why it is taking this long. Kept all the old shelves and 95% of the old flooring. Lighting is mostly the same except above a few departments. They have a mixture of new and old department signage.

They actually rearranged the grocery area in a way where SKUs were cut in some of the perishable categories (less cheese and lunchmeat now, but more yogurt). They also have less produce than before and less defrost and serve bakery than before. The actual amount of space for grocery did not change, just some layout changes that caused these mix changes. The dry goods look the same as before.

As far as the rest of the store- the Cosmetics area got significantly expanded and this cut into space where paper products had been. Seasonal was previously L shaped, it was downsized by the short end of the L, about 3.5 aisles, to work in the movement of paper products. The "dollar spot" area was moved into what was some open space in front of electronics and self checkouts were rearranged into that space (still only 4 self checkouts there, taking up twice the space the previous 4 took). They may have shaved 2 aisles off of the celebration department to facilitate this movement but I can't really tell.

They also shut down the Pizza Hut and switched it to coolers for grocery pick up storage, but the Pizza Hut menu boards are still there. They just put some coolers in front of the old order counter. The Starbucks is still there.

For the amount of time they've been working on this remodel it doesn't seem like they have accomplished much at all.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: January 3rd, 2022, 6:39 pm Target is still "remodeling" in Reno. Old Greatland Store. Very large and spacious. I thought they were done but they still have trailers blocking 1/3 of the parking lot. Not sure what they are doing or why it is taking this long. Kept all the old shelves and 95% of the old flooring. Lighting is mostly the same except above a few departments. They have a mixture of new and old department signage.

They actually rearranged the grocery area in a way where SKUs were cut in some of the perishable categories (less cheese and lunchmeat now, but more yogurt). They also have less produce than before and less defrost and serve bakery than before. The actual amount of space for grocery did not change, just some layout changes that caused these mix changes. The dry goods look the same as before.

As far as the rest of the store- the Cosmetics area got significantly expanded and this cut into space where paper products had been. Seasonal was previously L shaped, it was downsized by the short end of the L, about 3.5 aisles, to work in the movement of paper products. The "dollar spot" area was moved into what was some open space in front of electronics and self checkouts were rearranged into that space (still only 4 self checkouts there, taking up twice the space the previous 4 took). They may have shaved 2 aisles off of the celebration department to facilitate this movement but I can't really tell.

They also shut down the Pizza Hut and switched it to coolers for grocery pick up storage, but the Pizza Hut menu boards are still there. They just put some coolers in front of the old order counter. The Starbucks is still there.

For the amount of time they've been working on this remodel it doesn't seem like they have accomplished much at all.
There are several of these projects where dozens of storage containers are out front but it looks like nothing happened inside. These are stores where they are doing a complete backroom remodel to add a sortation center. Target historically has run massive backrooms with 60 all the way to 100 aisles of storage. The largest backroom stores are getting this space downsized to use for some sort of e-commerce sortation process for store fulfilled orders. Costa Mesa and Garden Grove-Harbor Blvd in Orange County are undergoing the same process. For both of those they just enclosed the long mothballed garden center space for the project but did not add an inch to the sales floor. Costa Mesa was also a Greatland but it opened with a smaller than normal stockroom only on the right side by grocery which must add a million footsteps to the stocking process.
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Re: Target 2021

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: January 3rd, 2022, 11:32 pm
There are several of these projects where dozens of storage containers are out front but it looks like nothing happened inside. These are stores where they are doing a complete backroom remodel to add a sortation center. Target historically has run massive backrooms with 60 all the way to 100 aisles of storage. The largest backroom stores are getting this space downsized to use for some sort of e-commerce sortation process for store fulfilled orders. Costa Mesa and Garden Grove-Harbor Blvd in Orange County are undergoing the same process. For both of those they just enclosed the long mothballed garden center space for the project but did not add an inch to the sales floor. Costa Mesa was also a Greatland but it opened with a smaller than normal stockroom only on the right side by grocery which must add a million footsteps to the stocking process.
Interesting. This Greatland opened in the late 90's and has a massive backroom so this must be exactly what is happening. Given it is the only Target in Reno it makes sense to do this as I think they have a high order volume in the area (also Sparks which has a newer and high traffic Target and isn't set up well for online orders at all).

I also notice the inventory level in this store seems much lower than it used to be. I thought maybe it was something to do with the remodel, or perhaps a very high volume of customer traffic. The other Targets I've been into do not look that way, and also appear to be having a very high volume of customer traffic.
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