Fred Meyer (WA) preparing for liquor sales

[Super S]

I was in my local Fred Meyer tonight (Longview, WA), and noticed areas of the store have been cleared out and some products set up in temporary locations. At first I wondered if another remodel was occurring, however, that is not the case. An employee told me that they are in the process of rearranging the store for the sale of hard liquor, due to the passage of I-1183 this past November. So far, this is the only local store I have seen preparing for this.

I am not going to get into the political aspects of this, but it is going to be interesting to see this transition take place and see how the different grocers handle this.

[storewanderer]

It is interesting to see how chains design stores in markets with liquor vs. no liquor. I have noticed some design variations particularly with Albertsons where pharmacy is on a side wall where they have liquor but more in a front corner where they do not have liquor.

Safeway in WA will be most interesting since many WA Safeways follow a different than standard floorplan with bakery on one front wall, deli on the other, and frozen on the side wall over on the bakery side.

With Fred Meyer I think the produce/nutrition flows better in WA since they have more space to work with in WA. Guess we will see what they do.

[Super S]

I was at this store again last night. The rearrangement so far has been in the book department, basically condensing into a smaller space and rearranging the aisles, and the cosmetics/health/beauty area has been redone, and the aisles all line up with the rest of the grocery area. The health/beauty/cosmetics appears finished as new signs have been hung from the ceiling. Basically it looks like they are starting on this end and slowly working across the grocery section of the store.

[Brian Lutz]

I haven't seen any signs of rearranging things for liquor in any of the Fred Meyers up here yet, but it seems like a lot of them have fairly large wine departments located in roughly the same spot in the store (back corner of the grocery department center aisles, next to the meat/bakery/produce areas,) with the natural foods section next to that. I imagine this has been factored into the design of the remodeled Kirkland store (which changed the layout of basically everything, including moving the deli to a center-of-store location right next to the main entrance,) but for the others I'm guessing they'll have to move around the natural foods departments for the space to accomodate liquor.

[scotty13]

I-1183 provides that 17% of all sales revenues from packaged spirits will be paid to the State of Washington. Since the margin on liquor is 34-35%, that is half of gross profits.

This post has been edited by the Administrator for violations of the Membership Agreement.

[submariner]

Please keep in mind that the forum is not a place to discuss political opinion. Any further discussion of political manners and you will be banned.

I have edited your post accordingly.

[TkarasekTomsherron]

Fred Meyer in Longview has moved their wine and expanded it to four aisles. The only store I have seen actually have liquor on the shelves is the 30th Ave Safeway. Of course, the liquor was covered and will be until 1 June.
I have been buying my liquor in California, Washington DC and Nevada for the last 50 years and am looking forward to being able to buy locally at similar prices. Competition will be interesting to watch too.

[TkarasekTomsherron]

Fred Meyer in Longview has a house brand gin now that is the least expensive of the stores I have surveyed which are Safeway, Winco, WalMart and the privately operated former state store in Triangle Mall. The latter has former state prices on all stock until it sells out, but law prohibits new dealer stores to do that. Anybody know Costco's prices?