Walmart Neighborhood Market coming to Seattle Metro Area

[Alpha8472]

The self-checkout machines were removed from many Walmart stores due to theft. People go to the self-checkout and ring up a few items and get a receipt. They then neglect to scan a few items and leave the store. The receipt checkers don't have time to check every single item in a shopping cart. The Walmart store then loses tons of money.

These neighborhood market stores have self-checkout because they tend to appeal to a higher income crowd. Walmart attracts low income people who are short on cash, but Neighborhood Market stores are designed to appeal to regular middle class and higher income people who don't need to shoplift just to survive.

If these Neighborhood Markets start seeing epidemics of shoplifting and theft, they will probably remove the self-checkouts also. Self-checkouts were supposed to replace employees and save money by reducing the need for cashiers. However, that strategy did not work as it contributed to massive theft and shoplifting.

Groceries are the least profitable section of a Walmart store. The profit is made in the non-food departments. Walmart wants to set up mini-Walmarts on every street corner and become a monopoly. The cheap groceries are there to attract people into the store so that they can buy more profitable non-food items.

[storewanderer]

Not including bakery/deli seems to be a new thing with the latest generation of neighborhood markets.

Having a greater mix of non perishables is probably a good way to try to shoot at Dollar General and Family Dollar.

Their weakness on dairy/meat pricing is interesting. I have noticed their dairy pricing has become VERY weak. This is a price sensitive category so I don't quite understand. I think the major chain grocers having their own dairy facilities is really having an impact. Or, the dairy vendors are for whatever reason not playing the game with Wal Mart on price. I know many states set minimum prices, and WMT's dairy prices are nowhere near the state minimum prices...

[Brian Lutz]

Neither Family Dollar or Dollar General have any stores around here, so they wouldn't be competing with those. The more direct competition for these stores is going to be with Target, which has a similar (albeit smaller) mix of grocery items in their stores.

It'll be interesting to see what they do with the other Bellevue Walmart store (currently under construction, I think I've heard late Summer as for opening thaqt one) which will be competing directly with a Target in the same shopping center.