To be fair the photo of the front of the store Supermarket News got appears to be pretty recent as they repainted the store and put up some odd metal thing next to one of the entrances that wasn't there before.rwsandiego wrote: ↑May 25th, 2021, 10:48 pm Perhaps the Customer Experience person stopped by their local dispensary prior to providing commentary for the PR piece highly informative article.
But seriously, it's one thing to execute a bad idea and fail. It's another to execute a bad idea, fail, and claim it is a success when reviews on the public internet are overwhelmingly negative. My guess is the piece was written before the place even re-opened.
I went again today. I was after a few boxes of baking soda to do some cleaning. I thought that would be simple and surely something they'd have a normal selection of given it is not part of their banned items list. They still have a full assortment of standard Raleys Brand Canned Fruits, Canned Vegetables, dry Pasta, etc. (non Organic) selling at everyday low prices of the Raleys Dailies EDLP program, so I assumed they'd still have basic Baking Soda too. Well, no. The only baking soda they had was some brand I've never heard of at 1.99 a box. It didn't say it was Organic and I could not tell anything special about it. Other than the high price tag. Arm & Hammer and Raleys Baking Soda- gone, no more. Went to Wal Mart after and the baking soda is .54 there for generic which is fine for this purpose (.90 for the Arm & Hammer).
I was taking a better look at the baking aisle and this entire aisle's mix and merchandising is completely weird. They still have basic bags of sugar and plain white flour at Raleys Dailies everyday low prices (either name brands C&H or Gold Medal or Raleys brand). Also the selection of bagged chocolate chips looked like a normal store with the various brands represented including multiple Raleys SKUs at the 2.98 EDLP plus the Nestle, etc. that you typically see. If you want cake mix you are looking at $4 minimum and that was a sale price for some gluten free cake mix. They did have what appeared to be some other standard cake mixes (Annie's and some other brands I'm not familiar with) all at $5 and up again those are sale prices. Looking at canned pumpkin they have two SKUs of Raleys brand which is not Organic (again on the everyday low price) but then the other SKU is some Organic brand. No Libby. I don't think Libby Pumpkin has any banned ingredients; it is just pumpkin. Cannot wait to see how this baking aisle does during the holidays. In previous holidays the store's old normal baking aisle got literally wiped out due to demand and the high volume of customers shopping in the store.
Someone else who was commenting negatively on the converted store told me the store only sells gluten free frozen pizza so I went and took a look at the frozen pizza area. That is actually not the case, though about 1/2 of the frozen pizza area is gluten free or vegetable crust pizzas, they do still have an assortment of standard frozen pizzas in various brands such as California PIzza Kitchen, etc. I am guessing since the first 4 or so doors as you enter the aisle had the gluten free and vegetable crust varieties, the person I spoke with did not venture further down the aisle and made an inaccurate assumption.
I did buy a couple of items and when paying a $5 off $35 purchase coupon was printed along with my receipt and in the small print states it is only valid at Raleys ONE Reno location, good either online or in store, only if you have a Something Extra membership. This isn't as good of an offer as the QR code stickers they have on random items throughout the store offering $5 off $25 if you sign up for Something Extra Loyalty Program.