Target 2022

[ClownLoach]

I visited the the large store on Western and Sunset in East Hollywood CA.

Wonderful parking (90 minutes free with validation).

The store was packed with people loading up their carts and also many with hand baskets. 12 self checkouts all being used. 6 of the 12 regular checkstands operating with people in line, perhaps 5 to 6 deep.

Surprisingly many employees on the floor! Great presentations and good variety throughout the store. Of course the typical SuperTarget large grocery area. It was generally in good shape with just a couple of troubled areas. Target is not known for even average variety in the grocery offerings. Many facings for one product and flavor.

Overall, the best Target I have seen in my general area (I would not shop there because it is too far with too much traffic to make it worth while).

It seems strange to me that the store is located in such a lousy neigborhood where a Wal Mart would make more sense.

In the upper scale neighborhoods we are stuck with small stores and lousy variety with comical little PFresh offerings.

So it opened with a deli counter and bakery? If so then it might be the first truly new Super location in a decade. Not that they're any good at operating these counters, but...

[ClownLoach]

Grass Valley is actually 90k square feet so I hesitate to call it small format. Kmart didn't feel quite that big to me.

There won't be any public announcement of slashing development of small format, but it will send shock waves through a lot of commercial developers who have sent a lot of tenants packing, including established grocers, in hopes of landing a small format Target. Joke is about to be on them.

To be clear the list was all stores, all formats. It just so happened that about 75% of them were small format which I define as anything 50K and below. At this point in time there are only 11 small format left in development, and of those only 6 are truly small (19K to 33K). There seem to be a ton of new 140K+ listings. No announcement needed; small format Target is dead and SuperTarget size buildings are their future again.

Yep the greedy landlords who were hoping for a high paying Target Express or Amazon Fresh are going to get exactly what they deserve as both concepts crash and burn.

The list must be pretty dynamic because I counted 13 small stores plus a number in the 60-80K range. The modal new store seems to hover around 90-110K and many of those seem to be existing suburban areas, which I assume are existing structures/sites. The truly large stores seem geographicallly targeted (forgive the pun) with so many in Texas.

It is. I'll go through it again later. Could be that they're trying to renegotiate some of these small formats they had removed from the list in an effort to lower rents and make them more likely to make a profit?

It seems some of the midsized locations, the 60-80K you mentioned, are decent operations and many get Target into older smaller buildings in communities that couldn't support or don't have space for a full size store. These are not what I consider small, nor are they seemingly the problem locations. I call these medium stores and Target has sprinkled these in around the country for a while, usually former Kmart or other closed regional "Kohl's type" retailers.

The small stores are these ones that are in the 10 to 30K range. The ones that are next to a University seem to do all right, like the UC Irvine store, and they're basically merchandised to take on the general merchandise sales the campus bookstores and student union stores used to handle before Amazon wiped out their businesses. The first few small formats were these University stores and they made sense when they could locate within walking distance of the dorms. But the company decided to pivot to intensely urban locations to expand, plus what I will call nonsense locations. The urban stores were in a building boom that seems to have stopped, these are where most of the recent and upcoming closures have occurred. Nearly all for theft. And they had very little in truly large buildings being built for a few years now, but after the Katy-Elison new prototype launch last fall they have definitely ramped up larger store construction again. The trend change I am indicating here does align with their PR that they're moving back to focusing on large formats. I do not think they will continue to pursue small stores and most will close at the first opportunity to exit the lease, just like the majority of Walmart Neighborhood Markets seem to be closing.

They also pursued nonsense stores as I mentioned with small formats in dense and competitive areas, many of which are rough spots. For example they took over a smaller 30K closed Ralphs at 7th and PCH in Long Beach less than a mile from a full size store that actually was expanded twice in the last 20 years (including after this opened) most recently building into the rest of the former garden center for a expansion of P-fresh. The small store struggles, the CVS in it's parking lot didn't renew it's lease and closed recently but they didn't build pharmacy into the small format. Then there is a Westchester store in a former Office Depot that is probably only 25K yet it has multiple entrances, including front and back, and their LP folks can't chase the shoplifters fast enough as they're looting the entire store while the selection is too small in any categories to be useful to anyone. They built the same thing famously on Folsom in San Francisco in a store that looks like a prison inside and just made news headlines again (yes, the sensationalist NY Post) in a really bad look where everything is in a glass case now. The reason these nonsense stores are such is that they're within close range of existing Target locations in many cases, or otherwise have numerous grocery store and drugstore options nearby if not directly across the street. They obviously are difficult to operate distractions that are not worth the effort when they have subpar operations like the infamous Reno location that keeps getting mentioned, and when some of these have closed (a few didn't make it 2 years including some Bay Area locations) they've acknowledged that they never made any profit whatsoever on them. They're not going to out compete Ralphs on food, CVS on health, it's like they thought they could skim sales volume from both yet all that happens is they get looted because of the more open layouts and lower staffing model wiping out any profit.

Here's that article, yes I know they're a tabloid but the video shows what the Folsom prison, I mean Target, looks like. What a dreary and awful looking store. If it is going to stay open they should at least make some kind of effort to dress the place up and make it less of a stain on their brand.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/san-franc ... risis/amp/

[veteran+]

I visited the the large store on Western and Sunset in East Hollywood CA.

Wonderful parking (90 minutes free with validation).

The store was packed with people loading up their carts and also many with hand baskets. 12 self checkouts all being used. 6 of the 12 regular checkstands operating with people in line, perhaps 5 to 6 deep.

Surprisingly many employees on the floor! Great presentations and good variety throughout the store. Of course the typical SuperTarget large grocery area. It was generally in good shape with just a couple of troubled areas. Target is not known for even average variety in the grocery offerings. Many facings for one product and flavor.

Overall, the best Target I have seen in my general area (I would not shop there because it is too far with too much traffic to make it worth while).

It seems strange to me that the store is located in such a lousy neigborhood where a Wal Mart would make more sense.

In the upper scale neighborhoods we are stuck with small stores and lousy variety with comical little PFresh offerings.

So it opened with a deli counter and bakery? If so then it might be the first truly new Super location in a decade. Not that they're any good at operating these counters, but...

Yikes! I failed to notice but there def was no service bakery.

Darn...............I'll have to swing around again to that traffic cluster XXXX and check it out.

[BreakingThrough]

The Westchester LAX small format Target is a disaster. My office is near there and that Sepulveda corridor in Westchester near LAX can be a bit sketchy, but it seems like all of the sketchiness convenes at the Target. It really damages the brand.

Even worse is the small format nearby in Lawndale at Rosecrans and Hawthorne Blvds. Terrible reviews of that store online, with lots of complaints about staff members / managers.

[storewanderer]

It appears Target's "small store" problem is similar to Wal Mart's "small store" problem. The wrong formats, in the wrong locations, with the wrong products, operated incorrectly. High costs in the case of Target (makes it that much harder for the formats to work), which really mess with ROI. I've heard many horror stories about how poor the service is in these small format Target Stores. They clearly would not send their best talent to these low volume stores, why would they? From how they seem to run a lot of small format units, it almost feels like they are where they put their worst talent.

Target will get to blame many of the small store failures or developments exited on "work from home" and fewer people around where they intended to open, whatever, but at the end of the day, a failing store, or a closed store, is the same thing...

As far as the appearance of Folsom Street Target (which has extended to 8 PM closing lately) in San Francisco goes, that is an industrial type neighborhood historically. It has changed direction a bit over the years to have more commercial and some additional residential. Gentrified basically. The store was designed to fit with the neighborhood. The neighborhood has actually changed/improved over the years as a whole. However for whatever reason the area around Target is quite nasty. There are large homeless camps directly behind the store under the overpass, these have grown exponentially in size in the past 3-5 years. There were always some homeless under the overpass but now there are dozens/hundreds of them. It is very unpleasant behind Target and I do not recommend walking behind Target for any reason at any time of day anymore.

As far as the LAX Store goes that is another mistake. Lawndale I actually didn't think was that bad... still small format and still probably not worth Target's effort.

I expect these types of locations will all close suddenly once Target's financial performance goes south or once there is a management change. For now the locations are safe as long as the corporate Target is doing well. Closing the stores will hurt their image even more than keeping them open. Only customers walking in see the lousy stores and lousy service. These stores have few customers and most customers are local and understand the issues of the neighborhood or maybe they don't understand but they are too few people to harm Target's image. But if they close the stores it will be all over the news, social media, everywhere with some saying Target is closing because of political policies in said cities and others saying Target closing because they are a big greedy corporation who only cares about profits and is hurting the neighborhoods by abandoning them and closing stores. So the amount of negative PR in staying open is less than the amount of negative PR in closing, especially mass closings, of these stores.

There are Wal Mart units in Las Vegas and possibly Albuquerque with virtually all of HBA locked up and anything you buy is put into a thick plastic cage to be removed when you pay. This was before COVID, not sure how that is working out since COVID and since Wal Mart has so little staffing.

[ClownLoach]

It appears Target's "small store" problem is similar to Wal Mart's "small store" problem. The wrong formats, in the wrong locations, with the wrong products, operated incorrectly. High costs in the case of Target (makes it that much harder for the formats to work), which really mess with ROI. I've heard many horror stories about how poor the service is in these small format Target Stores. They clearly would not send their best talent to these low volume stores, why would they? From how they seem to run a lot of small format units, it almost feels like they are where they put their worst talent.

Target will get to blame many of the small store failures or developments exited on "work from home" and fewer people around where they intended to open, whatever, but at the end of the day, a failing store, or a closed store, is the same thing...

As far as the appearance of Folsom Street Target (which has extended to 8 PM closing lately) in San Francisco goes, that is an industrial type neighborhood historically. It has changed direction a bit over the years to have more commercial and some additional residential. Gentrified basically. The store was designed to fit with the neighborhood. The neighborhood has actually changed/improved over the years as a whole. However for whatever reason the area around Target is quite nasty. There are large homeless camps directly behind the store under the overpass, these have grown exponentially in size in the past 3-5 years. There were always some homeless under the overpass but now there are dozens/hundreds of them. It is very unpleasant behind Target and I do not recommend walking behind Target for any reason at any time of day anymore.

As far as the LAX Store goes that is another mistake. Lawndale I actually didn't think was that bad... still small format and still probably not worth Target's effort.

I expect these types of locations will all close suddenly once Target's financial performance goes south or once there is a management change. For now the locations are safe as long as the corporate Target is doing well. Closing the stores will hurt their image even more than keeping them open. Only customers walking in see the lousy stores and lousy service. These stores have few customers and most customers are local and understand the issues of the neighborhood or maybe they don't understand but they are too few people to harm Target's image. But if they close the stores it will be all over the news, social media, everywhere with some saying Target is closing because of political policies in said cities and others saying Target closing because they are a big greedy corporation who only cares about profits and is hurting the neighborhoods by abandoning them and closing stores. So the amount of negative PR in staying open is less than the amount of negative PR in closing, especially mass closings, of these stores.

There are Wal Mart units in Las Vegas and possibly Albuquerque with virtually all of HBA locked up and anything you buy is put into a thick plastic cage to be removed when you pay. This was before COVID, not sure how that is working out since COVID and since Wal Mart has so little staffing.

I need to compile a list of closures, but I think they have quietly passed at least a dozen small format closures already. They've already got a few closing in the headlines right now. I am going to wager that the deciding factor is how the small format store comes out at inventory. If it's shrinking out, it's closing out.

My understanding is that the Store Managers of these small format locations are not well compensated, and not experienced. They would do better to establish a separate leadership team and bring in some folks who have run difficult drugstores in high shrink inner city environments to be the DMs and SMs. Obviously few if any of the normal Target processes, systems, and routines work for these small stores anyway because they lack the normal facilities, backrooms, etc.

So far the only three I've seen that appear to be remotely decent operations are UC Irvine, and the roughly 45K locations in La Canada Flintridge (rich area, former Sports Chalet flagship) and Orange (decent area, nice closed newer Ralphs that got destroyed by Stater Bros opening a few blocks over. La Canada Flintridge is probably the most ideal situation; a store with just enough product to be useful in a rich enclave where there truly isn't any room for a full size box or they would have built one already. Orange seems slow and, although it isn't routinely trashed, I wager isn't delivering much volume or profit. Certainly less than the Ralphs did, so odds are it won't be a urgent priority to close but won't survive the end of the first lease term either.

Others seem to be distractions, almost as if they wanted to do some things just to prove they could design and build it? Like the bowling alley location in Portland. Yes, it's pretty cool to build a store with retro signage into a bowling alley. Should they have done it in such a crappy area? No, not at all.

I think they may have found something useful in the middle sized stores around 60K to 80K; that could be a decent niche where the store could be customized for the community. But they still need to figure out how to manage grocery then make it the heart of these medium formats; they seem to be slowly refining the selection outside of perimeter in the SuperTarget locations lately although the failure point is absolutely zero localized assortment whatsoever. I'm sure if they had someone with some brains they could analyze SuperTarget locations that surround similar P-fresh locations, identify the top say 10,000 food SKUs at Super and re-assort P-fresh to sell those same 10,000 SKUs. But right now there isn't a single SKU different between grocery aisles at Menifee and Murrieta SuperTargets, Dallas-Fort Worth SuperTargets, or Orlando Florida SuperTargets. They're exactly and totally identical which defies comprehension. If you had perfectly memorized Irving, TX grocery aisles I could take you to Murrieta blindfolded, read you a list and tell you to pull the items and you'd get it 100% right. Fix that. Then find someone who can source LOCAL produce and supply decent deli and bakery programs (including training and support) and they might have a winner.

[ClownLoach]

The Westchester LAX small format Target is a disaster. My office is near there and that Sepulveda corridor in Westchester near LAX can be a bit sketchy, but it seems like all of the sketchiness convenes at the Target. It really damages the brand.

Even worse is the small format nearby in Lawndale at Rosecrans and Hawthorne Blvds. Terrible reviews of that store online, with lots of complaints about staff members / managers.

Wasn't Rosecrans and Hawthorne a closed Walmart Neighborhood market?

[ClownLoach]

It appears Target's "small store" problem is similar to Wal Mart's "small store" problem. The wrong formats, in the wrong locations, with the wrong products, operated incorrectly. High costs in the case of Target (makes it that much harder for the formats to work), which really mess with ROI.

I expect these types of locations will all close suddenly once Target's financial performance goes south or once there is a management change. For now the locations are safe as long as the corporate Target is doing well. Closing the stores will hurt their image even more than keeping them open. Only customers walking in see the lousy stores and lousy service. These stores have few customers and most customers are local and understand the issues of the neighborhood or maybe they don't understand but they are too few people to harm Target's image. But if they close the stores it will be all over the news, social media, everywhere with some saying Target is closing because of political policies in said cities and others saying Target closing because they are a big greedy corporation who only cares about profits and is hurting the neighborhoods by abandoning them and closing stores. So the amount of negative PR in staying open is less than the amount of negative PR in closing, especially mass closings, of these stores.

There are Wal Mart units in Las Vegas and possibly Albuquerque with virtually all of HBA locked up and anything you buy is put into a thick plastic cage to be removed when you pay. This was before COVID, not sure how that is working out since COVID and since Wal Mart has so little staffing.

For ROI, these were intended to be a trick play to improve the appearance of Target's productivity (sales per square foot) because a decade or so ago analysts were talking a lot about that figure. I met a SM of one of the first to open and he didn't know much but he sure knew his sales per square foot of every single department. The other (regular) Target SM I talked to at the time couldn't tell me the sales per square foot of anything in his store and he was the regional trainer.

I don't think Target is concerned about politics of closing these stores because they've already closed, or are in the process of closing, many that were decidedly in under-served communities. They have a pretty standard PR message and aren't afraid to explicitly say "the store was losing money so we did everything we could but there wasn't a way to fix it".

As far as Walmart is concerned, I'll bet the store I visited recently with the very professionally designed "corral" is one of those "carrying plastic box" stores you're referring to. It was obvious the store didn't just have a few overly aggressive Assistant and LP Managers cobble together a corral with spare fixture parts. Anyway, no plastic boxes but they did put a register in the area with the alarmed automatic one way gate - this one doesn't "break away" like the failed ones they were trying at the store fronts that are already being removed in the new remodels. I'm guessing the plastic boxes went away with COVID fear. Never heard of that before but a decent idea. I think the answer is that the LP departments should be responsible for unlocking cages and running secured items to the front. If they can't fund the payroll for the extra work the security requires then maybe it isn't paying for itself? I would literally fund them dollar by dollar based on shrink decrease in the first year of locking down items. If they lowered shrink $100K but needed $100K of payroll for extra LP helpers to unlock/run items up then I'd call it a win and say "that's your budget going forward." But right now it is too easy in these companies for the LP guy to just deflect and say "lock it up" despite the destruction it causes to service and ultimately sales.

[BreakingThrough]

Wasn't Rosecrans and Hawthorne a closed Walmart Neighborhood market?

I don't believe so – there is a WM Neighborhood market a couple blocks west at Rosecrans and Inglewood. Still open I believe. The Target was previously a BigSaver hispanic market.

[storewanderer]

Wasn't Rosecrans and Hawthorne a closed Walmart Neighborhood market?

I don't believe so – there is a WM Neighborhood market a couple blocks west at Rosecrans and Inglewood. Still open I believe. The Target was previously a BigSaver hispanic market.

The Big Saver is a former Alpha Beta and I guess Ralphs. It appears to have gone to Big Saver in 2004.