Dollar Tree Operations

Alpha8472
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Dollar Tree Operations

Post by Alpha8472 »

I visited a recently opened Dollar Tree in San Ramon, California. It is inside of a former Walgreens. They really went cheap with this store. The floor was the same Walgreens floor and in terrible condition with some mismatched repaired tiles. The walls still had the Walgreens mirrors on the walls. The entire store seemed really compact and claustrophobic. It is much smaller than Dollar Tree stores that opened in the past 10 years.

I noticed that the checkout lanes had plastic sneeze guards and credit card readers that made you stand far away from the cashier.

It was like they spent as little money as possible on this store. The pharmacy was turned into a break room. You could look inside and see the entire break room. The drive thru window was covered up.
storewanderer
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

Post by storewanderer »

This sounds very similar to a Dollar Tree I went into in Idaho in a converted Walgreens. They handled it the exact same way. I am pretty sure they kept Walgreens shelving too.

What did they do with the Walgreens Cooler? I assume this Walgreens had the usual cooler wall which had walk in cooler and walk in freezer. That was the one thing they appear to have demolished (or they just walled it over and installed freestanding refrigeration in front of where it had been) in the store I saw. I found that odd given Dollar Tree handles refrigerated/frozen but I guess the cost to keep a large walk in cooler cold was more than Dollar Tree wanted to pay for. At 1.25 you'd think they could afford to do better.

Conversely last year Dollar Tree opened a new store in Winnemucca in a former Bealls/short lived Emporium-Oregon Store. I think Bealls renovated the interior of the store. Before Bealls and Emporium, the building housed "Honk's $1.05" in the late 90's and early 00's and JC Penney in the early 90's. Anyway, in this store Dollar Tree completely gutted the old Bealls space and installed all new flooring, lighting, and re-did the layout. If you didn't know better you'd think it was an old drug store or something like that. They even relocated the restrooms (quite a downgrade from what they were before which I think were in the old JCP configuration).
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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Dollar Tree walled over the Walgreens coolers. There were Dollar Tree refrigerators lined up against the wall. It made the aisle very narrow.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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Alpha8472 wrote: March 9th, 2022, 11:09 am Dollar Tree walled over the Walgreens coolers. There were Dollar Tree refrigerators lined up against the wall. It made the aisle very narrow.
Same as what I saw in Idaho. I suspect the old Walgreens walk in cooler and cooler doors are still there and just got walled off and de-commissioned.

I wonder if Walgreens is subleasing these spaces to Dollar Tree and made an arrangement for them to not really modify the locations, in case Walgreens decides they want the locations back?
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

Post by Alpha8472 »

That would be a good business move. This location is a high income, low crime area with lots of traffic. This location could be easily reopened. The nearest open Walgreens is in a remote residential area high in the hills far away from any freeway. I have no idea why they chose to keep that one open and close this one.

Pharmacy business is cyclical. A few months ago pharmacies were totally sold out of cough and cold medications due to the Omnicron surge. Pharmacies were overloaded with people waiting for COVID vaccinations. Now it is less busy.

You never know. In the future there may be another surge and pharmacies will be overcrowded again.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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I went into Dollar Tree tonight. There were only a couple other customers and nobody buying much of anything. They had a big display of swim noodles up front for 1.25 (it is still March and it is about 30 degrees outside and I am walking around looking like eskimo). There were two employees standing around up front talking. The shelves in the store were at best 50% stocked and every aisle had 50-100 boxes of unstocked or partially stocked freight sitting on each side of the aisles. The store was absolutely filthy (I do not think the flooring has been cleaned since I posted the photos of this dump months ago) and had a dirty odor.

I did see a few mix changes- noticed they had some plastic bottles of .5 liter Tejava for instance. But 1.25 is no deal for those; those are regularly $1 at Safeway, 99 Cents Only, etc. There may have been some better items hidden in the mess of boxes they had piled around.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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Dollar Tree is a bad value right now. People are hesitant to spend as much with so much inflation. Sales are down and many people are going to places with better prices.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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Alpha8472 wrote: March 12th, 2022, 5:04 pm Dollar Tree is a bad value right now. People are hesitant to spend as much with so much inflation. Sales are down and many people are going to places with better prices.
I noticed the store here was still using plastic bags that say "Everything's $1" on them. Feels like false advertising but it isn't displayed anywhere on the sales floor or around the products so maybe not.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

Post by Alpha8472 »

I would not be surprised if employees were to write ".25" on the bags with a sharpie.
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Re: Dollar Tree Operations

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Alpha8472 wrote: March 12th, 2022, 9:58 pm I would not be surprised if employees were to write ".25" on the bags with a sharpie.
That would be a good idea, but they'd have to store use the Sharpies.
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