99 Cents Only

Alpha8472
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by Alpha8472 »

I passed by a 99 Cents today and it was not busy at all. The chain has really gone down hill in every way: less food, higher prices, dirtier, fewer employees. It is just so unpleasant to shop at. Why bother when you have better places to shop at? It is no longer any fun to shop at. I get the sense that these stores seem to be on a death spiral.
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

A couple local closures within the past few years may have been attributable to questionable location choices:9415 Madison on the Orangevale/Folsom border was in a not great center in a lower density area,while 4909 Auburn was in a low visibilty center.However as recently as the mid-2010's they were still opening new stores,one example being 7424 Greenback which opened 2016 in a subdivision of a late-1980's Albertsons-turned-Ralphs-turned-OSH at 6124 San Juan(other part is now a Crunch Fitness),not to mention that 4319 Elkhorn(one of their earliest local locations,former Lucky/Super Saver)was remodeled within the past year or two into the new 'The 99 Store' format.
For your life,Thrifty and Payless have got it.
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by storewanderer »

Sad times in the Reno location. Customer count of around 5 on what should be a busy afternoon. Very little produce or frozen. Some grocery shelves on grocery wall now have house items instead of grocery. The store is poorly stocked but the backroom is overflowing with pallets of what seem to be items that customers just aren't buying.

But produce was full of greenish bananas on the banana display so this tells me they had a recent produce delivery but hardly got anything. It is like the chain has just stopped even trying.

This store on weekends used to have a full parking lot, it is a very busy area on weekends being across the street from the mall and near Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and Target which all have heavy weekend traffic . The Hobby Lobby in the same lot as 99 Only had at least 200 cars out front at the time I took this photo.
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Bagels
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by Bagels »

storewanderer wrote: June 11th, 2022, 6:07 pm Sad times in the Reno location. Customer count of around 5 on what should be a busy afternoon. Very little produce or frozen. Some grocery shelves on grocery wall now have house items instead of grocery. The store is poorly stocked but the backroom is overflowing with pallets of what seem to be items that customers just aren't buying.

But produce was full of greenish bananas on the banana display so this tells me they had a recent produce delivery but hardly got anything. It is like the chain has just stopped even trying.
The stores near me looked similar - but they had fully stocked produce. Lots of bear shelves… In the past year, I’ve noticed few products distributed by the in-house “Momentum Brands.” Not sure if they’re having supply chain or liquidity issues, or both.
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by storewanderer »

Bagels wrote: June 11th, 2022, 10:08 pm

The stores near me looked similar - but they had fully stocked produce. Lots of bear shelves… In the past year, I’ve noticed few products distributed by the in-house “Momentum Brands.” Not sure if they’re having supply chain or liquidity issues, or both.
I've been in stores around Sacramento and also went into a couple down around Long Beach in the past month and the stores were full, clean, and reasonably neat.

This Reno unit is supplied by the distro center in Commerce so I guess they just don't care to send much of any produce up here. I wonder if they sent the bananas or ordered them from a distributor. Transportation costs have to really be hurting them and I assume they transport perishable from Commerce out to AZ/Las Vegas too.

I notice all of the party supplies got a price hike to 1.29. I think they would have been wise to keep those at 99 cents.

Also noticing some items in the cleaning aisle that were 1.29 that have gotten a price hike to 1.49. Larger containers than Dollar Tree though...

Plastic bag today said "The 99 Store."
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by Alpha8472 »

The company needs to realize that a bad store manager can destroy a store. If a store is in such bad shape, the manager needs to be replaced. A weak store manager will not be able to keep the other employees in line. The conditions at some of the awful stores is bringing the company down. Is there no district manager to come in and inspect these stores? Are there no secret shoppers?
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: June 12th, 2022, 10:27 am The company needs to realize that a bad store manager can destroy a store. If a store is in such bad shape, the manager needs to be replaced. A weak store manager will not be able to keep the other employees in line. The conditions at some of the awful stores is bringing the company down. Is there no district manager to come in and inspect these stores? Are there no secret shoppers?
Many retailers are having serious store manager shortages. I am floored to see the companies hiring outside store managers at the present time because they have no promotion pipeline and the prospect of transferring people from one state to another every couple years is dimming as people don't put up with that anymore and will quit before taking a forced transfer (and that is a good thing, that was a terrible thing about retail store management).

In the days when 99 Cents Only ran extremely high volume stores I am guessing it was easy to attract/retain store managers and pay them pretty good (not as good as a grocery store manager, but certainly better than a manager of another dollar store, or a pet supply chain/office supply chain store manager). Now with what seems to be an obvious store volume decline I suspect they cannot afford to pay managers as much anymore. I could be completely wrong on this. But if someone is faced with managing a Dollar Tree (with 1/2 or less square feet, way fewer employees, no perishable produce, and shorter hours of operation) or a 99 Cents Only for the same pay, obviously they would go for the Dollar Tree.
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by Bagels »

While waiting for the wifey, I stopped at my two local 99 Cents Only stores, was well as the nearby Dollar Tree and Grocery Outlet.

The 99s were fully stocked. They’re very sloppy in marking prices, which is an issue since hardly anything is 99 cents only anymore. They’re making up a lot of items, but only bothered to re-sticker some items, so a large bottle of laundry detergent had some marked 4.99 and others 7.99. LOTS of price hikes throughout the store… many items sold at Dollar Tree are being sold here for 1.49 and up. Shrinkflation is evident throughout the store - a pack of 250 cotton swaps next to a pack of 375, for example. They cost 1.49; Walmart sells a 500 pack (these are plastic sticks) for 99 cents still. Ralphs regularly puts 375 packs on sale (the good sticks) for 1.79-1.99. Among the other gems: Ruffles potato chips are now $3.99, up from $2.49.

The 99 has the same close out branded merchandise as Grocery Outlet. The 99 also charges more — 3.49 for Good & Gather (before they expire in several weeks) salad dressings, vs 50 cents at GO, for example. Surprisingly, the 99 did have a large selection of Oscar Meyer deli meats for $1 — GO wanted 1.99-2.99.

The 99 also had some good produce specials. Strawberries, blackberries and blueberries for $1, 8 oz mushrooms for $1, 3pk Romaine Hearts for $1.49, etc. GO uses the same suppliers, and much of it is priced higher.

One last observation: they claim they want to target more Latino customers and that’s evident at the El Toro location, which had tons of Hispanic groceries, including Mexican Kellogg’s cereal (3 for $10).
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by BillyGr »

Bagels wrote: June 11th, 2022, 10:08 pm The stores near me looked similar - but they had fully stocked produce. Lots of bear shelves… In the past year, I’ve noticed few products distributed by the in-house “Momentum Brands.” Not sure if they’re having supply chain or liquidity issues, or both.
Maybe the problem is that the bear shelves keep eating whatever is placed near them? ;)
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Re: 99 Cents Only

Post by storewanderer »

Reno store has pretty much fully stocked produce again. It all looked fresh so must have just shown up. Frozen is still 95% empty. The clogged backroom is slowly moving out to the sales floor.
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