Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by storewanderer »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:05 pm
In 2005, before the Albertsons breakup, there was rumors of Target acquiring Albertsons. That could've helped their grocery strategy.
At the end of the day Target's best business has been higher margin non food. Target's entire business model revolves around taking the exact same stuff Wal Mart imports from overseas, presenting it better, and getting an extra $1 or $2 for it.

It is a lot easier to sell general merchandise than food. It takes far less labor, it does not spoil out, it is just a much easier business.

As far as I'm concerned the ship has sailed for Target when it comes to grocery. Short of a complete crisis in their company where it is about to die, I don't see anything changing. If the situation at Target somehow gets so dire that the company is on the brink (which I don't see happening), then I think we may see a scenario where they are desperate for some quick 20-30% revenue gains and they come out and say okay- we are converting half of our stores to full grocery format (remember when Kmart did that announcement then went bankrupt not long after) over the next 2-3 years. Also I think such a strategy would fail and only hasten their demise just like it did for Kmart.

The other problem is many Target Stores are not located correctly to do a high grocery volume.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:24 pm As I am a fan of Target over Walmart I find it very sad they missed the boat and continue to travel in circles of misdirection.

If Walmart proved anything, it is that having a a Real grocery department during strange economic times is extremely beneficial to the bottom line. The "right" balance between discretionary spending and essential (staples) spending.

That P-Fresh was a total joke.
Target got its scare back in 2008 or 2010 or whenever they developed the P-Fresh and that was the best they (and their refusal to spend actual labor on grocery) could do. Many Greatland Stores could easily have been converted to Super Target.

Target has always been stuck in this vacuum of every store needs to be the same, consistent. That is the old 90's Target thinking and I think P-Fresh was born from that mentality. This current CEO with the smaller format push in the past 10 years has emphasized flexibility in formats for Target but I think that was a major culture shift for the company and how it did things over the years. The problem with flexibility in formats is that it tends to confuse the customer and at the end of the day national chain retailers seem to do best with one format and sub formats seem to often be sub par and sub performing. The only way sub formats work is if they are so separate that they cater to different customers and have separate management to the point that customers barely know they are related. Loblaw in Canada is the best I've ever seen of a company running multiple formats selling the same products yet entirely different formats very well.

I know you don't hang around Wal Mart like I do but as you note, it is impossible to emphasize just how important grocery sales have been to Wal Mart in the past few years. I really think grocery sales are carrying Wal Mart as a chain. The general merchandise side of many of their stores looks to be having much slower sales than in the past.

The other thing I see Wal Mart doing with grocery sales is bringing prices on groceries up to help their profit numbers. They used to be very competitive with WinCo on price. This is no longer the case and WinCo has far lower pricing across the board on groceries (Wal Mart is still often better on non food) since WinCo is still price shopping other grocers and adjusting prices. Wal Mart moves so many groceries it doesn't take much of a price hike to help their profits. This strategy long term is not going to sustain itself and eventually they are going to need to do more to drive general merchandise sales.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by arizonaguy »

storewanderer wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:34 pm
veteran+ wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:24 pm As I am a fan of Target over Walmart I find it very sad they missed the boat and continue to travel in circles of misdirection.

If Walmart proved anything, it is that having a a Real grocery department during strange economic times is extremely beneficial to the bottom line. The "right" balance between discretionary spending and essential (staples) spending.

That P-Fresh was a total joke.
Target got its scare back in 2008 or 2010 or whenever they developed the P-Fresh and that was the best they (and their refusal to spend actual labor on grocery) could do. Many Greatland Stores could easily have been converted to Super Target.

Target has always been stuck in this vacuum of every store needs to be the same, consistent. That is the old 90's Target thinking and I think P-Fresh was born from that mentality. This current CEO with the smaller format push in the past 10 years has emphasized flexibility in formats for Target but I think that was a major culture shift for the company and how it did things over the years. The problem with flexibility in formats is that it tends to confuse the customer and at the end of the day national chain retailers seem to do best with one format and sub formats seem to often be sub par and sub performing. The only way sub formats work is if they are so separate that they cater to different customers and have separate management to the point that customers barely know they are related. Loblaw in Canada is the best I've ever seen of a company running multiple formats selling the same products yet entirely different formats very well.

I know you don't hang around Wal Mart like I do but as you note, it is impossible to emphasize just how important grocery sales have been to Wal Mart in the past few years. I really think grocery sales are carrying Wal Mart as a chain. The general merchandise side of many of their stores looks to be having much slower sales than in the past.

The other thing I see Wal Mart doing with grocery sales is bringing prices on groceries up to help their profit numbers. They used to be very competitive with WinCo on price. This is no longer the case and WinCo has far lower pricing across the board on groceries (Wal Mart is still often better on non food) since WinCo is still price shopping other grocers and adjusting prices. Wal Mart moves so many groceries it doesn't take much of a price hike to help their profits. This strategy long term is not going to sustain itself and eventually they are going to need to do more to drive general merchandise sales.
Walmart's general merchandise has been in a period of stagnation for about the last 20 years. Walmart went all in on grocery in the late 1990s and early 2000s when they started building supercenters everywhere and/or replacing / converting it's existing division 1 stores to supercenters everywhere they could. Then they went into the Neighborhood Market building frenzy in the mid-late 2000s and opened a lot of supercenters during that time with full grocery departments but in buildings the size of division 1 stores (so many supercenters built around this time have abbreviated general merchandise mixes).

Walmart's online efforts and emphasis as of late has also done everything in it's power to lower general merchandise sales. Walmart used to use grocery to get customers into the stores so that while doing their weekly grocery shopping they would also potentially buy clothing, household appliances, video games, hardware, sporting goods, etc. With the more recent emphasis on grocery pickup and delivery customers are only purchasing what they need (the groceries) and are ignoring the general merchandise side altogether. The point of the supercenter was to get discretionary spending out of nondiscretionary spending in the same trip. The issue is that much of that discretionary spending is going to Amazon, Costco, Target or not happening at all and Walmart is stuck with grocery pickup / delivery that costs significantly more than if the customer browsed the store and results in smaller total sales. This is also the reason Kroger is de-emphasizing the Marketplace format. If the focus is online, customers are going to be purchasing groceries and not much else.

This is the one thing Target has done right. Target really hasn't lost focus on general merchandise like Kroger / Walmart have. At this point Kroger / Walmart are grocers who sell general merchandise. Target is a general merchandise discount store that sells groceries. Targets online offerings are geared more towards general merchandise than the grocery focused efforts at Kroger / Walmart and I really don't think Target is losing as many potential sales to Amazon as Kroger and Walmart are.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

arizonaguy wrote: March 11th, 2023, 1:33 pm At this point Kroger / Walmart are grocers who sell general merchandise. Target is a general merchandise discount store that sells groceries. Targets online offerings are geared more towards general merchandise than the grocery focused efforts at Kroger / Walmart and I really don't think Target is losing as many potential sales to Amazon as Kroger and Walmart are.
I would consider Walmart a discount store with a grocery section. Most Walmart stores are supercenters with sqft upwards of 200k. I haven't shopped at Walmart at all in the past 3 years, but when I've been in Supercenters, it seems like only a fourth of the space is dedicated to groceries. Walmart is best summed up as a mass merchandiser.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by BatteryMill »

veteran+ wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:24 pm As I am a fan of Target over Walmart I find it very sad they missed the boat and continue to travel in circles of misdirection.

If Walmart proved anything, it is that having a a Real grocery department during strange economic times is extremely beneficial to the bottom line. The "right" balance between discretionary spending and essential (staples) spending.

That P-Fresh was a total joke.
Why so?
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:34 pm
veteran+ wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:24 pm As I am a fan of Target over Walmart I find it very sad they missed the boat and continue to travel in circles of misdirection.

If Walmart proved anything, it is that having a a Real grocery department during strange economic times is extremely beneficial to the bottom line. The "right" balance between discretionary spending and essential (staples) spending.

That P-Fresh was a total joke.
Target has always been stuck in this vacuum of every store needs to be the same, consistent. That is the old 90's Target thinking and I think P-Fresh was born from that mentality. This current CEO with the smaller format push in the past 10 years has emphasized flexibility in formats for Target but I think that was a major culture shift for the company and how it did things over the years.
Target clearly broke away from that thought process a decade ago and hasn't looked back. I cannot name two "identical" Target stores anywhere in California anymore. Every single remodel diversifies the stores. Every department has different footage, every store has a different layout. They have hyper localized the assortment of every single store even more than Walmart. There is nothing "the same" about their stores anymore except a bullseye on the front (even that could be different colors).

The only thing that is "the same" currently? Ironically the topic of discussion here-the foods area in the SuperTarget format. Every single store has the exact same layout, exact same assortment, down to the exact same aisle numbers. It's the only part of the business that hasn't diversified or been customized in the new regime. Hence the speculation of this post that they are finally going to refocus on this subset of stores. Target under Cornell has been laser focused on the metric of sales per square foot. That is the reason why they did the small formats. But it is obvious from all of the posts here that the SuperTarget format is a drag on that metric. The only two areas that have improved are the produce department which is quietly getting better(and the new Touchscreen POS at Target scans industry standard PLUs now), and stores remodeled since 2017 which got upgraded fixtures, lighting, and a new graphics package with woodgrain signs everywhere.

If Target wanted to continue to drive those sales per square foot then they would definitely need to revitalize these stores. Plus we have already seen some of the small formats close (likely due to theft) and as a result that metric will be driven down by each subsequent small format closure.

So it makes sense that this news story is accurate and Target is going to make some sort of relaunch of the Super format in Naperville.

I'll leave with this - since there were comments here that Super has never been successful anywhere for Target - I have on good authority the #1 volume store in California and #6 overall in the company is the SuperTarget in Menifee. Which ironically has another SuperTarget 6 miles away.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:02 pm
BatteryMill wrote: March 11th, 2023, 10:56 am

I think you're right about that actually, but ST was certainly eager to expand into new regions to the very end. The 04-08 period is certainly where the Supers lost some of their bells and whistles from earlier, I think even bulk foods were gone at that time.

I think SuperTarget may have faded into the background in Utah because that format wasn't expanded beyond the initial 1990s crop, and new locations were instead targeted for regular Targets. Then again I don't know how much of the grocery section was eliminated at those; was it like some of the Supers that got the deli/bakery done away with? Then again I would think ST expanding into Fred Meyer territory today, with it being neutered would be better than in SuperTarget's heyday.
Another one which probably means nothing really but I find annoying is on produce. There are industry standard produce PLU codes. They are on stickers on produce and the stuff scans too. Of course Target... they have to be smarter than everyone else. They do not use the industry standard produce PLU codes, their system doesn't recognize scanning a produce sticker, they have their own PLU for produce so with produce sales every single item has to be looked up by the cashier on the register. This may be okay in a P-Fresh where about 10 customers per day buy produce, but in a Super Target where ideally you have hundreds of customers a day buying produce and many buying perhaps 5-8 different produce items in a single transaction, this is a big problem.
Their new touchscreen register system fixed this problem. They are scanning every one of these industry standard PLU stickers or entering the codes now. The self checkout also accepts them. By fixing this problem they no longer seem to be buying all the questionable product that had to go through an extra vendor or plant to get Target specific packaging or stickers. This might be why the produce is improving as of late.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: March 11th, 2023, 10:22 pm

Their new touchscreen register system fixed this problem. They are scanning every one of these industry standard PLU stickers or entering the codes now. The self checkout also accepts them. By fixing this problem they no longer seem to be buying all the questionable product that had to go through an extra vendor or plant to get Target specific packaging or stickers. This might be why the produce is improving as of late.
This is interesting- I tried to scan produce there in the past couple days and it would not scan. These are brand new self checkouts less than a year old. Do you have to use the hand scanner (not the counter top scanner)?

Only stores where I can scan produce most of the time are Kroger and Safeway. Even then sometimes I get errors. Wal Mart pushes for produce to be scanned, but I seem to get an error 50%+ of the time after attempting which is the most annoying on their system.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: March 11th, 2023, 10:18 pm

I'll leave with this - since there were comments here that Super has never been successful anywhere for Target - I have on good authority the #1 volume store in California and #6 overall in the company is the SuperTarget in Menifee. Which ironically has another SuperTarget 6 miles away.
That one store may be highly successful but what about the rest of the Super Targets in California? How do those do?

They were planning to work Supers up the state going north but after Atwater they stopped. Atwater barely survives. Atwater is a very nice store; I'd shop there if I was nearby. Same parking lot as a much busier Wal Mart Supercenter. I suspect the Wal Mart does 4-5x the volume of the Super Target.

Lathrop was supposed to be a Super Target but it was canceled in construction and opened as a regular Target. I think it may have been due to how terrible Atwater was performing from the start.

There were multiple Target openings around Sacramento that could have/should have been Super Targets but were not. But these stores are running high volumes without being Super Targets so maybe this actually works better for their sales per square foot metric.
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Re: Is "SuperTarget" making a comeback?

Post by veteran+ »

BatteryMill wrote: March 11th, 2023, 4:25 pm
veteran+ wrote: March 11th, 2023, 12:24 pm As I am a fan of Target over Walmart I find it very sad they missed the boat and continue to travel in circles of misdirection.

If Walmart proved anything, it is that having a a Real grocery department during strange economic times is extremely beneficial to the bottom line. The "right" balance between discretionary spending and essential (staples) spending.

That P-Fresh was a total joke.
Why so?
From my perspective, I have not seen a P-Fresh that I could do a full shop at (y'all know how I cannot stand driving around to different stores for groceries - :lol: ).

Limited SKUs in ambient groceries and very few organics (myriad facings of the same product).

Even fewer SKUs in Fresh & Frozen (organics? LOL).

Produce is the worst for me. It lacks consistent quality, very poor variety, almost no organic and too much packaging. How is one person gonna buy multiples of everything and not throw away a ton? I do not throw away food.

I buy all my non-foods at Target.

There is a SuperTarget in Lone Tree CO. that I was impressed with. And there was one in Indio (Coachella Valley) that was gorgeous (someone said this one is closed?).

P.S. There is a feel in these stores that they do not care about or respect selling food. It is not their priority and they do not seem to take pride in it. Barely any product knowledge at all and severly understaffed (especially in fresh, frozen and produce). They seem to pay a little more attention in ambient, concentrating on facing the shelves and ignoring the shelf tags, trying to make it look full.
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