But.............................as far as the STs I have seen, (most recently in the Denver area) their skus are deficient. Study their facings carefully. Pavilions or Ralphs will usually have 1 facing (perhaps 2) of Betty Crocker cake flavors. Target will have 2 or 3 or 4 facings of the same flavor AND will be missing many other flavors. Perhaps the cake thing is not the best example but this practice is all over the food areas.ClownLoach wrote: ↑October 7th, 2023, 3:21 pmThey really do seem to like it only in high volume SuperTarget locations and apparently both of the stores by me fit the category (one is high volume, other is the single highest volume Super location in the company). They're putting a well trained employee on tending produce from open to close 7 days a week which is more than I can say for the big chains these days.
Where I think they've gone wrong is the volume code practice which nobody else in foods uses to make such drastic decisions in operations. You don't see a slow neighborhood Safeway that moves to only prepacked deli and closes the bakery if business is slow, but that's exactly how Target has operated the Super locations. It took me a while to figure out what is going on with their operation and how their decisions are made. So if a Super location is "LV" or low volume they basically cease to staff those perimeter deli and bakery areas, and don't staff produce either. "MV" gives skeleton staffing to deli and bakery which enable them to make pre-made items. "HV" means staffed bakery that can take cake orders and staffed deli that will cut meats and cheeses to order.
All this means is that they encourage sales to decline if a store moves from "HV" down to "MV" which winds up becoming permanent, and apparently there is a cutoff point where they decide to pull out the expanded assortment entirely and get rid of the equipment (de-Supering). Rarely does a store move from "MV" up to "HV". They need to just make the decision on a company wide basis as obviously someone (or a lot of someones) are still developing new processes, recipes, etc for this subset of the chain that is about 10% of their units. Open and fully staff all those departments then tweak the pricing etc. so it's profitable across the entire subset of stores instead of micromanaging the labor and shrink expense on a store by store basis. They just changed the bakery program for the better a few weeks ago as I previously mentioned, but I also saw that the two stores execute differently.
The baffling part is knowing that they're losing a fortune on the small format stores that would become drastically more productive from being remodeled to basically just the left quarter of a Super location (foods perimeter, basic household goods incl. cleaning supplies and paper products, drug, pet, and basic beauty). Most are old supermarkets anyway that generated much more revenue before (and on what was assuredly less rent than Target is paying).
They have all of the solutions available but seem to be afraid of attempting to execute them. Too much fear of the past even though there is so much potential ahead.
The store looks wonderful and full but the variety is very diminished. Buckguy is spot on about their DNA. That inflexibility does not serve them well and I guess they are willing to pay that price.
