Recent content by foodwatcher

Costco is extremely disciplined in everything they do. They would only open a new store if they believed that it would generate enough incremental sales volume to justify the investment. Two of the interesting facts that Costco discloses about the Costco Business Centre is that it averages 3...

In the United States, Costco does operate around 10 Costco Business Centres which are a modified and downsized version of a traditional Costco but I don't think that they have opened one in Canada yet. Here is a link to a fact sheet from Costco that describes their business centres and how it...

Tuscani01, I know that you work in Store Support (Retail City ?) for Canadian Tire but your information here is not correct. Lumsden Brothers, a Division of Sobeys, was the original supplier of food into the pilot stores on the food test except for those products (e.g. commercial bakery...

You may be right about the grocery store pilot but the reality is that there wasn't a major grocery store that was willing to work on a partnership basis with Canadian Tire for that pilot test. It is well known in the grocery industry that the original supplier for the Canadian Tire grocery...

Target is actually pretty weak at store operations and inventory management in the United States. Having visited a large number of their stores in the U.S. prior to their launch in Canada for a major Canadian retailer, we were surprised at how weak their store standards actually were and the...

When Canadian Tire talks internally about the size of their stores, unlike many other retailers, they refer to the store's selling area and do not include their backrooms, garden centres or auto service centres which is why the individual posting from Canadian Tire is quoting a lower average...

Within the grocery retail business at either conventional stores (e.g. Loblaws, Metro or Sobeys) or discount stores (e.g. No Frills, Food Basics or Freshco), items like lactose free skim milk in bags and dairy-free bread would not be considered "basics" due to their relatively niche consumer...

Whole Foods New Stores Not a lot of details but John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods said this during their most recent investor conference call: "Whole Foods said it also was ramping up expansion in Canada, where it recently reviewed “several†markets and signed deals for “a couple†of...

CT Urban Is it possible for you to post a copy of the flyer that talks about CT Urban. I would be interested in seeing what they are saying and I didn't get one in my neighbourhood. Thanks

The amusing thing is that often President's Choice, Compliments and Master Choice are made by the exact same company and are more often than not basically the same product. The same would apply to No Name, Compliments Vaue and Equality. What is changing is that with Metro from Quebec now the...

and while I will give the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that it was not intended that way, this is a racist statement and offensive to Newfoundlanders

I have heard about the rumoured Loblaws concept at King and Portland but my guess is that with everything that they are dealing with right now in their business that launching a new concept will be a very low priority. They have so much to do to fix their existing business. I also understand...

I would really be surprised if it is Tesco. They have only opened 50 stores in the United States and are still proving out whether or not their Fresh and Easy stores can generate the sales volumes required to make money. Recent analyst reports from the U.S. are quoting that the stores are...

Sobeys Expansion In Toronto I was reading a report by the Retail Analyst for CIBC World Markets by Perry Caicco on Metro (who owns Dominion and Food Basics) and this is what he had to say about Sobeys: "Sobeys is grabbing sites left, right and centre and will soon announce a downtown...

Canadian Tire at Yonge & Dundas I haven't had that experience at that store. In fact, they have a very large escalator system in the middle of the store which includes a system to handle shopping carts so that you don't have to check out on one floor before you go to the next floor. The...