If you’re going shopping this weekend, and paying with a credit card – watch out. Beginning Sunday, stores can charge you extra for it. Under the terms of a settlement reached last year, stores will have the option of adding a surcharge for credit card payments – passing the cost that they already pay to the credit card companies, on[Read More…]
(Update: The Audubon store is set to close on May 27, 2015, officially bringing down the curtain on Genuardi’s for good.) And then there was one. By next month, the nearly century-old story of the Genuardi’s supermarket chain will end just as it began – with a single store in southeastern Pennsylvania. If you’re not familiar with the store, you[Read More…]
If you’re saving up your pennies to buy the perfect holiday gift – be careful. Your local store may not take them. Portland, Oregon-based Fred Meyer found itself in the middle of a social media firestorm over the past 24 hours, after its Facebook fans reacted angrily to the story that a suburban Seattle woman shared last night: “My daughter[Read More…]
For all the talk of big-box retailers, drug stores, specialty grocers and dollar stores gobbling up a bigger share of the grocery pie, don’t count out the nation’s largest traditional supermarket. Kroger says it’s doing just fine, thank you. Kroger today reported its latest quarterly earnings, beating analysts’ expectations. For the year, earnings are up about 3%. “Not a particularly[Read More…]
It’s not Walmart. It’s not even Aldi. The new grocery low-price leader is – would you believe – Dollar General? That’s not what Walmart would have you believe. The company trumpeted its price leadership at an investors conference last week, and the Wall Street Journal today headlined a Deutsche Bank price-comparison study that crowned Walmart the cheapest option. But while[Read More…]
Sure, you like your local grocery store, but have you “liked” them? A roundup of the most and least popular grocery retailers on social media sites (see the full list below) can yield some interesting insights, though it also shows that “likes” aren’t necessarily everything. Florida-based Publix was recently criticized (in “Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer” magazine) for being “technology-challenged”: “Yes,[Read More…]
Sure, you’re loyal to your local grocery store – but do you have the card to prove it? More supermarkets are looking to the loyalty card as their ticket out of oblivion. Sacramento, California-based Raley’s, which also operates Bel Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source stores across Northern California and Nevada, is the latest to unveil a store[Read More…]
Walmart apparently will stop at nothing to ensure you never go anywhere other than Walmart to buy anything ever again. Not only does the store want you to fill your shopping cart there, now it wants you to fill your tank there, too. Beginning today, through Christmas Eve, Walmart is offering a discount of up to 15 cents per gallon[Read More…]
Last week, we brought you the story about the growing popularity of “scratch-and-dent” discount grocery stores (read: Seeking Out Groceries That Are Dented, Expired, Discontinued – And Cheap.) Maybe we should have called them “scratch-and-dent-and-rotten-and-stolen from other supermarkets’ dumpsters” stores. At least in one particularly icky case. Rodney Sparks of Monrovia, Maryland was arraigned earlier this week, on charges that[Read More…]
When it comes to privacy in this age of data collection and identity theft, many savvy consumers are careful about what personal information they’re willing to share. That said, we’re apparently willing to lower our guard for a Cheez Doodles coupon. A new poll commissioned by digital advertising company Placecast asked how people feel about companies’ use of their personal[Read More…]
