Retailer Briefs
Wegman's Testing Self-Scan Wegman’s began testing self-checkout lanes at its Eastway store in the Rochester, N.Y. suburb of Penfield early this month. The pilot store has four self-can lanes in addition to 21 regular/express lanes. The pilot, expected to continue for at least several months, was launched in response to requests from customers in the company’s newer Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey markets, where self-checkout systems are prevalent, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "Wegmans always gets high marks for speed, accuracy and convenience," Wegman’s spokesperson Jo Natale told the paper. "We were never in a rush to introduce self-checkout. We had never seen one we liked or that offered features for customer convenience." Natale added that if customers respond to the self-scan option, the chain will roll it out to stores large enough to accommodate the units.
Walmart Opens Marketside Small Grocery Formats in Arizona
Walmart has become the latest retailer to venture into small grocery formats. The retailer opened four, convenience-sized (about 15,000 square feet) Marketside grocery stores southeast of Phoenix in late September. Walmart executives have stated that the stores are a pilot. The stores do not bear the Walmart name, but are positioned as both convenient and affordable. The stores will be competing with Tesco’s Fresh & Easy format, which has 78 stores in Arizona, Nevada and California. Safeway is also testing small stores in California, and Whole Foods Market is considering the format, according to Reuters.
Third-Party Gift Cards Look Hot for Holidays, Grocery Chains Upping Incentives
While overall gift-card sales this holiday season are expected to decline by 5%, to $25 billion, sales of gift cards for third-party retailers such as department store chains and prepaid bank gift cards through grocery, drug and mass retailers and kiosks should jump by 30%, according to a new survey by Stamford, Conn.-based Archstone Consulting.
Prepaid bank cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.) will again dominate gift-card purchases because of the flexibility they provide to the recipient, but retailer-specific cards that come with a coupon or discount offer are also attractive to consumers, Archstone reports.
Looking to simultaneously up their gas sales and maximize their cut of sales of third-party gift cards, some grocery chains are announcing new gas discounts and other incentives tied to card purchases. In the Pittsburgh region, for example, Stop n' Shop independent retailers have introduced doubled gas discounts earned through purchase of $50 gift cards (to 20 cents off each gallon of gas), including cards for Home Depot, Macy's and Best Buy.
Giant Eagle, which also sells gift cards for other retailers, launched a similar incentive program in Pittsburgh and West Virginia, and plans to roll it out to other markets, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Meanwhile, the O'Hara grocery chain is offering gas discounts that can be earned by shopping more than 600 retailers online through a dedicated Web portal. |
