Health and beauty takes up much of the back wall of the store, starting with the rather strange-looking pharmacy. Unlike what I'm used to for grocery-store pharmacies, this one is almost entirely walled off, with just a little counter and some small windows under the main department sign, which is itself missing its "basket lid" (something the other signs in this store have).
Also on full display is the "Q Pharmacy" branding, part of Kroger's late-2010s attempt at rebranding QFC as simply "Q". This seems to have been their last attempt to fix QFC's poor brand perception, something that has recently come up as part of the C&S deal, where executives were openly discussing how bad QFC's brand is around here.
Ha, yeah, I saw those articles with the C&S people talking about how badly the Kroger people viewed QFC, Haggen, and the Roundy's stores! I can't speak for the Roundy's stores, though the Kroger Pick 'n Save stores in Milwaukee have absolutely terrible user reviews on Google, many as low as 3.2-3.4 which is otherwise unheard of for chain supermarket stores. With that, and with the mess that some of those Mariano's stores in Chicago were/are, maybe that isn't a surprise. Haggen and QFC, well, we know about those as well! Given some of these photos, especially of the floor, it is no mystery why QFC is in the state that they are in! I doubt C&S is in any position to fix those problems either. They might let these stores sit with broken Kroger decor for years!
ReplyDeleteI feel like QFC is in a similar position to some Safeway divisions in the Lifestyle era, where they have a reputation for upscale prices without upscale products. And then you add in the lack of investment and resulting run-down stores... yeah, it's no surprise they aren't well-regarded! And C&S seems like a bad fit, but it's not like Kroger has any incentive to set them up for success...
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