Despite Pak 'n Save being a discount format, this store does have a proper customer service counter, right next to the bakery. I guess that's not too surprising since it wasn't until decades later that grocery stores really started aggressively cutting staff to cut costs. Behind the counter, there seems to be a whole shelf of shampoos and such -- not something I'm used to seeing locked up! And on checkout 1, it's weird seeing a modern LED bulb sticking out the top of one of these old-fashioned register lights.
It's a little weird to be writing about an all-but-defunct discount grocery chain right as one of the big names in American discount companies is abruptly shutting down. Goodbye Spirit Airlines, you will be missed. I never did fly them -- their premium product was certainly my sort of thing (decent seats without added extras that I have limited interest in), but they never had enough of a presence in my area for them to be a reasonable option for me. Before their first bankruptcy, when they still flew to the northwest at all, I had looked in to their flights, but to fly them to anywhere I actually wanted to go involved long, inconvenient connections and simply wasn't cheap enough to be worth it. But it is sad to lose what was probably the cheapest way to travel between many parts of the country, with Spirit flights often being cheaper than driving or even Greyhound if you were OK going without any of the add-ons. In the end, I suspect their extremely poor brand perception is the main reason they ended up failing, something we've seen in the retail world as well, potentially including Pak 'n Save itself (I've briefly mentioned before just how many negative comments about Pak 'n Save I've found, while I can find pretty much nobody mentioning a positive opinion of the brand).
It seems to me that discount supermarkets and discount airlines are going in opposite directions! The Aldis around here seem to be about as busy as Houston Aldis have ever been (granted, that's not saying much, they generally have about the same traffic as a Walgreens or CVS) and HEB is committing to expanding their Joe V's deep discount supermarket format even though regular HEB stores are pretty much discount stores themselves! I'm sure WinCo and company are doing pretty well out in your part of the country.
ReplyDeleteOf course, people have to buy groceries, but travel is a luxury for most and it seems a lot of people have cut back on that with the high cost of tickets, hotels, rental cars, event tickets, and so forth. The people who have money and want to travel domestically will just take United or Delta if they can, or maybe Southwest if they are more convenient. Plus, United, Delta, and American have their profitable credit card and loyalty points programs.
So, with that, I suppose it isn't surprising Spirit went under and some of the other lower cost airlines are like JetBlue are struggling. Although ultra low-cost carriers are all the rage in Europe, they've never really caught on here, perhaps for the above reason that those who vacation here almost have to have a lot of money by default to pay for hotels and so forth. Europe isn't so much like that. I've never personally been on an ultra low-cost carrier, and I've only been on a couple of regular low-cost carriers. One of those, Southwest, was nearly 40 years ago at this point! The other, WestJet, isn't even American and I'm not sure if WestJet was really considered a low-cost carrier in 2018 when I flew them. Air Canada didn't seem any fancier at least.
One reason why ultra low-cost carriers never really carried much interest to me is that they seem to have favored flights to places like Las Vegas and Florida. I've been to both, but I really have little interest in returning anytime soon to either (no offense, AFB, I just don't like going to places as hot or hotter than Houston!) and so they just don't have much relevance to me. That said, Spirit had a major operation at IAH Terminal A, so it'll be a big loss for IAH. Southwest left IAH a year or two ago (for a second time), WestJet and Air Canada moved to international terminals from their long-time homes at Terminal A, and so Terminal A might look pretty bare now with most of the flights there being from American and Delta, two airlines with relatively minor presences at IAH. Maybe United will be interested in some of those left over gates, though that'll add little variety to IAH!
Yeah, I've always found the unpopularity of discount travel options in the US odd. I get that bus travel is never going to be as practical here as it is in Europe due to the longer travel distances, but I would have expected that to make low-cost air travel even more popular here! But, like you said, all of the other aspects of travel are a lot more expensive here than in Europe, where hotels and restaurants are much cheaper and renting a car isn't a default expectation. I've priced things out in the past, and for a longer vacation, it was actually cheaper to go to Europe than to many parts of the US, as long as you're willing to fly basic economy (this was before the Iran war and may be specific to Seattle since there aren't a lot of cheap low-cost domestic flights available here). It used to be possible to get flights to Europe for around $500, while the cheapest domestic flights were at least $100, so only a few nights of cheaper hotels would make up for the price difference.
DeleteThe only real low-cost airline I've ever flown on was Southwest, and that was at least 20 years ago. My parents hated their open seating policy, so maybe they'd be more interested now that they've gone to assigned seating. Of course, we did fly Condor recently, but I'd consider them a mid-range airline, similar to Westjet, JetBlue, or Alaska, rather than a true low-cost long-haul airline like Norse Atlantic or Air Transat. It's difficult to consider an airline with a true business class product low-cost!
I have that same issue with low-cost airlines -- they tend to only have flights from Seattle to places further south (California, Vegas, and Florida), which aren't places I have much interest in. And when I priced out Spirit tickets to places like Chicago or Boston a few years back (before they pulled out of Seattle), that meant the only options were extremely indirect itineraries that weren't very cost-competitive with direct flights with regular airlines.
United seems dead-set on infinite growth at this point, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them take a lot of the space Spirit is leaving around the country. They seem to be the only airline that's still heavily pushing for growth despite everything that's going on these days... we'll see how that works out for them.
Love the icon with the film, check, and lotto ticket -- and what's that on the far left?
ReplyDeleteYeah, more 90s clip art stuff! I'm not sure -- maybe weird-looking cigarettes?
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