Next to the main service counter was the Fred Meyer Package Services counter, something I've never seen elsewhere. This store was built around the time that online shopping was really exploding (though perhaps a little late for that), so my only guess is that Kroger thought there would be a big demand for shipping services, something that never seemed to materialize. The concept of having big box stores with shipping services is something that has come up over and over, from the mailbox stores of the 90s to Walmart and Walgreens' partnerships with Fedex today, but they never seem to have taken off.
Huh, that's interesting to see a shipping center at a Kroger store. I've heard of a few Safeway and Kroger locations which have UPS Store type things in them and I suppose this is something similar. There were a lot of attempts at postal centers in various types of retailers. Shell experimented with extensive postal counters at one of their ETD (Experience the Difference) gas stations here in my area in the early 1990s, but I don't think the postal counter lasted very long.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of trying things, a permit was filed and it looks like Kroger is going to build their first new Houston area store in a decade. It'll go in the suburb/exurb of Hockley, so it'll be in a new neighborhood and not a replacement store. It looks like it'll be a Marketplace store, but only 100k sq. ft., which is about 15k less than the Marketplace stores they built the last time they built Marketplace stores here. In fact, it's almost exactly the same size as the last non-Marketplace store they opened in the Houston area. We'll see! Kroger also filed a permit to build a same sized store in the Dallas Metroplex, but oddly the Hockley store is estimated to cost significantly more than the DFW store. I can't imagine the difference in price is due to one store being nicer than the other, but then I don't know what the difference is as I can't imagine labor is that much cheaper in Dallas. If anything, I'd expect it to be cheaper here!