The New Retail Thread

davem said:
"The Street" is 100% done from the outside, but a lot of the interior spaces on the upper floors are still under construction. For a mall, it's not bad. I only drove through the parking lot... which is terrible. They just redid it and it's now a thousand times worse. Confusing traffic patterns make it impossible to drive more than a few feet without coming on three or four cars who cant figure out how to get around each other.
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They really missed an opportunity there, I think. They went for the maximum constructability within existing footprints, but having all of that outdoor patio space up against Route 9 kind of murders its effectiveness. If they'd just flipped the parking lot and the buildings so that it was up against Hammond Pond, they could have had something special there (especially with Hammond Pond Reservation right there). As it is, it just feels half-assed.

davem said:
Finally, Chestnut Hill Square (I think that's what they're calling it). I didn't spend any time anywhere but Wegmans, but it lives up to the hype. They absolutely blow every other supermarket around here out of the water. Despite having a Stop & Shop and a Shaws within less than a mile of my house, Wegmans is my new go-to supermarket. I hope to god they put Shaws out of business and take over their spaces.
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Could not disagree more. Wegman's is fine - I shop there a bit - but the new Star Market in Chestnut Hill makes it look like a dump. That store is bright and pleasant and feels a little swanky (even if the bread is hidden down some random aisle), while Wegman's feels like a cramped Costco with nicer finishes. I mean, a supermarket is warehousey by nature, but Wegman's really shows it, and it feels every bit as cramped as it has to be given the small square footage.

At least a third of the store is given over to prepared foods - for whom exactly? The only people I see eating there are Wegman's employees, and with no front-facing entrance it's not convenient for office lunchers.

davem said:
They also redid Route 9 a bit out front, and no surprise they screwed it up. They added another lane on the inbound side from roughly Florence street to the ramps for the Hammond Pond Parkway. But for some reason instead of doing the logical thing and having the new lane be exit-only for Hammond, and the middle lane be an option lane (either exit or continue straight over the overpass) they have the new lane continue about 200' further past the offramp and then end in a merge before the overpass. Horrible backups from typical masshole behavior of waiting until the last second to merge. Just unbelievably stupid planning.
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USDOT should just ban lanes that end without an exit on Federally-funded highways to change the behavior. It's stupid every time it's done, and it's done a lot in Massachusetts.
 
The newton Wegmans was squished into the space and the result is not very good. It's a boutique store (for them) that will probably do fine but its not good branding as the first Wegmans inside 128. The Burlington location, which is opening soon, should be a lot better experience. I just hope the Chestnut Hill location doesn't turn people off to the brand before they get a presence in Boston.
 
From an aesthetic perspective shaws is better. But as far as aisle layout and merchandising wegamans makes a million times more sense. Mostly because of shaws stupid practise of segragiting basic stuff into the "international" and "organic" sections, so you have to hunt through the whole store for one thing. For another, I got better quality stuff for at least 15% less than Shaws. Their prices are vastly better, as is the quality of their store brand stuff.

I will say I wasnt a fan of the deli; too small, not enough selection (no pepper turkey, really?) And precut meat. The prepared food section was slammed when I was there though, around rush hour. Lots of locals buying dinner. The market there are keeping up with the Joneses Newtonites, who have amazing kitchens but no idea how to cook.
 
davem said:
From an aesthetic perspective shaws is better. But as far as aisle layout and merchandising wegamans makes a million times more sense. Mostly because of shaws stupid practise of segragiting basic stuff into the "international" and "organic" sections, so you have to hunt through the whole store for one thing. For another, I got better quality stuff for at least 15% less than Shaws. Their prices are vastly better, as is the quality of their store brand stuff.
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Well, some of it is familiarity. I find myself wandering around Wegman's in circles looking for some darn thing every time I go, while in Star (which is older and thus more familiar to me) I can generally picture in my head where any item I need is. Not nearly as good as when I basically could have done Safeway blindfolded in Berkeley, but not terrible.

Honestly, I don't comparison shop grocery stores on price. I'm more concerned with kosher stuff. When Wegman's starts selling deli rolls that aren't marked dairy, my opinion of them will improve considerably, though I have to ding Star for inexplicably not carrying certified canned mushrooms...
 
Equilibria said:
(even if the bread is hidden down some random aisle),
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just the bread? That market is easily the worst layout of any new market I have ever set foot in. There is no rhyme or reason to much of the placement of products.
 
BosDevelop said:
just the bread? That market is easily the worst layout of any new market I have ever set foot in. There is no rhyme or reason to much of the placement of products.
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Again, I know that there's a whole group of people who have degrees and careers in retail interior design, and they'll cringe when I say: I pay no heed to logic when I go in a supermarket. I want to know where everything is from experience, since pretty much every store I set foot in for the first time is a complete maze to me.

I do notice nice things like putting english muffins in the frozen breakfast foods aisle (which I have seen at that Star), but really that Star is no better or worse on paper than anywhere else to me. It's all experience.

Now, the Prospect/Harvard Whole Foods? That's objectively hell. I wandered the bread items section for twenty minutes (one half of an aisle) there this week looking for tortillas. They were on the other side of the store, in a refrigerator case, frozen together.

This is a strange thread.
 
My "objectivity hell" is the Shaw's at the Pru. If it isn't a vegetable, good luck.
 
I guess I'm going to have to go all the way to Cambridge to get my video games then because the one at the Galleria is the last transit accessible one in the area.
 
Does this space just get swallowed by the Wegmans? I know they were planning on just plopping it in the middle and eating some parking lot, but I'm sure they'd go for the extra square footage if it were available.
 
Proposition Joe said:
I guess I'm going to have to go all the way to Cambridge to get my video games then because the one at the Galleria is the last transit accessible one in the area.
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There's a Target opening up early next year just down the street from Best Buy. They should have all the video games you need.
 
Amazon might be the answer for video games, but it is not the answer to immediate needs. While nearly all of Best Buy's merchandise is available on the web, ordering from Amazon does not help you when you forgot your HDMI cable and are on your way to a meeting or when your mouse breaks and you need a replacement mid day. Best Buy and Radio Shack still exist to serve those immediate needs. Luckily, Target will be able to serve those immediate needs in the Fenway now that Best Buy will be gone, but the point still stands. Until Amazon perfects their instant drone delivery, we will still need brick and mortar stores. Amazon is only good when you have a couple days to spare.

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Right, but he specifically mentioned video games, which for most people aren't really an immediate need type of products.
 
statler said:
Right, but he specifically mentioned video games, which for most people aren't really an immediate need type of products.
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That's a good point. I edited the first sentence to clarify. I've been seeing all this anti Best Buy/"it's useless" sentiment all over the web in the wake of this announcement and figured it was coming here, so I spoke up.
 
ErnieAdams said:
Does this space just get swallowed by the Wegmans? I know they were planning on just plopping it in the middle and eating some parking lot, but I'm sure they'd go for the extra square footage if it were available.
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Nope. WorstBuy had a preexisting opt-out deadline in its lease if it chose not to want to stick around for the massive construction at the complex, and this was them voluntarily giving notice of the opt-out. Wasn't pushed on them by anyone and was just announced, so sizing up replacement tenants starts now. Since the chain's in a store-closing mode anyway it probably made little difference whether they saw a future at that location or not...it cost the company less to close in a higher-rent space like that one vs. at a big box they owned or suburban mall they had anchor tenant privileges at.

datadyne007 said:
That's a good point. I edited the first sentence to clarify. I've been seeing all this anti Best Buy/"it's useless" sentiment all over the web in the wake of this announcement and figured it was coming here, so I spoke up.
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Honestly, I have never been in a situation where I needed a cable that badly and they had it at anything close to acceptable price. I had to buy an HDMI-to-HDMI connector a few weeks ago, and sad-sack Radio Shack with its ignoramus sales staff assaulting me into trying to buy cell accessories still beat WorstBuy.

A few years ago maybe I could see it, but most locations have slashed back their inventory to squeeze on costs. Especially A/V accessories and computer peripherals. It's not even what it used to be selection-wise as the place you go for comparison shopping on Amazon. Not Circuit City-bad, but trending that direction.


And I don't know why they're pushing Keurig coffee makers so damn hard when every store has those things now. That's something you buy with your extra Kohl's bucks nowadays.
 
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monoprice.com for cables guys. Better quality, a million times cheaper.

You're welcome.


Best buy is garbage anyway. Most of their electronics are the "B" models that Walmart and such gets, lesser versions of the good products you can get at real A/V stores. The cables have something like a 200% markup too. Monster Cable is such a ripoff its not even funny.
 
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