There was a recent thread devoted to places like Starbucks and McDonalds on two or three corners of an intersection, but are there similar examples of places like Wal-Mart or Kroger very close to one another? The best I could come up with is in Sunnyvale, CA there are two Safeway’s probably within a mile of each other, but surely there are closer examples?
Probably not so much with things like Safeway or WalMart.
The folks at Starbucks are operating under the notion (and it may well be entirely true) that people in downtown areas will more likely go somewhere else on the block than cross the street to get to a coffee shop.
It’s a good thing other retailers don’t have that philosophy. A typical Starbucks occupies a few hundred square feet in a commercial building and claims no space for parking spots. I’ve only seen one stand-alone Starbucks in its own building, and that was in the corner of a suburban shopping center’s parking lot. We just don’t have the land to support mass quantities of big stores - a big Costco or WalMart with its big parking lot sits on something in the area of 25 or so acres.
Not grocery, but back in the mid to late '90s, I worked as a manager for Blockbuster Video, and their stated intent (in employee literature) was for there to eventually be a Blockbuster Video every two blocks all across the US. They stopped saying this once Netflix started to rear its scary head.
There’s two by my house, each a block away in opposite directions (one at 7300 Western, and one at 7574 Western), so in some places they actually succeeded.
I also live between 2 Dominick’ses (large Chicago area chain supermarket) that are 1.5 miles apart, according to mapping software.
I think it’s not so pervasive in retail or grocery because people tend not to pop into a grocery store for a one item impulse buy like a cup of coffee. If you want people to carry away what you sell on their way to work, you won’t be selling bags of onions and cat litter. If you’re selling bags of onions and cat litter, people make plans to go to your store, either by car or train, so you don’t have to “catch them” on impulse.
'Round here we have two Pick 'n Saves (mega food mart type place) within a block of each other. Though this might not count, becuase the second one is a different style then the first and I assume the original one will be gone in a few years.
(For people in Milwaukee, that’s the two Pick N Saves on Van Buren, the regular one and the Metro Mart)
In Memphis, there are two Schnuck’s within a mile of each other on Poplar. One is a smaller store that’s been around for years, and the other is a a much much bigger store that I believe was built by Albertson’s, the last chain that passed through here.
-Lil
What surprises me is that there is enough business to keep each of them running. These stores are not tiny. I don’t want to imagine how many videos they have to turn over just to pay the rent, let alone salaries and other expenses.
Another store every two blocks means that, on average, my customer base extends one block in each direction, for a total of four blocks. That’s not a lot of people!
Are you asking about two of the same store next to each other? I don’t know of any thing like that around me. However, near me we have a Walmart and Target right next to each other. We also have a Giant grocery and Whole Foods that are basically across the street from each other. I can’t see why you would want two of the same store next to each other, except for fast food places. Though we do have two starbucks right next to each other, I never did understand that one.
Before we moved, I lived within two miles of two Targets, two Barnes and Nobles’, two Stop and Shops, and two Best Buys.
One set of stores was clustered around a poor suburb of the nearest city, and the other was clustered around an upscale mall right off the highway, but I still found it amusing.
Our Target and WalMart are close, our Jewel and Dominick’s are close - I always thought it worked out that way because of zoning. That’s how it seems to be shaping up where some friends of ours moved recently - the area is being built up (it used to be farmland) and when an area gets zoned for this, everyone wants in on the action.
It is most likely an issue of retail traffic, density and sales.
If one store has significantly higher sales than typical for a comparable store of its size and category, it will suggest to management that there is unmet demand in the area. In that case, management may decide to open a new store nearby to capture that demand, instead of letting a competitor do so. It may be better to put a second store where there is known demand (and it is impractical to expand the first store) than putting that store in virgin territory.
Our Costco and Sam’s Club are a block apart. In the same general area there is a Best Buy and a Circuit City maybe 1/4 mile apart. Pretty much because of what Missy noted in the previous post: zoning regs.
Also, part of Starbucks buisness model is that it’s ok to self-canibalize part of another of its own store’s customer base. Since it is ok to take business away from themselves, it leads me to believe they don’t operate on the same razor-thin profit margins as do grocery stores. This, along with the space restrictions gotpasswords mentioned, are the two biggest reasons finding two of the same store very close is not very common.
BTW, I’ve seen plenty of Starbucks in their own, stand-alone building. OTOH, I live in a pretty rural state.
Looking for an example of retail saturation? Look no farther than chain drugstores.
I can drive down any of the major roads in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland and, at every major intersection, roughly at every mile, find a CVS drugstore. The ntersection will often be shared with either a Rite Aid or Walgreen’s.
I wonder about how all the cell phone kiosks and stores in shopping malls stay in business. A shopping mall near where I work has 15 cell phone stores and kiosks.
Across town we have a Walmart adjacent to Office Max with is across the street from Home Depot. Oh the Walmart has a McDonalds in the parking lot and in the store proper. We also have two malls sitting side by side both on Pacific Ave.
I Just realized my OP was unclear, I meant the same store, like two Wal-mart’s, very close together.
One that’s starting to irritate me is Dollar General. I presently find myself about a hop, skip and jump away from no fewer than three Dollar General stores, and I am way out on the skirts of the city.
I live in a town that has two Blockbusters that are across the street from each other. This caused all kinds of annoyance and confusion in my family; if you were returning a video that another family member had rented, you’d have to figure out which Blockbuster it came from. Looking at the address label on the box was no help because they had very similar addresses. We finally agreed that we would only patronize the one on the west side of the street (or, as we call it, “the one by Target,” as opposed to “the one by Office Max”).
If there is enough business in the store to warrant it, and they can’t expand, I can see why this would happen.
Being in the land of Target and Best Buy headquarters I can get to 6 different Best Buys, 4 Super Targets, and 7 regular Targets within a 20 minute drive of my home.
In Mississauga, there are a Best Buy and a Future Shop very close to one another, in the zone of big-box stores near Mavis and Britannia. They are both consumer-electronics stores, selling the same kind of products. They also have competing flyers in the same newspapers on the same days.
Best Buy owns Future Shop.