Grocery store cigarette sales

[storewanderer]

Don't forget that Target was one of the first to ban tobacco sales in the 1990s. It didn't really hurt them....

I do not really know why so many stores keep selling tobacco. For stores like Costco/Sam's who do full case sales and have a lot of resale customers, I get it..

Every store I've ever worked in, tobacco was a problem category and we always were hearing it lost money. If it wasn't due to theft, it was due to inventory errors, or due to spoilage/improper rotation. Tobacco customers seem impatient and having a case that someone has to "walk to" and "unlock" seems to annoy customers. As far as I'm concerned customers should just buy tobacco at gas stations that seem better equipped to sell the product and usually have better prices too.

There is also a chain called Dotty's who runs slot parlors (which allow smoking inside) who also sells cigarettes at very low prices. Dotty's took the slot traffic from many grocery store slot machine departments (which used to allow smoking inside but no longer do) and I think also has taken a lot of cigarette traffic from grocery stores.

Nevada is a pretty big tobacco state due to the casinos and that smoking is a big part of casinos. Yet outside of the casino environment I really do not notice all that many people who smoke anymore.

[Brian Lutz]

I'm pretty sure all the Walgreens stores here still sell tobacco, although I haven't ever bothered looking to see if any of the Walmart stores here sell tobacco or not. North Carolina is probably a bit of an outlier in that department though, since a number of the tobacco companies are based in Durham and Winston-Salem with manufacturing operations nearby and even though there's likely less demand now there's still a fair amount of tobacco being grown in the area as well.

[pseudo3d]

Don't forget that Target was one of the first to ban tobacco sales in the 1990s. It didn't really hurt them....

Target never did play by the rules. They started dropping hard lines in the 1990s when other discounters still had them, and they never jumped aboard the grocery train like Kmart and Wal-Mart did. Both of them had partnered with regional supermarket chains to make a big European-style hypermarket then developed 24-hour prototypes of their own. (FWIW, I think Hypermart USA was the better store; better looking, more options, and a better transition into the Supercenter, even if modern Supercenter stores are highly lacking).

Target did come up with SuperTarget but it was never 24 hours, rarely replaced any existing Target stores, and I don't think any Target stores were expanded into SuperTarget.

Every store I've ever worked in, tobacco was a problem category and we always were hearing it lost money. If it wasn't due to theft, it was due to inventory errors, or due to spoilage/improper rotation. Tobacco customers seem impatient and having a case that someone has to "walk to" and "unlock" seems to annoy customers. As far as I'm concerned customers should just buy tobacco at gas stations that seem better equipped to sell the product and usually have better prices too.

It must have some profit, enough to justify keeping it around. Otherwise any locked-shelf store would be going out of business (I have no idea how crime Walgreens and Walmarts stay in business with everything locked up...possibly subsidized). Tobacco is one of those categories where if it gets taken out it's seen as some sort of political statement (always volatile in this day and age), whether intended or not...a lesser version of firearms sales. Fred Meyer took out firearms a few years ago, but it was the timing or maybe the statements that made it a political move, despite the more pragmatic reason being that Kroger had been pushing a lot of the non-food categories out the door at FM and that was the logical next step for eliminating sporting goods beyond a token category.

[ClownLoach]

I was in a Costco business center this weekend in San Marcos CA and it did still have a tobacco cage. It was not staffed at all and locked up completely. They don't seem to be doing any business out of it.

[babs]

Don't forget that Target was one of the first to ban tobacco sales in the 1990s. It didn't really hurt them....

Target never did play by the rules. They started dropping hard lines in the 1990s when other discounters still had them, and they never jumped aboard the grocery train like Kmart and Wal-Mart did. Both of them had partnered with regional supermarket chains to make a big European-style hypermarket then developed 24-hour prototypes of their own. (FWIW, I think Hypermart USA was the better store; better looking, more options, and a better transition into the Supercenter, even if modern Supercenter stores are highly lacking).

Target did come up with SuperTarget but it was never 24 hours, rarely replaced any existing Target stores, and I don't think any Target stores were expanded into SuperTarget.

Every store I've ever worked in, tobacco was a problem category and we always were hearing it lost money. If it wasn't due to theft, it was due to inventory errors, or due to spoilage/improper rotation. Tobacco customers seem impatient and having a case that someone has to "walk to" and "unlock" seems to annoy customers. As far as I'm concerned customers should just buy tobacco at gas stations that seem better equipped to sell the product and usually have better prices too.

It must have some profit, enough to justify keeping it around. Otherwise any locked-shelf store would be going out of business (I have no idea how crime Walgreens and Walmarts stay in business with everything locked up...possibly subsidized). Tobacco is one of those categories where if it gets taken out it's seen as some sort of political statement (always volatile in this day and age), whether intended or not...a lesser version of firearms sales. Fred Meyer took out firearms a few years ago, but it was the timing or maybe the statements that made it a political move, despite the more pragmatic reason being that Kroger had been pushing a lot of the non-food categories out the door at FM and that was the logical next step for eliminating sporting goods beyond a token category.

I was at Target when they got rid of cigarettes. There used to be a tower of cigarettes by the middle register. It was located there to have some eyes on it. Even then it was our most stolen item in the store with some brazen heists. They got rid of it both because it was a money loser due to theft and the potential for store employees to be injured from the thieves. We just were not set up to sell it and it really didn't match the vibe they were trying to market either.

[ClownLoach]

Don't forget that Target was one of the first to ban tobacco sales in the 1990s. It didn't really hurt them....

Target never did play by the rules. They started dropping hard lines in the 1990s when other discounters still had them, and they never jumped aboard the grocery train like Kmart and Wal-Mart did. Both of them had partnered with regional supermarket chains to make a big European-style hypermarket then developed 24-hour prototypes of their own. (FWIW, I think Hypermart USA was the better store; better looking, more options, and a better transition into the Supercenter, even if modern Supercenter stores are highly lacking).

Target did come up with SuperTarget but it was never 24 hours, rarely replaced any existing Target stores, and I don't think any Target stores were expanded into SuperTarget.

Every store I've ever worked in, tobacco was a problem category and we always were hearing it lost money. If it wasn't due to theft, it was due to inventory errors, or due to spoilage/improper rotation. Tobacco customers seem impatient and having a case that someone has to "walk to" and "unlock" seems to annoy customers. As far as I'm concerned customers should just buy tobacco at gas stations that seem better equipped to sell the product and usually have better prices too.

It must have some profit, enough to justify keeping it around. Otherwise any locked-shelf store would be going out of business (I have no idea how crime Walgreens and Walmarts stay in business with everything locked up...possibly subsidized). Tobacco is one of those categories where if it gets taken out it's seen as some sort of political statement (always volatile in this day and age), whether intended or not...a lesser version of firearms sales. Fred Meyer took out firearms a few years ago, but it was the timing or maybe the statements that made it a political move, despite the more pragmatic reason being that Kroger had been pushing a lot of the non-food categories out the door at FM and that was the logical next step for eliminating sporting goods beyond a token category.

I was at Target when they got rid of cigarettes. There used to be a tower of cigarettes by the middle register. It was located there to have some eyes on it. Even then it was our most stolen item in the store with some brazen heists. They got rid of it both because it was a money loser due to theft and the potential for store employees to be injured from the thieves. We just were not set up to sell it and it really didn't match the vibe they were trying to market either.

That Costco business center had it all locked with both some kind of key fob or key card reader as well as a padlock. There are two full conveyor belt checkout stands inside the cage. I would imagine that they would tell a potential customer to do all their other purchases before meeting at the front for tobacco, then an employee basically escorts them into that room and then rings up the tobacco transaction so nothing leaves the room unpaid. Seems like the shrink from the category warrants a lot of security expense which probably isn't worth it even for a business center like that store. Again nobody was in there the entire time I shopped and the store was busy that morning.

[Alpha8472]

Costco has lots of employees compared to Walgreens and even other supermarkets. The problem is that cigarette selling takes a ton of labor to get rid of the expired products. It is really labor intensive and Walgreens and other stores are already running on very few employees. The theft of cigarettes at Walgreens is well documented on videos on the internet. Walgreens should exit cigarettes sales in some really bad urban areas.

[babs]

Costco has lots of employees compared to Walgreens and even other supermarkets. The problem is that cigarette selling takes a ton of labor to get rid of the expired products. It is really labor intensive and Walgreens and other stores are already running on very few employees. The theft of cigarettes at Walgreens is well documented on videos on the internet. Walgreens should exit cigarettes sales in some really bad urban areas.

Sorry I had to laugh at expired cigarettes. Having never smoked, I will admit that I'm no expert but do expired cigarettes really burn/taste all that different???

[veteran+]

My first promotion above bagboy was stocker and order clerk for front end merchandise, including cigarettes (I was 15yrs old, LOL).

It was not labor intensive (even without computers). Side note: We also had those cigarette machines. Proper ordering and rotation routines made it a breeze to manage. I never had expired product to worry about. Side note: exotic merch received credit returns from vendors at the time.

When I got promoted to Front End Manager, I even expanded our tobacco offerings (imported and exotic brands).

Eeezy Peezy!

[storewanderer]

My first promotion above bagboy was stocker and order clerk for front end merchandise, including cigarettes (I was 15yrs old, LOL).

It was not labor intensive (even without computers). Side note: We also had those cigarette machines. Proper ordering and rotation routines made it a breeze to manage. I never had expired product to worry about. Side note: exotic merch received credit returns from vendors at the time.

When I got promoted to Front End Manager, I even expanded our tobacco offerings (imported and exotic brands).

Eeezy Peezy!

The market has changed. As tobacco values per pack increased and sales volumes kept declining, theft became a bigger problem and more noticeable. The amount of internal theft on tobacco I dealt with was stunning and quite stupid. I'm taking excellent quality 20-25 year tenure employees stealing tobacco into their shoes or pants type stuff. Get so close to the case no way a camera can see them and the brand they smoked just so happened to be stocked on a bottom shelf conveniently.

The problem I kept having was with the adjustments from carton to single packs. Multiple retailers. All received by the carton, and we sold cartons. But to rip open cartons and adjust out the cartons and adjust in the single packs was always a problem. Labor intensive and mistakes often made. Then there was the issue of no singles left so random cashiers without access to the inventory adjustment equipment would rip open cartons and grab a few single packs out, etc. Directing them to leave empty cartons so the employees who knew the process worked to an extent. If employees are trained properly, the inventory side of this isn't an issue...

If I had a store and could avoid selling tobacco, I would avoid selling tobacco. But many stores customers demand this product be sold especially in rural areas.