[Speed Gibson,
Monday August 21, 2006 at 10:11am]
Is Byerly's Shrinking?
I was just at Byerly's in Maple Grove, and I'm worried. It seems to be devolving into a "Cub Greatland" like Cub's latest store in Brooklyn Park, Highway 610 and Zane.
The homemade, legendary pies are gone, replaced by a reduced selection made at a central commissary. The whole bakery operation has shrunk by half. They're down to just a single aisle of breads and rolls, with some types scattered to other locations like the deli.
The once challenging soups like the roasted roma tomato served for lunch by the salad bar seem to be disappearing in favor of dumbed down selections like broccoli cheese and baked potato. Even the classic Byerly's Wild Rice Soup is now billed as a Lund's classic.
The deli is about the same, but the inventory of related carryout items seems to have gone down. The take home soups appear to be a third party brand now, not to be confused with the freshly made.
There appears to be a new focus on organic products in produce, which is good. In the product aisles, however, house brands, not even well-packaged house brands, are appearing everywhere. Additional "impulse" racks have appeared, blocking the aisle signage.
Finally, they have installed self-checkout lanes, which make no sense to me at all at an upscale grocer. They seem largely unused for that very reason.
Byerly's / Lunds is still a much nicer store than Cub and the rest. But I fear they're ultimately going to try to sell us Cub goods at Byerly's prices, and that demands more than carpeting.
The homemade, legendary pies are gone, replaced by a reduced selection made at a central commissary. The whole bakery operation has shrunk by half. They're down to just a single aisle of breads and rolls, with some types scattered to other locations like the deli.
The once challenging soups like the roasted roma tomato served for lunch by the salad bar seem to be disappearing in favor of dumbed down selections like broccoli cheese and baked potato. Even the classic Byerly's Wild Rice Soup is now billed as a Lund's classic.
The deli is about the same, but the inventory of related carryout items seems to have gone down. The take home soups appear to be a third party brand now, not to be confused with the freshly made.
There appears to be a new focus on organic products in produce, which is good. In the product aisles, however, house brands, not even well-packaged house brands, are appearing everywhere. Additional "impulse" racks have appeared, blocking the aisle signage.
Finally, they have installed self-checkout lanes, which make no sense to me at all at an upscale grocer. They seem largely unused for that very reason.
Byerly's / Lunds is still a much nicer store than Cub and the rest. But I fear they're ultimately going to try to sell us Cub goods at Byerly's prices, and that demands more than carpeting.