Major Retail Chains That "Skipped" Your Area, Past or Present?

[Scott5114]

Lots of chains skip Oklahoma City, because the city's population density is so low it messes with formulas executives use to calculate expected profitability of a potential store. Often, these are based on the income levels found within a 5 or 10 mile radius of the proposed site. They don't account for the fact that Oklahomans won't hesitate to drive 20 miles or more to visit a store if they like it well enough.

[roadman65]

Long John Silvers never bothered to open a store in NJ.

[jp the roadgeek]

Perkins are plentiful in NY state, but have never crossed northeast into New England.

Golden Corral has only one New England location in Springfield, MA.  It came and went in a couple years in Milford, CT

Never had Montgomery Ward in CT.  Nearest one was Poughkeepsie

There was one Checkers in Bristol, CT that lasted a year.  Nearest one now is Long Island

No White Castles in New England.  Have to go to Nanuet, NY

[nexus73]

Costco and Trader Joe's are MIA in the Coos Bay-North Bend OR area.  We are the largest urban area on the Oregon coast, serving a regional market of 100K plus a ton of tourists in the summer.  Plenty of other chains manage to make a nice enough profit here to stick around so it is not like we are some sort of poor backwater. 

Came & Went Department: Arby's picked as lousy a location as possible and wound up folding their tent.  Once again, we are doing well with many other major chains so why not do the job right Arby's?

Rick

[roadman65]

Pizza Hut took its time coming to NJ.  As NY and PA had them plenty, but not the Garden State until about 1984.

Then Mays department store when in their hey days, were in the NYC metro area, but not in North Jersey.  They were big on Long Island, some of the outer boroughs of NYC, and the lower Upstate NY counties.

[hbelkins]

Someone upthread mentioned Ross. They were very notably absent from Kentucky until just a few years ago.

[Takumi]

If and when Wegmans does finally build in Florida, it's gonna be interesting to see how it affects Publix, since they pretty much own nearly the whole state these days.

Publix and Wegmans overlap in the Richmond and Raleigh markets, which, like Florida, have lots of transplants from Wegmans' home base. In both markets, the Wegmans are very large stores with only a couple locations in affluent areas, while Publix feels more like a typical grocery store and are more plentiful. I don't frequent either, but there are literally dozens of grocery stores between me and the closest Wegmans, while I'll only go to Publix if I want something specifically from there.

[formulanone]

https://www.wegmans.com/news-media/articles/please-build-a-wegmans-near-me/

LOL. Unsurprising that Florida tops the list of places where people request a Wegmans, as it's probably mostly retirees and other transplants from the Rochester area. I wonder where northern/eastern NY would rank on that list - probably below at least a handful of southern states. My somewhat bold prediction is Florida gets their first Wegmans before Ohio.

25 years ago, maybe, but I don't see the point of distributing that far away. While Publix is strong down in Florida, managers mumbled that they would lose about 10-15% of their business soon after a Walmart / Target Supercenter popped up nearby. Since Publix in the RDU area as well, I could see there being a bit of a stalemate, since Harris Teeter is a comparable store and has an established presence there. Even Kroger has very few stores in Florida (though I'm struggling to think of one right now).

South Florida is a bit of a distribution cul-de-sac (do Maine and Western Washington have these issues?), but it's grown enough that the situation has changed a bit.

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts. 

[webny99]

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts.

I find it much more surprising that they don't have much of a presence in the PNW. I guess I think of them as more of a northern chain, so the Deep South would be below that on the list of places I'd expect them to be.

[roadman65]

I was shocked in 1988 there were none in CA around LA.  I guess they took time expanding.


Then u have In and Out which selects markets and has no plans to expand. In away I find it admirable.

[chrisdiaz]

Charleston and Myrtle Beach never have had Macy's. Every other market around us to the north and west had either Rich's or Macy's.

Completely forgot about this one. It was my mom's favorite store when we lived in NY 

[SkyPesos]

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts.

I find it much more surprising that they don't have much of a presence in the PNW. I guess I think of them as more of a northern chain, so the Deep South would be below that on the list of places I'd expect them to be.

I'm not surprised about the lack of a PNW presence for Dunkin, considering they're (especially Seattle) Starbuck's home turf.

[webny99]

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts.

I find it much more surprising that they don't have much of a presence in the PNW. I guess I think of them as more of a northern chain, so the Deep South would be below that on the list of places I'd expect them to be.

I'm not surprised about the lack of a PNW presence for Dunkin, considering they're (especially Seattle) Starbuck's home turf.

Yes, but plenty of places have both. Massachusetts is Dunkin's home turf and they have tons of Starbucks too.

[formulanone]

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts.

I find it much more surprising that they don't have much of a presence in the PNW. I guess I think of them as more of a northern chain, so the Deep South would be below that on the list of places I'd expect them to be.

I'm not surprised about the lack of a PNW presence for Dunkin, considering they're (especially Seattle) Starbuck's home turf.

Yes, but plenty of places have both. Massachusetts is Dunkin's home turf and they have tons of Starbucks too.

Oddly we had Starbucks before a Dunkin'. I wonder what the market threshold is for a new Starbucks point; going to guess an agglomeration of 50,000 residents (or travelers) is a starting site. And if it's successful, probably a little less for each subsequent location until the saturation point is hit.

You could probably substitute any other mid-market national brand in for Starbucks.

[Sctvhound]

James Island (29412 zip code) has about 45,000 population. We had just hit the 40K point a few years back when we got a Chick-fil-A and a Starbucks.

We had a Kmart as far back as the early 80s because the population that lived on John's Island, West Ashley south of US 17, Folly Beach and parts of downtown was enough to break whatever threshold they had.

Walmart came in about 1995. We also got Blockbuster Video around that time.

But they definitely do look at demographics. Harris Teeter only goes in household income areas above 60 or 70K a year. Like how my area has 4 of them while the highly populated North Charleston, Hanahan, Goose Creek and Moncks Corner area doesn't have one.

Wegmans probably has an even higher household income point.

Cheesecake Factory is another restaurant chain that is very picky about where it goes. You only see them around super regional malls that are doing very well. Weirdly, Gainesville, FL and Lexington, KY have them (two pretty small metro areas).

The only Cheesecake Factory in South Carolina is in Greenville. With so much population growth in the state between Charleston, Columbia and Myrtle Beach you'd think one of the three cities would have one.

SM-G998U

[Bruce]

Folks from the Northeast are a little surprised that Dunkin' Donuts didn't make it the Huntsville area until 2014, around the time Cracker Barrel was starting to become a novelty in those parts.

I find it much more surprising that they don't have much of a presence in the PNW. I guess I think of them as more of a northern chain, so the Deep South would be below that on the list of places I'd expect them to be.

Dunkin Donuts did have 10 stores in Washington from the 1980s until 2002, when the last ones shut down.

[GCrites]

Charleston and Myrtle Beach never have had Macy's. Every other market around us to the north and west had either Rich's or Macy's.

Completely forgot about this one. It was my mom's favorite store when we lived in NY 

Does Belk have the market there? Macy's mostly wound up with former Federated stores outside their main service area and Belk wasn't Federated.

[chrisdiaz]

Charleston and Myrtle Beach never have had Macy's. Every other market around us to the north and west had either Rich's or Macy's.

Completely forgot about this one. It was my mom's favorite store when we lived in NY 

Does Belk have the market there? Macy's mostly wound up with former Federated stores outside their main service area and Belk wasn't Federated.

Yeah, actually they do, at least in MB, and I never thought of that before your reply. We have 4 in the immediate MB area, with 2 in MB, and one each in Conway and Murrells Inlet. There are also Belks in Georgetown and Shallotte, both on the fringes of what I would consider the Myrtle Beach metro.

[hbelkins]

I always thought of Dunkin as a competitor of Krispy Kreme, not Starbucks.

I'm in the area that has both donut places.

[Ted$8roadFan]

At one point, the Boston area used to have Krispy Kreme during a franchise agreement with a company called The Jan Companies, which was based in Rhode Island with their first location being in Medford. It should be noted though that there is still one New England location inside of Mohegan Sun in Norwich, Connecticut. Krispy Kreme in Greater Boston lasted from 2003-2007. Besides that, the closest ones are in New Jersey. I guess Dunkin Donuts was just too popular around here to keep them going.

When they first came here, I remember lines snaking around the block and becoming a traffic hazard, especially at places like their location on the Berlin Turnpike south of Hartford (a death trap, anyway).

Once the novelty wore off, Krispy was just ill-suited to New England tastes. We have a sweet tooth, but nothing like the South, making their donuts too sweet, and - most importantly - their coffee was subpar.

[NWI_Irish96]

I always thought of Dunkin as a competitor of Krispy Kreme, not Starbucks.

I'm in the area that has both donut places.

As people have become more carb conscious, Dunkin has emphasized coffee a lot more and donuts less. The Dunkins around here have drive thru lines backed up into the streets in the mornings.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I always thought of Dunkin as a competitor of Krispy Kreme, not Starbucks.

I'm in the area that has both donut places.

As people have become more carb conscious, Dunkin has emphasized coffee a lot more and donuts less. The Dunkins around here have drive thru lines backed up into the streets in the mornings.

Indeed. The one near my office has shrunk the donut selection to a relatively small glass case while the coffee bar (not an exaggeration) is there for all to watch their specialty brew being made.

[Mapmikey]

Long Island has many:

In terms of Myrtle Beach, we just recently got 7-Elevens here, and there are only two of them so far. Another notable example is Kroger/Harris Teeter. In the Myrtle Beach metro, we have Kroger. In every adjacent area (Charleston, Florence, Wilmington), they have Harris Teeter supermarkets.

7-11s were everywhere in South Carolina up until around 1980 or so

[Rothman]

America runs on Dunkin'.

[CoreySamson]

Waffle House until very recently didn't have much of a presence in the Houston area. Even so, outside of the suburbs, it still isn't much of a thing (I've never been). Huddle House is non-existent.