Sunday, November 01, 2009
Checking in on the Storefront
Jenny Kincaid Boone
Jenny reports on the latest news on the Roanoke Valley retail industry.
Recent stories
Chick-fil-A ranks No. 1 among fast food drive-throughs. Retailers are giving you money if you carry a reusable bag. Cupcake bakeries are taking off in the Roanoke Valley.
Below are excerpts from the Storefront blog. Check it out at blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/storefront/ to see what you're missing.
Who has the best drive-through? (Oct. 5)
Fast food restaurants and coffee shops rely on drive-through business to generate revenue. And those of you who regularly pull your vehicle through a restaurant's drive-through probably already know which ones tend to be the fastest and get your order right.
So, how do your assessments match up with QSR magazine's recent ranking of restaurant drive-through service? Blog readers pondered QSR magazine's ranking and compared it to their own assessments.
Chick-fil-A ranked first in overall drive-through performance this year, according to QSR's annual study. QSR's ranking categories include speed of service, menu-board appearance, speaker clarity and order accuracy. This year, McDonald's drive-through fell to seventh from second place.
Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy told me in an interview last year that the chicken chain aims for a 90-second drive-through turnaround time or better. Some Chick-fil-A's have 120 to 140 cars per hour in the drive-through, which equates to less than 60 seconds per vehicle, he told me.
Read the blog to find out QSR's winners in each category.
Take your own shopping bag (Oct. 19)
The incentives are rising for shoppers who don't use plastic bags.
Target and CVS have joined the small number of retailers nationwide that are offering slight savings on your bill if you use reusable sacks, rather than plastic bags. Environmental groups claim that plastic bags are harmful for the environment.
Starting today (Nov. 1), Target will give you a 5-cent discount for every reusable bag that you use to pack your purchases at its stores across the country.
Also at CVS stores, you can earn Extra Buck savings when you scan a special green leaf tag and your CVS card. The green tags are supposed to be attached to a cloth bag or a similar sack. After four scans, CVS will give you a $1 Extra Buck coupon.
But you have to pay 99 cents to get this green leaf tag.
CVS is launching this program at 7,000 drug stores over the next three weeks.
Viva La Cupcake: (Oct. 20)
Cupcake shops are popping up across the country, and this sweet-treats trend is catching on in the Roanoke Valley.
Roanoke native Pennie Ahuero has been the cupcake mom for years, toting large batches to her sons' classrooms for special events.
Several months ago she moved to the Grandin Village farmers market, where she sold her cupcake creations to a larger clientele.
Opening her own cupcake shop was in the back of her mind, and this month it happened.
Ahuero opened Viva La Cupcake on Oct. 20 on Grandin Road in Roanoke, inside a multi-tenant building that houses Valley Bank and West Pharmacy.
There she sells six to eight cupcake flavors at a time, for $2.95 each. Her signature cupcake is a chocolate concoction with white chocolate filling and milk chocolate, drizzled with fudge, on the top. Other flavors include lemon, chocolate-filled raspberry, white almond with pink almond cream frosting, coconut and many others.
She does all of the baking inside her Grandin Village home, and she also caters for special events.
It's a small enterprise, for now, and Ahuero, the mother of three boys and wife to an IT specialist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, said she's content starting out small.
"I'm actually just really happy where we're at and what we're going to do," she said. "I'm not out to make millions on cupcakes."
Viva La Cupcake arrives just as the owner of Bubblecake, another local cupcake shop, said that she will open a second location in downtown Roanoke in November. Bubblecake will land at 16 W. Kirk Ave.
Lisa Lusk opened her first shop this summer in South Roanoke.
Store closings, openings
Dandelion Feet, a downtown Roanoke shoe store, closed (Oct. 7).
Polished by Claire V in downtown Roanoke appears to be underway (Oct.13).
The owner of Les Cheveux Salon & Day Spa at Towers Shopping Center in Roanoke plans to open a new day spa and a cosmetology and aesthetics school (Oct. 29).
