I've been watching with interest the buyouts and selling offs of the major chains in the area and wondering what it will do to the mystery shopping. From what I've read, Albertson's (which is heavily shopped now) has bought out Tom Thum ( which did have their own internal shoppers, but stopped the program a couple of years ago). Then because that caused a lot of stores to be in direct competition with each other, like across the street from each others, some are being sold off to other companies. Here in the DFW area Minyards has bought 12 of the misplaced stores. Years ago Minyards was shopped by a company that now only does video shops. I am hoping we will see a lot of new grocery shops in the area, and maybe by some new companies.
What has been the experience of other areas that has been caught up in the grocery store swap outs?