Sears store-within-a-stores over the years

[pseudo3d]

I don't know what the deal with this Sears having a "steak & seafood spectacular" thanks a group I'm in. I was intrigued and looked up to see if they had a leased meats department. No dice, but they did have a health food department run by Vitality Unlimited, with over 120 leased department in Sears (and five in Montgomery Ward).

That sounds like an outside group that set something up with them to be there for those days. Not necessarily Schwan's, but some type of company similar to that that sold items in bulk - maybe even through one of the major companies that usually distribute to restaurants.

That time falls at the end of the period where things still had some more control on a local basis, possibly even something an individual store manager arranged to try and boost sales at his store, by getting people to come for the food deals and hopefully buy other items while they were there (and then maybe see that it was a good place to shop and return).

The Sears meat promotions were at other stores. It's still a bit of an odd matchup--even in the day Sears wasn't known for fresh food, and they had to provide not only the freezer space but the return guarantees.

[pseudo3d]

K B Toys used to have stores inside of Sears

From what I could tell these were done in the early 2000s as a seasonal thing and not a year-round thing.

I'm more interested in regional departments...

[retail_person_247]

Did anyone mention the Bell Phone Centers yet?

They were a chain of stand alone phones stores operated by the Bell System before having some short-lived departments (around 3 years) inside of select Sears locations,

All of them were converted into AT&T Phone Centers, which included the Sears departments


(More info about it here for the interested:)
https://defunct-brands.fandom.com/wiki/ ... nter_Store

[BatteryMill]

K B Toys used to have stores inside of Sears

From what I could tell these were done in the early 2000s as a seasonal thing and not a year-round thing.

I'm more interested in regional departments...

So Macy's wasn't the first with Toys R Us...

[retail_person_247]

K B Toys used to have stores inside of Sears

From what I could tell these were done in the early 2000s as a seasonal thing and not a year-round thing.

I'm more interested in regional departments...

So Macy's wasn't the first with Toys R Us...

Montgomery Ward had a full sized Toys "R" Us in their Gaithersburg MD location

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 90de2ba2f/

[BatteryMill]

From what I could tell these were done in the early 2000s as a seasonal thing and not a year-round thing.

I'm more interested in regional departments...

So Macy's wasn't the first with Toys R Us...

Montgomery Ward had a full sized Toys "R" Us in their Gaithersburg MD location

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 90de2ba2f/

Sears' K-B Toys experiment sounds more similar to Macy's current Toys R Us partnership; that Wards/TRU joint venture focuses more on a full-size setup.

[wnetmacman]

So Macy's wasn't the first with Toys R Us...

Montgomery Ward had a full sized Toys "R" Us in their Gaithersburg MD location

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 90de2ba2f/

Sears' K-B Toys experiment sounds more similar to Macy's current Toys R Us partnership; that Wards/TRU joint venture focuses more on a full-size setup.

I saw that store 5 years after Ward's went out of business. The TRU was independent of the store; it was still open then.

[pseudo3d]

Montgomery Ward had a full sized Toys "R" Us in their Gaithersburg MD location

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 90de2ba2f/

Sears' K-B Toys experiment sounds more similar to Macy's current Toys R Us partnership; that Wards/TRU joint venture focuses more on a full-size setup.

I saw that store 5 years after Ward's went out of business. The TRU was independent of the store; it was still open then.

So did they just have a large part of the store that had been walled off and abandoned after Montgomery Ward closed? ...or did they pull out long before? The 1997 bankruptcy killed the specialty store business (Lechmere, stand-alone Electric Avenue, etc.).

[wnetmacman]

So did they just have a large part of the store that had been walled off and abandoned after Montgomery Ward closed? ...or did they pull out long before? The 1997 bankruptcy killed the specialty store business (Lechmere, stand-alone Electric Avenue, etc.).

The store was subdivided.

[pseudo3d]

So did they just have a large part of the store that had been walled off and abandoned after Montgomery Ward closed? ...or did they pull out long before? The 1997 bankruptcy killed the specialty store business (Lechmere, stand-alone Electric Avenue, etc.).

The store was subdivided.

I'm not sure if that was always the case. The article sure doesn't make it sound that way and another article I found (paywalled) suggests differently. It talks about how "Ward and TRU now share the building, with one common entrance, while operating two separate businesses" and talks about it as one store. I do remember seeing a photo once showing a Montgomery Ward and Toys R Us sharing two different entrances at the end of a mall. I don't know if they actually did that elsewhere or I'm imagining it.

[pseudo3d]

I had heard the Canoga Park Sears had a wine and liquor department by Vendome inside of it in the 1960s. I'm sure it wasn't the only California outlet to operate with it.

From what I've seen there were the obvious departments that all Sears had--hardware, garden and patio shop, automotive, heavy appliances, clothing, the Sears services, but there seemed to be a lot of "optional" departments as well like health food. I wonder what other "optional" departments Sears had running, and how late.

There were also the manufacturer-run displays like World of Nintendo, which was shared with other stores, but I'm sure that wasn't the only manufacturer display they had.

[jleyerle]

Now that you mention it, I think I do remember natural foods in our local Sears in the 1979-ish timeframe in St. Louis, MO (one of their stronger markets--no MW competition). My sense was that as you mention, there were lots of "optional" vendors which could be added in a local market; presumably the local district management vetted the stores for appropriate space allocation and the vendor for their reasonableness. The store nearest us (Crestwood Plaza--their first suburban mall store in St. Louis opened in 1957) was >200k sqft after adding a 3rd story in the early 60s and had the normal urban leased departments (optical/hearing/photo/shop at home home furnishings/driver training/charm schools/nuts and confectionery). The late 70s added (I recall) the natural foods and a jobber-run toiletries section (likely at separate times; perhaps sequential as one faded away).