photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Lawrence's Hy-Vee store at Clinton Parkway and Kasold Drive is pictured on Sept. 23, 2024.

News and notes from around town:

• There’s seemingly a bit of a debate going on in the grocery store industry. Should the self-checkout lane stay or go? One Lawrence grocery store in recent days has apparently said it must go.

Lawrence’s Hy-Vee store at Clinton Parkway and Kasold Drive has removed its self-checkout lanes, and replaced them with approximately a half-dozen quick service counters that are staffed by actual cashiers.

Exactly why Hy-Vee has decided to remove the lanes is a bit of a self-guessing game at this point. A local manager at the store told me she wasn’t authorized to comment on the change, and my attempts to get a comment from a corporate spokeswoman wasn’t successful on Monday.

A quick check of the Hy-Vee corporate website doesn’t indicate that Hy-Vee has dropped the self-checkout lanes in all locations. I know some other grocers — Wal-Mart is an example — let their local managers make decisions about whether self-checkout should be part of their stores.

Wal-Mart is an example of a chain that seems to be open to the idea of getting rid of some. This spring, various trade journals reported Wal-Mart had removed self-checkout lanes in a handful of stores in Missouri, Ohio and New Mexico.

photo by: AdobeStock

A Wal-Mart self-checkout station is shown in this AdobeStock photo

Target this spring made changes to its self-checkout operations on a company-wide basis. It began limiting the number of items individuals could take through the self-checkout line to 10 items.

But the most recent chain to make changes has been Dollar General, and — in general — it is finding it doesn’t like self-checkout. In May, the company announced it plans to remove self-checkout from the “vast majority” of its stores. That followed earlier action by Dollar General to remove the self-checkout lanes from about 12,000 of its 20,000 stores.

Dollar General also has been pretty upfront about why it is getting rid of the self-checkout lanes. Too much merchandise was leaving the store without payment, which the industry calls “shrink.”

“Shrink continues to be the most significant headwind in our business,” Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said in May, according to a report from the trade journal Retail Dive.

Is that the issue at the Lawrence Hy-Vee store? Again, Hy-Vee officials haven’t yet offered any comment. However, I would note that I see new types of signs at the Hy-Vee store. They are reminding shoppers to not place items in their bags before the items actually have been purchased.

That may be a request that is specific to the Lawrence audience these days. As you recall, Lawrence has banned plastic bags at grocery stores and other retailers. As a result, stores have encouraged shoppers to bring their own reusable bags to their stores. But now, it seems that some shoppers are skipping the cart or basket all together and just putting items in their canvas bags. It is not hard to understand why that would make grocers nervous.

(The whole bag issue is one I won’t miss at self-checkout. I always get the densest cashier at the self-checkout who still asks me if I prefer paper or plastic. Oh, the arguments we have.)

Some of you have noticed that there is work underway at the former Henry T’s restaurant at 3520 W. Sixth St., just west of Sixth and Kasold. It appears construction crews are gutting the interior of the space, which has been vacant since last summer.

I don’t have any official announcements to pass along on the space, but I did determine that the property has been purchased by one of the owners of a business just down the street. Don Greenfield, an owner of the Pennzoil Westridge Wash and Lube at 3530 W. Sixth St., is the leader of an entity that has bought the old Henry T’s building. Douglas County property records show PHT Property LLC purchased the Henry T’s building earlier this year, and the Kansas Secretary of State’s office shows that Greenfield is the resident agent for that company.

If you are trying to picture the two spots, the Westridge Wash and Lube is just west of the Henry T’s building, separated by a large parking lot.

I don’t think the Henry T’s building is destined to become an auto mechanics shop, but I don’t have any official word to pass on. I tried to call Greenfield a couple times on Monday, but had no luck getting him on the phone.

However, from other sources that have inquired about the building, I hear that a bakery is under consideration for at least part of the space. Again, that is unconfirmed, so take it for what it is worth. But, if true, imagine the possibilities. You go to Westridge to get your tires rotated, wait next door at the bakery and order a doughnut shaped like — wait for it — a tire. The cross marketing potential is just off the charts.

Finally, let’s talk a little inside baseball. (No, not actual talk about the Kansas City Royals, although their recent losing streak does fit the theme of self-checkout.) Instead, let me pass along some information about the Journal-World and its operations.

In recent days, we’ve changed the commenting system that is attached to the bottom of all of our online articles. It no longer is associated with Facebook, which means you no longer have to have a Facebook account to comment on our articles.

That has been a goal of mine for awhile. I’ve long thought the ‘f’ in Facebook’s logo should be capital and in red ink because that’s the grade I think the platform deserves most days. I won’t get into all my thoughts on that, but I will say that the amount of spam commenters we were getting through the Facebook system was horrendous.

Many website users had noticed and become annoyed by the large number of fake Facebook accounts that were posting on our articles about how much they are making per hour doing heaven knows what.

I’m hopeful that problem will be largely taken care of via our new system. The new system is called Disqus. We’ve only had it operational for about a week on LJWorld.com, but we’ve had it for more than a year on our sister site, KUsports.com. The amount of spam comments on KUsports.com has been much less than what we received on the LJWorld.com site.

As for how to use Disqus to make a comment on LJWorld.com, it is pretty straightforward. You can create an account by entering your email address, choosing a username, setting a password, and proving that you are not a robot.

Unlike Facebook, creating an account on Disqus doesn’t create a public social media page for you. I’ve heard from many readers who don’t want to have a Facebook page but still want to digitally comment on local news articles. Now, such a system exists. Please use it responsibly.