Digital services are starting to surface on supermarket Web sites. Dominick's Finer Foods, Northlake, Ill., for example, recently announced on its Web page: "New -- Put Pictures on Your Computer. Kodak Picture Disk-Kodak Picture CD."
ve-channel models of virtual Photo Centers. The CVS.com Photo Center, launched last June, is a co-branded site which features the Kodak Picture Center Online. It offers customers a chance to upload digital pictures to the site or consumers can have their film processed at their local CVS and check a box on the film envelope for Pictures Online. Another hint of the future appears on Wal-Mart's Web site, which offers choices similar to those of CVS -- either uploading or an overnight film envelope -- but Wal-Mart adds a progressive footnote on its site: "Uploads to Photo Center are not yet available from our one-hour labs." Not now, but maybe soon.
Is all this too futuristic for supermarkets? Equity researcher Gibboney Huske of Credit Suisse First Boston, New York, thinks it will be hard for the food channel to make this kind of digital transition -- but with major chains reportedly looking at different digital options, who knows what will be served on tomorrow's supermarket Web sites?