2008 was a bad year for most retailers — and 2009 hasn’t exactly been great, either — yet there is hope that the bottom has been reached and the economy might show signs of real improvement before the year is out.

Not that all retailers are in the same boat. This is the time of the supercenter, the dollar store, price-impact grocers and selected other retailers with an off-price or deep discount business model. Food retailing has been driving the industry, along with merchants who say to consumers, “Come pinch your pennies with us.”

A glance at the earnings column in this year's edition of the STORES Top 100 Retailers chart shows that a fair portion of the nation's largest retail companies posted lower earnings than in the previous fiscal year. Even those with gains were largely limited to single-digit increases, including mighty Wal-Mart (5.3 percent).

Like Wal-Mart, other names atop the Top 100 chart remain quite familiar: Kroger, Costco, Home Depot and Target hold the next four positions, though Home Depot dropped from the runner-up spot a year ago.

Best Buy, the last national electronics retailer left standing after Circuit City's demise, wrested the 10th rung from another Twin Cities-based retailer, SUPERVALU, which is still digesting its 2006 acquisition of the Albertsons supermarket operations.

The Top 100 companies are ranked by sales volume, with this year's figures compiled by London-based research firm Planet Retail. Some sales totals are estimates, primarily for closely held companies that don't make such information public.

“People still have to eat” goes the adage used to describe why the supermarket segment is seemingly recession-proof. This year, however, many traditional supermarkets found they aren't quite so impervious after all. It is the discount food sellers that are prospering, and as the largest supercenter operator in the country, Wal-Mart is riding this wave, along with limited assortment grocers like Aldi, Save-A-Lot and Kroger's Food4Less.

Shoppers have displayed an increased propensity for passing up national brands in favor of house brands, so Wal-Mart relaunched its private-label Great Value line. It also has undertaken initiatives that appeal to new-found customers during the current economic climate, as well as to its traditional customer base. The company does not want a replay of a few years ago, when it tried and failed to attract more affluent shoppers with merchandise that turned off its core price-conscious customers.

How long will current shopping patterns continue? “Noticeable changes in consumer spending will take some time as the economy continues to rebuild itself through the rest of the year,” says NRF chief economist Rosalind Wells. Such a forecast fits well with Wal-Mart's strategy. “When economic conditions improve, we believe customers who shop Wal-Mart today will stay with us because of the business improvements we're making and continue to make,” says company CEO Mike Duke.

Kroger operates multiple grocery-selling formats, including many that might fit the supercenter description, though the company eschews that term. It benefited greatly from the high price of gasoline last year, which prompted consumers to stock their pantries and buy non-food items on the same shopping trip in order to conserve fuel. Kroger is also capitalizing on consumers who purchase house brands, which accounted for 26 percent of its grocery sales in 2008.

Though food-selling bolstered Costco's business for much of 2008, the general merchandise side has been a drag and will continue to be for much of its current fiscal year, which ends August 30. In retrenching, Costco is closing its two Costco Home stores (Kirkland, Wash., and Tempe, Ariz.) devoted exclusively to home furnishings.

CVS Caremark's retail sales grew 8.7 percent last year, bolstered by the October acquisition of West Coast chain Longs Drug Stores. The company is also exploring, and in some cases employing, synergies available from the drug store-pharmacy benefits management merger of two years ago. Home Depot experienced an uptick in performance this spring, but the dark days experienced in 2008 are likely to continue through much of the year and the company has cut some unproductive operations.