There are a few news stories that cross my inbox that make me have to check the date, and the one about Kroger launching its own clothing line was exactly one of that kind of story.

Sometimes a story seems so off the wall, you have to do a kind of gut-check: this isn’t April Fool’s Day, is it? Is there some kind of prank event or something that I don’t know about? Is this story for real?

When the headline came up that Kroger is launching its own clothing line, I had to do that weird story gut-check. I know the company is implementing a lot of new initiatives as part of its “Restock Plan “, but most of the ones I’ve heard about are related to, you know, selling food – even opening restaurants as part of the Kroger store experience makes sense.

But when you dig a bit more into the story (you can’t dig very deep, as the line won’t launch until Fall 2018, and there isn’t much detail out there beyond a Kroger press release and a couple of media outlets that have picked up the story), there does seem to be some things there that make sense.

One, Kroger is focusing its apparel line on its Marketplace stores and Fred Meyer stores – the line will initially be available in those 300-odd stores when it first rolls out. Two, there really isn’t that much value to Kroger selling a lot more of the brands you can get anywhere else. Another outlet for Hanes sweat pants or Lee Jeans? That’s probably not good for either the brand or the retailer.

That leaves private label. On one level, Kroger has a lot of experience with building private label brands, so at least there is infrastructure in place to serve as a foundation for extending into clothing. But, as Amazon is finding, fashion is not as easy as selling anything else, especially when you’re looking to create a brand, rather than leveraging the power of someone else’s brand investment.

However, I would argue that Kroger is actually already more brand- and lifestyle-conscious than Amazon, so I can’t knock them for giving apparel a try.

I think what’s more notable about this story is Kroger’s acknowledgement that grocery alone isn’t enough to really cut it in retail today. Like Walmart and Target, and even regional players like HEB, Kroger has gotten into the general merchandise categories that move beyond grocery. I don’t actually think this is a response to pressure from Amazon – I think it’s a response to Walmart and Target moving into grocery. Target’s commitment has always seemed kind of iffy, like the company hasn’t been sure that it’s really paid off.

But they’re all in it now – Kroger is solidly committed to general merchandise, to the point that it’s creating its own private label apparel line, and general merchants, including Amazon, are solidly in the grocery category. While I suspect we’ll always see local grocery-only stores, grocers who move more solidly into general merchandise and apparel have a larger opportunity to local inventory than they’ve had before.

As a result, that local grocery store may never more look the same.