Not speaking to the other points, but I did notice many stores completely reconfigured the checkouts in my area; before the pandemic there were few very tiny self checkout stalls, and there was always a long line of people with just a few items.

Now almost all the aisles are self-checkout and are friendlier to larger cart-fulls like I buy (having a few kids means there's no such thing as a quick trip with a hand basket anymore...).