> Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to protect their bonus.

I guess one important thing to look out for to judge this as either a PR stunt, or an actual well meaning practice - will be toi see if store managers get any advance notice that the CEO is gonna be working there.

If an ambitious career oriented manager knows the boss is gonna see everything that hopes on tomorrow, you can bet there's be extra staff rostered on the day before to make sure everything is better-that-normally prepped for the next day, that all the most compliant staff and the staff who are most beholden to the manager will be rostered on and they'll all be coached about what to say and threatened if they say the wrong thing, and probably a whole bunch of friends of the manager will show up as stooges on the day cosplaying happy and satisfied "ordinary customers".