I wonder if they bought out Kodak's Choke Cherry Road lab gear.

The dye transfer process is complex and "fiddly". Wikipedia has a rather lengthy entry on the K-xx process and its history.

Ektachrome was an eye opener in that the processing could be done by anyone with a darkroom. E-4 (requiring a 'flash' exposure during processing for image reversal) and later, E-6, were what I grew up on. The 'good old days'.