Retail Watchers

Tillamook butter is 100% licensee-produced by Challenge in California. I don’t know if they’re still buying ice cream production capacity from Safeway’s Bellevue plant but they have in the past. I believe all of the novelty products are also co-packed. To the topic at hand: Winco store brand quality...

Consent decrees in a business with grocery margins? Pigs will line up for take off at LaGuardia first. (I also wouldn’t trust Accenture to run a compliance program at any cost, but that’s another story). Does ACI even own any real estate anymore? I thought the various deals have essentially been pai...

[quote=marketreportblog post_id=50117 time=1694719716 user_id=3205] I don't know if there's any real news here, but it does look increasingly likely that the FTC will seek to block or greatly restrict this deal. [/quote] Zero chance it’s blocked in the sense of “completely disallowed in any form”. T...

Even at 104/49, WA and OR are laughable. That represents dozens of clusters of four or more contiguous census tracts (about 16000 consumers) where they’re trying to maintain share comparable to that of the duopoly. I don’t know what methodology the Attorneys General and the FTC will use but I’m rela...

The current divest count in the PNW ex-Alaska is somewhere between aspiration and outright delusion. For Washington locations it’s going to leave the Safeway banner on the net 25-30 ACI pickups they retain and whatever current QFC locations survive (10-15 by my guess). I’m skeptical that FM won’t ev...

The Port Orchard, WA rebanner also has little quirks like that. It’s the Uncanny Valley thing - it’s almost but not quite a Safeway, and I’m also absolutely certain it’s not surviving divestiture. It had a decent reset and light-touch remodel a few years ago (integrating natural/organic, some aisle ...

N=1, but the Federal Way, WA store has shuttered the service seafood and meat counter. Interestingly a lot of the beef SKUs were coming from Pat LaFrieda - I got some amazing dry-aged NY strips off them. This Fresh has turned into GrocOut-style treasure hunt. They seem to be trying to adjust center ...

I’m shocked at how good that Safeway is - the layout ex-Larry’s is much, much better than Admiral and I’ve always found it well-staffed. I agree that even the third-tranche QFCs do significant business and there’s never a question of perimeter freshness. When I gripe about produce quality going down...

3. Who's to say that there is only one "Spinco"? I'd spin off FFL into a separate "Spinco" with other value conscious assets. Then put the other assets into a separate "Spinco". I agree: Spinco is too heterogenous to survive in the day-of-spinout form. Someone, somewhe...

QFC can be at least three different stores though: The flagship locations (Seattle U Village, Redmond Bella Bottega, Bellevue Downtown, to some extent the two Broadway locations in Seattle) - strong perimeter, high service levels, better than average wine and spirits set (the adjacent QFC Liquor sto...