The Milwaukee grocery market

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. No non-grocery posts.
Post Reply
pseudo3d
Posts: 3852
Joined: November 12th, 2015, 7:01 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 77 times
Status: Online

The Milwaukee grocery market

Post by pseudo3d »

I'm relatively unfamiliar with Milwaukee's grocery market, and to me, there doesn't seem to be a clear leader that does most everything right. Pick N Save, Roundy's "default" supermarket, had been really deteriorating as capex and attention went to Mariano's, Meijer has entered but isn't a huge success (and from what I've heard has bad operations compared to their native Michigan), Woodman's Markets only has a handful of stores (and is mostly a warehouse store), and there's some independents. Jewel-Osco had stores there (since at least the late 1990s) but they pulled out during the SuperValu days (which didn't have that well-run stores either).

Does anyone know who really runs the place, and if there is a "good" supermarket there?
storewanderer
Posts: 14379
Joined: February 23rd, 2009, 3:54 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 298 times
Contact:
Status: Offline

Re: The Milwaukee grocery market

Post by storewanderer »

Roundys runs it as a few years ago, I think they had a 40% or so market share. That absolutely constitutes "running it." This was after A&P, Jewel, and some others folded in that market so it was easy for them to pick up a lot of share despite stores being run poorly and raped of labor to pay for the Mariano's expansion in Chicago.

There are some Piggly Wiggly franchisees there who do some business (their best stores probably do about equal volume to a low volume Roundys but they are much smaller in size and run better). There is also an independent called Sendik's (two different ownerships depending on the location) which didn't impress me much but clearly had better quality perimeters and far better service than Roundys.

Now many competitors have entered and/or built more stores, Roundys has closed some stores, probably needs to close some more, and the pie is being cut.

I don't know where the marketshare still stands but I suspect at this point Roundys share is down in the 30% range at best, and I would still say in the end when everything settles down we will see Roundy's with a 25%-30% share in the market and they will still be the market leader but a shadow of what they once were. But I also think closing more poor stores will help Roundys because it will hopefully allow them to run a lower store count of stores as better stores so they will appear stronger.

Make no mistake, Roundys has a lot of quite high volume stores. Every one of their stores I saw was large and modern. Volumes much higher than Albertsons, a number of Kroger divisions, Safeway, etc. have. At the same time they have some stores that do very low volume.

I will also note Roundys is already getting Kroger brand items and they are starting to do Kroger-looking remodels in those stores. Funny how "fast" that chain got attention as Harris Teeter sails on still largely as its own thing with its own brand, own decor, etc.
Post Reply