Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:Good for them. I guess Albertsons will get that $500k breakup fee, then. Hopefully they weren't betting the farm on having those stores. I wonder how much the families paid and how much debt the new company is starting out with.
Why would there be a $500K breakup fee on a bankruptcy auction? I've looked into stories about their bid, and I cannot find anything to that effect. That would be highly unusual in a bankruptcy proceeding of any kind for a failed bidder to get compensated.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by klkla »

If the bid is a 'stalking horse' bid a break up fee could be included. I seem to remember Smart & Final and Gelson's negotiating one in the Haggen BK case.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by storewanderer »

I thought I saw there is a break up fee...

I am glad to see the family get their stores back, I hope they do well. I wonder who their supplier will be...

This is also really a rather significant thing that Albertsons lost this bid. Albertsons can't seem to get anything this year; they tried to get Price Chopper, failed, tried Sprouts and Whole Foods, failed. Now this, failed again. Time to quit trying to buy up everything possible and operate your own stores better and lower the everyday retail prices!
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by rwsandiego »

arizonaguy wrote:Looks like Albertsons lost the auction.

The Strack and the Van Til families as well as some others put in a successful bid for 20 stores.

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 81144.html
I hope they succeed. They probably regretted selling the chain in the first place. Now they have it back.
storewanderer wrote:I thought I saw there is a break up fee...

I am glad to see the family get their stores back, I hope they do well. I wonder who their supplier will be...

This is also really a rather significant thing that Albertsons lost this bid. Albertsons can't seem to get anything this year; they tried to get Price Chopper, failed, tried Sprouts and Whole Foods, failed. Now this, failed again. Time to quit trying to buy up everything possible and operate your own stores better and lower the everyday retail prices!
I'm not a big Albertsons fan, either, but the thing to remember is Jewel-Osco is actually well-run, unlike many other components of Albertsons. That said, buying a beloved local institution and changing the name often doesn't work out very well. Macy's is a prime example.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:Good for them. I guess Albertsons will get that $500k breakup fee, then. Hopefully they weren't betting the farm on having those stores. I wonder how much the families paid and how much debt the new company is starting out with.
Why would there be a $500K breakup fee on a bankruptcy auction? I've looked into stories about their bid, and I cannot find anything to that effect. That would be highly unusual in a bankruptcy proceeding of any kind for a failed bidder to get compensated.
http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 331b0.html

This does explain Strack they dragged their feet on the bid, it was to raise money. They would've had to outbid Albertsons significantly for it, so the total pricetag was well over $100 million.
rwsandiego wrote:
arizonaguy wrote:Looks like Albertsons lost the auction.

The Strack and the Van Til families as well as some others put in a successful bid for 20 stores.

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 81144.html
rwsandiego wrote: I'm not a big Albertsons fan, either, but the thing to remember is Jewel-Osco is actually well-run, unlike many other components of Albertsons. That said, buying a beloved local institution and changing the name often doesn't work out very well. Macy's is a prime example.
ACME was well on the mend until the A&P takeover, where they had to take on a bunch of unionized employees who may or may not have been part of the problem the chain failed in the first place. Strack & Van Til also has a union, and that could've posed problems later down the line, additionally, the Strack & Van Til stores were more suburban than the urban Jewel-Osco stores.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by rwsandiego »

pseudo3d wrote:
wnetmacman wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:Good for them. I guess Albertsons will get that $500k breakup fee, then. Hopefully they weren't betting the farm on having those stores. I wonder how much the families paid and how much debt the new company is starting out with.
Why would there be a $500K breakup fee on a bankruptcy auction? I've looked into stories about their bid, and I cannot find anything to that effect. That would be highly unusual in a bankruptcy proceeding of any kind for a failed bidder to get compensated.
http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 331b0.html

This does explain Strack they dragged their feet on the bid, it was to raise money. They would've had to outbid Albertsons significantly for it, so the total pricetag was well over $100 million.
rwsandiego wrote:
arizonaguy wrote:Looks like Albertsons lost the auction.

The Strack and the Van Til families as well as some others put in a successful bid for 20 stores.

http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 81144.html
rwsandiego wrote: I'm not a big Albertsons fan, either, but the thing to remember is Jewel-Osco is actually well-run, unlike many other components of Albertsons. That said, buying a beloved local institution and changing the name often doesn't work out very well. Macy's is a prime example.
ACME was well on the mend until the A&P takeover, where they had to take on a bunch of unionized employees who may or may not have been part of the problem the chain failed in the first place. Strack & Van Til also has a union, and that could've posed problems later down the line, additionally, the Strack & Van Til stores were more suburban than the urban Jewel-Osco stores.
Based on reviews of the A&Ps-turned-ACME it seems that the surly employees are part of the problem. Jewel is a union chain, but I don't know whether Jewel and S&VT have the same union.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by pseudo3d »

rwsandiego wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:
wnetmacman wrote:
Why would there be a $500K breakup fee on a bankruptcy auction? I've looked into stories about their bid, and I cannot find anything to that effect. That would be highly unusual in a bankruptcy proceeding of any kind for a failed bidder to get compensated.
http://www.nwitimes.com/business/retail ... 331b0.html

This does explain Strack they dragged their feet on the bid, it was to raise money. They would've had to outbid Albertsons significantly for it, so the total pricetag was well over $100 million.
rwsandiego wrote:
ACME was well on the mend until the A&P takeover, where they had to take on a bunch of unionized employees who may or may not have been part of the problem the chain failed in the first place. Strack & Van Til also has a union, and that could've posed problems later down the line, additionally, the Strack & Van Til stores were more suburban than the urban Jewel-Osco stores.
Based on reviews of the A&Ps-turned-ACME it seems that the surly employees are part of the problem. Jewel is a union chain, but I don't know whether Jewel and S&VT have the same union.
It's not necessarily surly employees, it's the whole issue of benefits, seniority, etc.

A company still coming up short every year doesn't need that baggage.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by storewanderer »

I think the difference though is A&P had a terrible reputation. Somehow, Acme has not managed to really improve that. It seems people dislike Acme even more than they disliked A&P. As someone who visited Acme Stores and A&P/Pathmark Stores on the same trip, the difference, frankly, was night and day. Acme's perimeters were so far above those of A&P there was simply no comparison. Pricing was similar at both (higher than Giant), though.

I am beginning to wonder if Acme's success in recent years is a fluke as a result of the fallout of Genuardi's as well as some decline at Giant-PA and really it isn't that Acme is improving, it is that its competition has either gone out of business or gotten worse so some sales have drifted their way.


I don't think Strack & Van Til has a particularly bad reputation (though not a glowing one either). It is unknown how the financial problems of Central have impacted SVT over the past year or two, though.

A&P was a very long, rather slow decline.

Jewel could have taken these over and made everyone happy by lowering prices. But lowering prices doesn't seem to be part of the strategy. However, it would have been interesting to see how Jewel handled a takeover... as you point out, they have always been the best run piece of Albertsons over the years (and Supervalu).
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote:I think the difference though is A&P had a terrible reputation. Somehow, Acme has not managed to really improve that. It seems people dislike Acme even more than they disliked A&P. As someone who visited Acme Stores and A&P/Pathmark Stores on the same trip, the difference, frankly, was night and day. Acme's perimeters were so far above those of A&P there was simply no comparison. Pricing was similar at both (higher than Giant), though.

I am beginning to wonder if Acme's success in recent years is a fluke as a result of the fallout of Genuardi's as well as some decline at Giant-PA and really it isn't that Acme is improving, it is that its competition has either gone out of business or gotten worse so some sales have drifted their way.
I believe ACME really did improve under Perkins, who is returning to ACME and the one that took it out of SuperValu's mismanagement starting in 2013. The biggest problem with the A&P ACME stores and why they became so disliked is that they took out the self-checkout, and around the time ACME bought A&P's stores, prices shot back up to A&P levels.

I think that if Jewel did take over S&VT, prices would be worse, even if the unique features of some of the remodeled stores were kept.
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Re: Strack & Van Til to sell 22 stores, close remaining nine

Post by BillyGr »

pseudo3d wrote:
rwsandiego wrote:Based on reviews of the A&Ps-turned-ACME it seems that the surly employees are part of the problem. Jewel is a union chain, but I don't know whether Jewel and S&VT have the same union.
It's not necessarily surly employees, it's the whole issue of benefits, seniority, etc.

A company still coming up short every year doesn't need that baggage.
That was known to be an issue with A&P - due to the number of stores closed over the years, they wound up with higher labor costs (as more senior employees from closing stores moved to still open ones, bumping out newer and cheaper ones).
Thus, you wound up with a store where you were paying all the employees more, so either they had to sell more to offset that, raise prices to offset costs or staff with less people - the first never worked out, and the latter two only cause customers to be unhappy and thus to stop coming to your store (which is what happened).
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