Albertsons in Wichita, KS

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Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by storewanderer »

I had no idea Albertsons was in Wichita but I drove by a couple obvious former Albertsons today (one a late 90's store now a Dillons with the F4L interior, the other looks like a late 90's store too, now a Best Buy).

So it looks like Albertsons entered Wichita in 1991 and exited in 2002. Upon exit, the stores were part of the Dallas/Fort Worth division. No wonder that didn't work... talk about radically different markets.

It appears the stores were sold to AWG (Homeland) when they left... then later Homeland exited the market and sold their (few) remaining stores to Dillons. One Homeland (now a Cost+ format but still operated by Homeland) remains about 20 miles south of Wichita. It seems like Dillons and AWG worked out some sort of deal that removed Homeland from Wichita and Topeka and removed Dillons from its few Kansas City suburb stores...

What is interesting is in Kansas, Homeland was operating the Fally's/F4L Stores (Homeland closed its former Safeways in Kansas during its bankrupty). Those stores were owned by Fred Meyer when merged with Kroger and divested as part of the FTC agreement on that merger. It is interesting that Kroger, even if it was 10-15 years later, seems to have gotten back 3-4 of those stores...

Wichita is interesting as you literally have nothing here but Dillons (mostly very large stores) and Wal Mart. There is a Whole Foods that is the slowest and most lightly stocked Whole Foods I've ever seen, and looks like it will be out of business soon, and a new Sprouts that appears to have traffic but the baskets are sure small dollar in there...
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by Super S »

I recall stopping at a Dillons (not sure of location) when in Wichita in 2008, and saw some interior signage that looked like Albertsons stuff. The outside didn't really strike me as Albertsons at all, and just seemed like a mediocre store at best.
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote:I had no idea Albertsons was in Wichita but I drove by a couple obvious former Albertsons today (one a late 90's store now a Dillons with the F4L interior, the other looks like a late 90's store too, now a Best Buy).

So it looks like Albertsons entered Wichita in 1991 and exited in 2002. Upon exit, the stores were part of the Dallas/Fort Worth division. No wonder that didn't work... talk about radically different markets.

It appears the stores were sold to AWG (Homeland) when they left... then later Homeland exited the market and sold their (few) remaining stores to Dillons. One Homeland (now a Cost+ format but still operated by Homeland) remains about 20 miles south of Wichita. It seems like Dillons and AWG worked out some sort of deal that removed Homeland from Wichita and Topeka and removed Dillons from its few Kansas City suburb stores...

What is interesting is in Kansas, Homeland was operating the Fally's/F4L Stores (Homeland closed its former Safeways in Kansas during its bankrupty). Those stores were owned by Fred Meyer when merged with Kroger and divested as part of the FTC agreement on that merger. It is interesting that Kroger, even if it was 10-15 years later, seems to have gotten back 3-4 of those stores...

Wichita is interesting as you literally have nothing here but Dillons (mostly very large stores) and Wal Mart. There is a Whole Foods that is the slowest and most lightly stocked Whole Foods I've ever seen, and looks like it will be out of business soon, and a new Sprouts that appears to have traffic but the baskets are sure small dollar in there...
I was talking to Albertsons Florida Blog about this market recently. First, to note, Wichita was never in the Dallas/Fort Worth division. They were in a different division called Great Plains, which had Oklahoma, Omaha, Springfield MO, and Wichita. They sold the DC in Oklahoma to Fleming with a 5-year distribution deal in 2002 but that never got far along, especially as most of the stores were closed (I believe the Great Plains division was closed for good in 2004 when Omaha was closed, leaving Oklahoma to go to DFW).

The stores were mostly from Harvest Foods, which was the company created to lead the Little Rock division of Safeway after it spun off, which were not Safeway stores but rather some Skaggs Alpha Beta stores that opened in that market of all things that Harvest Foods bought before American Stores pulled the plug on the entire division. (This was from reading OCR text on newspapers.com)
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by storewanderer »

So far I have encountered three former Albertsons in Wichita. I found a third today, down in Southwest Wichita, across the road from a very large Dillons that is not a marketplace. It is now a Wal Mart Neighborhood Market, remodeled beyond recognition. But the roadsign sign is clearly an Albertsons sign.

The former Albertsons that is operating as a Dillons with a F4L interior is very interesting. I would have loved to see this store as a Homeland operation under whatever banner they had here because I suspect it would have been much more preserved. I think it has had some major layout changes with Dillon. It is one of the late 90's era Albertsons locations with a drop ceiling in center store and a warehouse type ceiling around the perimeter. There are a lot of differences in this store vs. what one would expect of an Albertsons of this era is that this store has deli on half of the front side wall and then produce on the other half of that wall, with bakery in a position on the back wall next to produce (this layout would follow an Albertsons Grocery Palace layout). However right next to bakery is the dairy, and then meat is on the rest of the back wall including seafood angled in the back corner (double angled- the counter is much larger than an Albertsons counter of this era and includes about 24 feet of meat and pork and chicken in a "carneceria."). The pharmacy is on the very front wall far off to the side (would have expected that on a side wall with Albertsons) and they have built in a drive through pharmacy lane. The restrooms/break room are also in the front center of the store across from checkout which is about where I would have expected video in Albertsons (would have expected those about where pharmacy is currently located in Dillon, as Albertsons). There is also a dining area with about 16 tables against the front wall beside the deli. The deli area is very large (much larger than Albertsons would have been) with a large salad bar, large coffee/soda/iced tea bar, salsa counter, large hot Chinese food department, large hot food department, and large cold case. The bakery looks about like an Albertsons Grocery Palace bakery would look, but is merchandised well here as they have added a tortilla machine to the large space and the donut case is about 1/3 dedicated to various hispanic pastries that I suspect are all bakeoff items (polverones, curenos, conchas, etc.). Overall this was a very different Dillons than any other I've seen from the layout to the merchandising.
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:The stores were mostly from Harvest Foods, which was the company created to lead the Little Rock division of Safeway after it spun off, which were not Safeway stores but rather some Skaggs Alpha Beta stores that opened in that market of all things that Harvest Foods bought before American Stores pulled the plug on the entire division. (This was from reading OCR text on newspapers.com)
Harvest Foods only had about a 10 year true run. They were created in 1987 to purchase the Little Rock division of Safeway. They ceased operation in 1997, selling most of the stores to either Kroger, Brookshire, Affiliated Foods Southwest (itself now defunct) or closing outright. The Harvest Foods stores were almost exclusively in Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. The Skaggs stores they bought over the years had long since been closed, but were relegated to the area around Little Rock. Only a handful still survive even in Arkansas as supermarkets, beyond Kroger and a few that Brookshire picked up. Brookshire didn't get any former Skaggs stores when they bought them.

That being said, I know beyond a doubt that the Wichita stores weren't part of this company.
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:The stores were mostly from Harvest Foods, which was the company created to lead the Little Rock division of Safeway after it spun off, which were not Safeway stores but rather some Skaggs Alpha Beta stores that opened in that market of all things that Harvest Foods bought before American Stores pulled the plug on the entire division. (This was from reading OCR text on newspapers.com)
Harvest Foods only had about a 10 year true run. They were created in 1987 to purchase the Little Rock division of Safeway. They ceased operation in 1997, selling most of the stores to either Kroger, Brookshire, Affiliated Foods Southwest (itself now defunct) or closing outright. The Harvest Foods stores were almost exclusively in Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. The Skaggs stores they bought over the years had long since been closed, but were relegated to the area around Little Rock. Only a handful still survive even in Arkansas as supermarkets, beyond Kroger and a few that Brookshire picked up. Brookshire didn't get any former Skaggs stores when they bought them.

That being said, I know beyond a doubt that the Wichita stores weren't part of this company.
In 1991, Albertsons did buy stores from Harvest Foods in the Wichita area (and even though it didn't end up that way, it does look like they were initially served from D/FW, though almost certainly they used other distribution centers to do it...as of 1993 a third of the items Albertsons purchased were not from its own systems). This 1998 article mentions that the stores had a slightly different (larger) layout and had to be "retrofitted" into the store layout instead of a smaller but more efficient footprint. The Harvest Foods name intrigued me too, as Harvest Foods was the Safeway Little Rock division, and that was a ways away from Wichita. If it was former Safeway stores, it would've been Food Barn or something (the KC division).

Then, I found it. A 1990 article where Dillon's had plans to acquire a store from Homeland, where all was explained. The OCR text is below and has some errors but it answered everything...that it was indeed Harvest Foods of Little Rock (seems Acadia Partners Inc., which later became Harvest Foods Inc., had bought more than just the Little Rock Safeway), that it was Skaggs that had the stores originally (with the larger hard goods selection the Skaggs Albertsons stores were originally known for), that Harvest Foods DID maintain the hard goods section that Albertsons scrapped. The Great Plains division switch happened later (the OK distribution center was built in 1999).
Dillon Stores Division of Hutchinson is negotiating with Harvest Foods Inc. to buy its Salina grocery store at 2350 Planet. Officials from both companies expect to close the deal in about 30 days, which, if successful, will give Dillon Stores its fourth grocery store in Salina and its largest store in Kansas. The 65,000-square-f oot store will be slightly larger than the chain's superstores located in Wichita and throughout northeast Kansas, said Ken Reefer, a Dillon Stores spokesman. "Most stores in that class are more than 60,000 square feet," Reefer said. Harvest Foods, based in Little Rock, Ark., indicated in a prepared release it is selling the Salina store in order to consolidate its operations. "We believe it will allow us to best utilize our human resources and capital in our other operations, including our other stores in Kansas," the statement said. The company's 60 stores are mostly in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas. It also has some in Oklahoma and only five stores in Ransas — four of them in Wichita. The Wichita stores and the lone store in Salina were bought from Skaggs Alpha Beta last year. Skaggs built the Salina store in February 1986. A Harvest Foods spokesman said the Dillon deal involves only the Salina store and won't affect operations of its Wichita groceries. The Salina Harvest Foods was the company's most northerly store. By consolidating its marketing regions, Harvest Foods is repeating a move by Skaggs Alpha Beta last year when it sold 12 of its grocery stores in "We see this as a real complement and an opportunity to ex* pand in Salina, which is one of our key operating areas." — KenKeefer Dillon spokesman Ransas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. A Skaggs spokesman last year said that Skaggs had overexpanded geo-, graphically, which increased the company's supervisory burden and responsibilities. The core of its gro- eery stores are in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. Dillon Stores, by comparison, has* 61 grocery stores in 28 Kansas com-" munities. "We see this as a real complement * and an opportunity to expand in Salina, which is one of our key operating areas," Reefer said. Keefer said no significant change in operations is expected initially, but some merchandise shifting likely will occur later. First Skaggs, then Harvest Foods, maintained a multi-aisle section of hard goods and general merchandise in addition to its food departments. Reefer said he doubted Dillon Stores would continue to maintain the size of the hard goods selections.
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by storewanderer »

So Harvest Foods was operating former Safeway and former Skaggs Alpha Beta locations. No wonder they didn't last, two very different formats.

Interestingly the Dillons in the former Albertsons has better Yelp reviews than any other location... https://www.yelp.com/biz/dillons-wichita-2
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote:So Harvest Foods was operating former Safeway and former Skaggs Alpha Beta locations. No wonder they didn't last, two very different formats.
According to this link this link they paid $66 million for 51 Safeway stores and $144 million for 12 Skaggs stores. So they paid $1.6 million for each Safeway store (on average, that cost presumably includes the DC and other facilities) and $12 million for each Skaggs store. Either way, this was not a sound move for the company's intended goal (to sell everything at a profit after 10 years, or go public), considering that a number of the Skaggs stores were a ways away from their base in Little Rock.

It looks like unlike AppleTree or Food Barn (KC), Harvest Foods actually was well funded and wasn't saddled with debt that was unworkable (AppleTree ran into big problems fairly fast when they found they were stuck with a dated group of stores when their existing competitors were moving forward with nicer stores, and new competitors were undercutting them in price). But no doubt the Safeway stores caused problems for Harvest Foods...I heard that there were some '60s Marina stores that were included in the division. Maybe they were trying to buy the Skaggs stores to fuel the rest of the company. :roll:
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by klkla »

pseudo3d wrote:they paid $144 million for 12 Skaggs stores ... $12 million for each Skaggs store.
That's crazy. In the late 80's it only cost $6-8 million to build a store from ground up here in Southern California where real estate costs are much higher. $12 million would have been way too much no matter how you look at it.
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Re: Albertsons in Wichita, KS

Post by pseudo3d »

klkla wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:they paid $144 million for 12 Skaggs stores ... $12 million for each Skaggs store.
That's crazy. In the late 80's it only cost $6-8 million to build a store from ground up here in Southern California where real estate costs are much higher. $12 million would have been way too much no matter how you look at it.
Yeah, especially considering that in 1992 Albertsons purchased 74 stores from American Stores (all branded Jewel-Osco, all outside Chicagoland, with all but a few being built as Skaggs stores), and while Albertsons never said how much they paid, American Stores got over $300 million out of it, so let's assume that it was 330 million paid, would still be under $5 million a store.

Hard to believe American Stores didn't try them to sell the whole division at the cash they were plunking down for those twelve stores. :shock: :roll:
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