Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

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storewanderer
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Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

Post by storewanderer »

I happened upon this store in Hudson, WI. Pulling in, the place looked real shabby. Few cars in the lot, chipped paint on the building, etc. Upon walking up, I noticed the closed pharmacy then saw signs on the door that said store closing all items some percentage off.

Walked into the store and went over toward the pharmacy side first. The store looked a lot better inside, than outside. But still looked like a store from about a decade ago inside. It was a nice, big, pretty high quality store. Tough to comment on merchandising when the shelves are about 25% stocked and employees are packing items up in boxes as you are walking through. Pricing seemed pretty high (a lot higher than Cub or Hy Vee closer to Minneapolis). Looking through I saw Our Family private label items.

I got over to the fresh departments (which were pretty much all closed) last. This part of the store was extremely nice looking. It had different flooring and lighting than the rest of the store. Giant (empty/closed) service meat counter. Giant deli. Salad bar. Caribou Coffee kiosk and attached seating area which was also quite nice. Still had limited produce and bakery.

I wonder what happened with this store? Given the giant fresh departments, it must have done quite well in the past. They were using generic Our Family plastic bags but looking at the receipt it appears this is a corporate Spartan Nash operation. I know Nash Finish (I mean Finch) ran pretty lousy retail operations with a tract record of failure (will never forget their Avanza joke in Denver) but am not sure how Spartan did on that end of the business.
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Re: Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

I wonder who could take this store? The competition nearby is a Target, a County Market (SVU supplied store), and a Walmart.
Hy-Vee could probably take this store, as they opened a store in Plymouth, MN that was a former Rainbow Foods (became a Cub for a a couple years after Roundy's exited the Twin Cities).
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Re: Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

Post by storewanderer »

Target was undergoing a remodel. Wal Mart was pretty unimpressive there, a smaller Division 1 Store with limited everything. County Market was very busy (it was okay). I did not see what else was in this town beyond that one exit. Hy Vee would probably be a good bet.
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Re: Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

Post by klkla »

storewanderer wrote: November 9th, 2019, 12:36 am I happened upon this store in Hudson, WI. Pulling in, the place looked real shabby. Few cars in the lot, chipped paint on the building, etc. Upon walking up, I noticed the closed pharmacy then saw signs on the door that said store closing all items some percentage off.

Walked into the store and went over toward the pharmacy side first. The store looked a lot better inside, than outside. But still looked like a store from about a decade ago inside. It was a nice, big, pretty high quality store. Tough to comment on merchandising when the shelves are about 25% stocked and employees are packing items up in boxes as you are walking through. Pricing seemed pretty high (a lot higher than Cub or Hy Vee closer to Minneapolis). Looking through I saw Our Family private label items.

I got over to the fresh departments (which were pretty much all closed) last. This part of the store was extremely nice looking. It had different flooring and lighting than the rest of the store. Giant (empty/closed) service meat counter. Giant deli. Salad bar. Caribou Coffee kiosk and attached seating area which was also quite nice. Still had limited produce and bakery.

I wonder what happened with this store? Given the giant fresh departments, it must have done quite well in the past. They were using generic Our Family plastic bags but looking at the receipt it appears this is a corporate Spartan Nash operation. I know Nash Finish (I mean Finch) ran pretty lousy retail operations with a tract record of failure (will never forget their Avanza joke in Denver) but am not sure how Spartan did on that end of the business.
It sounds like it was a somewhat upscale market before. What were the demographics of the neighborhood like? Could it be that the store was just in a neighborhood that couldn’t support an upscale store?
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Re: Family Fresh Foods Hudson, WI

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: November 25th, 2019, 10:52 am


It sounds like it was a somewhat upscale market before. What were the demographics of the neighborhood like? Could it be that the store was just in a neighborhood that couldn’t support an upscale store?
I did some research and found exactly 10 years ago this store converted from Econofoods to this format. Econofoods is exactly what it sounds like. So it was an upscale remodel 10 years ago. It was probably too upscale for the town. The placement of the store near Target probably did not help as the Wal Mart seemed to be pulling quite a bit more traffic. The County Market was near Wal Mart as well and very very busy. I am not sure who the franchise on the County Market was, but it was a large well appointed, well assorted store with so so at best pricing but lacked any real "wow" factor.
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