United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

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pseudo3d
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:The store in Roswell used to be a Furr's prior to 2001 (seems LB quickly reopened it, no clue on decor). The Abilene store at Pine Street was indeed a Safeway (confirmed here).
I'd be willing to bet that the Roswell store may have also been Safeway at some point. A good number, though not all, of the stores Furr's operated were former Safeway stores. Judging by the look of the architecture, it has many Safeway 1970's/1980's elements.

It will also be a very small Albertsons; it only looks to be 35,000-40,000sf. When you consider that the other Albertsons store in town looks to be over 50,000sf, it will be a small store.
Probably. The El Paso division of Safeway was sold to Furr's, after all.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

Turns out they've been doing some rolling conversions like ACME did with A&P. Some observations from all this...

- The Clyde store reopened May 12th, thanks to info from the Chamber of Commerce. It looks like they added United's décor package to it, as that does seem to match the newer store in Brownwood opened last year. The floor, unsurprisingly, remains unchanged. However, there's evidence that it was merely altered, like the clearly-added-later "UNITED" sign next to a larger "Bakes" sign.
- The "$5" sticker and hanging signage is straight out of Safeway.
- The signage outside prominently mentions a "Café", which was not seen in the old Cash Saver signage. This is in reference to Mac's Diner, an eatery inside the store. This appears to be operated by the store and not a third party.
Yes, the diner is still there. I don't think they're going to call it Mac's but they're definitely keeping the Café. They had some delicious smelling breakfast this morning!
- Seymour opened May 13th, and the Seminole store also has reopened sometime this last past week, and they did keep it as a United Supermarkets (not Super Saver Foods). The Seminole store is extremely small, in the range of 15k square feet.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

As I predicted, the Abilene Pine Street store did not keep its Ace Hardware store-within-a-store. Bummer. Would've liked to see some new non-food concepts come out of United/Albertsons/Safeway, even if it's in disparate different stores. The upshot is at least the United can stock more of what it originally carried—food. To note, this was originally a Safeway back in the 1980s.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

They had an article on the reopening of the former Lawrence Bros. in Ruidoso into a full Albertsons Market. They actually added a full "Albertsons Market" sign (to my knowledge, only the new-build in Alamogordo has that), and already made improvements like adding bulk foods. They promise it will have the features of "better" Albertsons stores (wing bars, sushi, etc.). Ruidoso seems to be a nice area in NM (resort town). The Roswell store also reopened yesterday.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by storewanderer »

I went up to Ruidoso and had not remembered this was a former Lawrence Brothers (I had to look it up while I was in the store because the store was obviously not an original Albertsons). Actually I think it is an old Safeway based on the layout. Maybe it was a Furr's too?

Anyway the store has the Albertsons LLC wall package but beyond that it comes off like something else. Perimeter departments are kind of small but the deli packs in a lot with wing bar, sushi, salad bar, a hot mexican burrito/bowl bar (prices $2 to $2.50 an excellent value), very tiny service meat, etc. They do have a seating area in the deli actually in the spot where, as a Safeway, they would have had entry doors. I'm not sure what Lawrence Brothers was doing here and if that was just continued or United made these changes to the store.

In any case this was a pretty good store. It isn't very big, but it is jam packed with product. The store was very busy (every checkstand open), but it closes at 9 PM so it must get really slow at night.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: April 21st, 2018, 10:01 pm I went up to Ruidoso and had not remembered this was a former Lawrence Brothers (I had to look it up while I was in the store because the store was obviously not an original Albertsons). Actually I think it is an old Safeway based on the layout. Maybe it was a Furr's too?

Anyway the store has the Albertsons LLC wall package but beyond that it comes off like something else. Perimeter departments are kind of small but the deli packs in a lot with wing bar, sushi, salad bar, a hot mexican burrito/bowl bar (prices $2 to $2.50 an excellent value), very tiny service meat, etc. They do have a seating area in the deli actually in the spot where, as a Safeway, they would have had entry doors. I'm not sure what Lawrence Brothers was doing here and if that was just continued or United made these changes to the store.

In any case this was a pretty good store. It isn't very big, but it is jam packed with product. The store was very busy (every checkstand open), but it closes at 9 PM so it must get really slow at night.
According to the archived Furr's website, 721 Mechem was a Furr's as of 2001. It probably was a Safeway originally.
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