United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

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United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

United is expanding again, purchasing 7 stores from Lawrence Bros. (small-town grocer I've never heard of, IGA affiliate), five of which are in Texas, two of which are in New Mexico. What's particularly interesting is the Seminole, Texas store will reopen as Super Saver Foods...the first new Super Saver opened in over a decade, and the first Super Saver in the United division (it may have a slightly different name than the Super Saver stores in Utah...unless there are plans to close or convert those to full-scale Albertsons).

http://supermarketnews.com/retail-finan ... ico-stores
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by architect »

This is an interesting move to say the least. Aside from the Roswell and Abilene stores, these locations are mostly in small towns, which likely limits their potential for sales growth. It seems like these stores would be more of a hastle to rebrand than they are worth revenue-wise.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by wnetmacman »

architect wrote:Aside from the Roswell and Abilene stores, these locations are mostly in small towns, which likely limits their potential for sales growth
Keep in mind, however, that United specializes in smaller towns throughout the Panhandle of Texas. These stores would be right up their alley. And folks in these smaller towns don't want a hypermarket. Seminole (where the Super Saver is going) only has a standard, non-Supercenter Walmart.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by storewanderer »

Lawrence Brothers is who bought the FTC-required divests when Albertsons and United merged. It was only a couple locations as I recall; all were Albertsons locations.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

I think they bought Wichita Falls and Amarillo, both of which only had one Albertsons left (as they were United-dominated towns). The Cash Saver (owned by Lawrence Bros.) in Winters even made it into some mainstream news sites as they were about to close before Walmart decided to leave town first.

My question is, why? United isn't buying all the stores from Lawrence Bros. (yet?), and they might have been moribund stores that Lawrence Bros. didn't even want. While it's nice to see the store count go up a bit, I'd rather see them focus on Dallas and parts south (a new store for Waco, 95k square feet Market Street stores, additional and larger Amigos).
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

This article indicates the Roswell store will convert to the name in late May of this year, with a 3-day closure. The article also mentions the store will go changes in "signage, interior design, displays and inventory", which could mean anything from a "Slap stickers on the old brands and do a total reset" conversions like ACME did, or a "new paint and a total décor" re-do like Haggen did to its acquisitions.
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by storewanderer »

I think United will do better than Acme did on these quickie conversions. They do not seem to do things like the rest of the company does...
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

The Cost Saver store in Abilene (which was converted from a Lawrence Bros. a few years ago) has an Ace Hardware inside (I doubt this will be kept) looks like it was a Safeway some years ago (the Ace sign replaced DRUGS after the store converted to CS).
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Re: United to buy 7 stores from Lawrence Bros.

Post by pseudo3d »

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

Post by wnetmacman »

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.
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