Raleys "find a rock" promotion

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storewanderer
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Raleys "find a rock" promotion

Post by storewanderer »

Appears to be a local promotion in the Fernley, NV Store. They have planted random "rocks" in random places and whoever finds the rocks can go redeem the rocks for a free of whatever the picture on the rock is.

https://www.facebook.com/RaleysFernley/

I think, Raleys would be better off, getting the shelves in the former Scolaris Stores restocked which has been a VERY slow process, getting the quality of the perimeters up to the level of their legacy stores, getting their own seasonal goods into the Scolaris Stores, getting Catalina Coupon printers into the Scolaris Stores so the Something Extra Program can be fully implemented, getting plastic bags into the stores that actually have a store name printed on them, and getting uniforms for all of the employees because some still seem to be wearing the old Scolaris blue polos. Oh and they also need to get the rural stores in Fernley and Yerington off the "high" price scale and onto the "5% lower" price scale they use in other similar areas. I have some faith they will get it right, but I think the corporate management in Sacramento has not given the local stores the proper support or allocated enough talent to get these stores right. This reminds me so much of Haggen in CA/AZ...

I don't understand how it can be so hard to stock center store shelves when you self distribute. The excuse is they want to capture "purchase data" from the "Something Extra" cards to determine how to stock the shelves. When you took over stores that already had poor center store merchandising, and in the weeks leading up to the ownership change the prior owners ran clearance sales and had run down their inventory, then grand open with the Raleys banner but restock them very haphazardly with only the most basic items, and drive away customers as a result, you are not getting very good data to determine how to stock the shelves in the future.
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Re: Raleys "find a rock" promotion

Post by rwsandiego »

storewanderer wrote: August 15th, 2018, 10:59 pm Appears to be a local promotion in the Fernley, NV Store. They have planted random "rocks" in random places and whoever finds the rocks can go redeem the rocks for a free of whatever the picture on the rock is.

https://www.facebook.com/RaleysFernley/

I think, Raleys would be better off, getting the shelves in the former Scolaris Stores restocked which has been a VERY slow process, getting the quality of the perimeters up to the level of their legacy stores, getting their own seasonal goods into the Scolaris Stores, getting Catalina Coupon printers into the Scolaris Stores so the Something Extra Program can be fully implemented, getting plastic bags into the stores that actually have a store name printed on them, and getting uniforms for all of the employees because some still seem to be wearing the old Scolaris blue polos. Oh and they also need to get the rural stores in Fernley and Yerington off the "high" price scale and onto the "5% lower" price scale they use in other similar areas. I have some faith they will get it right, but I think the corporate management in Sacramento has not given the local stores the proper support or allocated enough talent to get these stores right. This reminds me so much of Haggen in CA/AZ...

I don't understand how it can be so hard to stock center store shelves when you self distribute. The excuse is they want to capture "purchase data" from the "Something Extra" cards to determine how to stock the shelves. When you took over stores that already had poor center store merchandising, and in the weeks leading up to the ownership change the prior owners ran clearance sales and had run down their inventory, then grand open with the Raleys banner but restock them very haphazardly with only the most basic items, and drive away customers as a result, you are not getting very good data to determine how to stock the shelves in the future.
I've never bee inside of a Raley's store, but I thought they were a decent operator. Wonder what gives.
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Re: Raleys "find a rock" promotion

Post by storewanderer »

rwsandiego wrote: August 16th, 2018, 8:11 pm
I've never bee inside of a Raley's store, but I thought they were a decent operator. Wonder what gives.
[/quote]

Raleys gets it right because they run with good quality products and provide for ample staffing levels in their stores. The typical result is strong perimeters and good overall execution/service levels. Good looking and well presented stores too. This is a contrast to competitor Save Mart with lousy quality and awful looking stores, and competitor Safeway with haphazardly understaffed in some cases stores and very mixed execution on the quality front. Luckily, the existing Raleys stores in the market have not been impacted in a visible manner by what is happening with the stores they took over from Scolaris. The existing stores are still great.

I think they bit off more than they can chew or are not giving it the proper support. Tonight I was in their "Sak N Save" Store which came with Scolaris. I don't even know where to start on how that store looked tonight (it never looked good, but tonight's condition was unacceptably bad). They've shortened all the aisles, big gaps of floor tiles missing where they yanked out the old metal rack shelving, center store full of unstocked shelf spaces, disorganized layout, and filthy looking floors.

I might just be expecting too much of them too fast. Maybe in six months they will have things resolved. But I feel like if Albertsons or Kroger had been the buyer, we would have seen stores remerchandised within a few weeks of the take over.
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Re: Raleys "find a rock" promotion

Post by storewanderer »

I was in the Fernley Raley's yesterday afternoon. The store looks very clean and orderly, and the items in the fresh departments look fresh, but the merchandising is pathetic. They have filled up various empty shelf spaces all over the store with paper products. The produce, meat, bakery, and deli looked very lightly stocked. They did fill up the old Scolaris Ice Cream by the scoop counter with some trays and some of those little 3 ounce size cups of Haagan Dazs for 1.25 each so that is no longer empty. This store was MUCH better as Scolari's and also had a lot more customer traffic.

Customer traffic was absolutely abysmal. It is currently the entry weekend for the Burning Man event (bunch of people take rvs/vans etc. and go live in the desert for a week) which is a huge weekend for grocery stores, and Fernley is one of the last stops before some people go there (the main route with the majority of participants goes through Sparks, but a good number do enter by way of Fernley also). There were 5-10 burners at the Raleys at any given time. Across the street at Wal Mart there were probably 200-300 of them. I am not sure they were all shopping, some may have just been using the parking lot. Beyond them, there were maybe another 5-10 customers in the Raleys who appeared to be "locals" all just buying a few items.

This really really reminds me of Haggen's expansion into SoCal/AZ.

It will be interesting to see what happens long term with this particular location. I think another operator could do okay with it. Raley's clearly has no clue what they are doing in rural Nevada. They need to stick to parts of Reno that have no Smiths nearby, that is where they can be successful.
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Re: Raleys "find a rock" promotion

Post by klkla »

storewanderer wrote: August 26th, 2018, 11:57 amThey have filled up various empty shelf spaces all over the store with paper products.
I've seen other stores do this preceding remodels and resets.

Generally this happens when they are going to reduce the amount of shelf space in the store during the remodel or reset. One chain here in SoCal uses 24 packs of Arrowhead water to fill the spaces for some reason.
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