Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by rwsandiego »

I think Albertsons is as strong or possibly stronger than VONS in Orange County. They definitely didn't come close to VONS in San Diego.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by storewanderer »

rwsandiego wrote: January 16th, 2021, 10:44 pm I think Albertsons is as strong or possibly stronger than VONS in Orange County. They definitely didn't come close to VONS in San Diego.
Albertsons had (has) some pretty nice stores in San Diego, particularly north of San Diego, there were a number of new stores built in the early 00's, then also even a couple by Supervalu (I think one or two of those closed already). I am guessing the old Alpha Beta Stores dragged down their reputation there.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by Bluelightspecial »

I would guess most of Bakersfield area is better for the Albertsons banner. I don't think there are any other Albertsons banners left in Kern county except for maybe Lake Isabella that are successful. As a rule, everything east of Interstate 15 should be an Albertsons. Palm Springs might be the exception. There used to be a Pavilions in Rancho Mirage that had to sold off due to the Haagen fiasco. There is a very upscale Albertsons in Rancho Mirage. If they wanted to differentiate between banners, they probably should have made this a Pavilions when they had to sell the other one off.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by storewanderer »

My general impression is where Albertsons built newer stores in the early 00's, where the stores actually stayed open and were successful, they have a decent image and reputation in those markets. Those were nice stores, large, and well built. Conversely the former Lucky Stores, as well as late 80's/early 90's original Albertsons Stores, that were older stores and needed significant investment (and mostly did not get it or get it in a significant enough manner) were not good at all for image. Safeway did much better "Lifestyle" remodels to those smaller/older Vons stores to make them feel as if they had been modernized. They cut many corners, but they dimmed the lights so you didn't notice. Good sound systems were installed to soften the music and pages. In the case of many Albertsons remodels in the 00's to older stores, I'm not sure if they even dusted the lights let alone anything else and they sure didn't do anything with the in-store sound systems.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

storewanderer wrote: January 16th, 2021, 11:12 pm
rwsandiego wrote: January 16th, 2021, 10:44 pm I think Albertsons is as strong or possibly stronger than VONS in Orange County. They definitely didn't come close to VONS in San Diego.
Albertsons had (has) some pretty nice stores in San Diego, particularly north of San Diego, there were a number of new stores built in the early 00's, then also even a couple by Supervalu (I think one or two of those closed already). I am guessing the old Alpha Beta Stores dragged down their reputation there.
Many of the former Alpha Beta stores were sold to Haggen.
Pre-ASC, Albertsons had some presence in San Diego, mostly 80's/90's stores in North County, not to mention the 4 stores they got from Big Bear. The ASC acquisition fueled their presence in San Diego.
San Diego shoppers were fine with Lucky being converted to Albertsons, because the Lucky brand was relatively new to San Diego. The Lucky stores around here were called Food Basket until the late 80's.
Albertsons was a close #2 to Vons in market share here.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

rwsandiego wrote: January 16th, 2021, 10:44 pm I think Albertsons is as strong or possibly stronger than VONS in Orange County. They definitely didn't come close to VONS in San Diego.
Yes- Albertsons first SoCal stores were in OC (they acquired some small chain around 1964 or so). After the Lucky "marriage", they were #1 in OC. They invested heavily in OC in the Larry Johnston era, building and remodeling aggressively at the time.
Albertsons had one mid-60's store in Corona Del Mar (Newport Beach) that operated for around 50 years as Albertsons before Haggen bought it.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by klkla »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: January 17th, 2021, 12:21 pm
storewanderer wrote: January 16th, 2021, 11:12 pm
rwsandiego wrote: January 16th, 2021, 10:44 pm I think Albertsons is as strong or possibly stronger than VONS in Orange County. They definitely didn't come close to VONS in San Diego.
Albertsons had (has) some pretty nice stores in San Diego, particularly north of San Diego, there were a number of new stores built in the early 00's, then also even a couple by Supervalu (I think one or two of those closed already). I am guessing the old Alpha Beta Stores dragged down their reputation there.
Many of the former Alpha Beta stores were sold to Haggen.
Pre-ASC, Albertsons had some presence in San Diego, mostly 80's/90's stores in North County, not to mention the 4 stores they got from Big Bear. The ASC acquisition fueled their presence in San Diego.
San Diego shoppers were fine with Lucky being converted to Albertsons, because the Lucky brand was relatively new to San Diego. The Lucky stores around here were called Food Basket until the late 80's.
Albertsons was a close #2 to Vons in market share here.
The only former Alpha Beta stores I can think of in San Diego sold to Haggen were Coronado and Pacific Beach.

Vons became the dominant grocer in San Diego when they acquired Safeway's Southern California division. Vons was already #1 in the market and Safeway was a strong #3 behind Food Basket. More importantly they had very little overlap with Vons being stronger in the newly developed suburban areas and Safeway stronger in the more mature urban areas. At this point they were not just #1 they were absolutely dominant.

It's accurate to say that Albertson's was #2 in market share in 2015 but it was not even close in market share to Vons. It would be more accurate to say they were a distant #2. Now the combined company is even more dominant than when they acquired Safeway. If this had had happened twenty years ago there's no way the FTC would have allowed this near monopoly to occur.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by klkla »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: January 17th, 2021, 12:21 pm San Diego shoppers were fine with Lucky being converted to Albertsons, because the Lucky brand was relatively new to San Diego. The Lucky stores around here were called Food Basket until the late 80's.
Albertsons was a close #2 to Vons in market share here.
I found some data from 2008 for San Diego market share. This was during the SuperValu era and all the stores had been converted to the Albertson's name by this time:

#1 - Vons 28.5% (57 stores)
#2 - Costco 18.8% (12 stores)
#3 - Kroger under Ralphs + Food4Less names 15.7% (38 stores)
#4 - Albertson's 14.1% (52 stores)
#5 - Smart & Final 5.0% (29 stores)
#6 - Stater Bros 4.6% (10 stores)

It does not sound like San Diego was O.K. with Albertson's after the conversion. Even though they had almost the same number of stores as Vons they had half the market share and was clearly underperforming. Until looking at this data I hadn't realized just how bad they were actually performing at this time.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by rwsandiego »

klkla wrote: January 17th, 2021, 6:27 pm
I found some data from 2008 for San Diego market share. This was during the SuperValu era and all the stores had been converted to the Albertson's name by this time:

#1 - Vons 28.5% (57 stores)
#2 - Costco 18.8% (12 stores)
#3 - Kroger under Ralphs + Food4Less names 15.7% (38 stores)
#4 - Albertson's 14.1% (52 stores)
#5 - Smart & Final 5.0% (29 stores)
#6 - Stater Bros 4.6% (10 stores)

It does not sound like San Diego was O.K. with Albertson's after the conversion. Even though they had almost the same number of stores as Vons they had half the market share and was clearly underperforming. Until looking at this data I hadn't realized just how bad they were actually performing at this time.
While Vons had/has some small stores, Albertsons had a lot of old, tiny stores. Many, if not most, were run down by Lucky before the Albertsons/ASC merger. Albertsons did a good job of cleaning them up, but they were still tiny stores.
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Re: Albertson/Vons/Pavilions Pricing

Post by veteran+ »

I did not live long in San Diego but this is what was available to me as a shopper.

Hillcrest neighborhood:

Ralphs Fresh Fare on University Av.

Vons on W. Washington St.



Mission Valley neighborhood:

Ralphs Fresh Fare on Mission Center Rd.

Food4Less 2 blocks away.




NO nearby Albertsons! For such a densely populated area seems to be a scarcity of the 3 big chains.
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