Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by Super S »

pseudo3d wrote:
It depends on what the merchandise mix is, depending if they lean "Wegmans" or lean "Walmart". What I mean by this is leaning toward the Wegmans style of store design, cloned by H-E-B (and possibly others)--one with a huge perishable departments (and a lot of space to handle crowds, resulting in inflated square footage), possibly a beer and wine bar but not so much in merchandise mix (besides an expanded kitchen gear department like H-E-B has). The "Walmart" idea would be leaning to more of Kroger's "Marketplace" layout, which has fairly standard features but a larger selection of general merchandise (possibly in part to replace ShopKo's merchandise mix). The upscale store design certainly suggests the former, maybe they'll even use a new name to differentiate it. Either way, this looks like one to watch.
I have to wonder if Albertson's has been taking note of the superstore concept and is considering trying the format. Boise has not only Walmart, but also Fred Meyer in the picture. Kroger has been taking some of the Fred Meyer concept and applying it towards new stores in the midwest over the past few years to not only compete better with Walmart, but also stores such as Meijer.

Kmart (which has closed their last store in Boise) and Target have hit stumbling blocks with their grocery attempts, partly due to not having an established grocery infrastucture in place. Albertsons certainly would have no issue there. But it's hard to say if they could operate a general merchandise type of store that has competitive pricing. Kroger has the advantage of owning Fred Meyer, where Albertsons doesn't have a superstore format, which means less buying power on the general merchandise side.

In any case, this will be an interesting one to watch.
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by pseudo3d »

Super S wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:
It depends on what the merchandise mix is, depending if they lean "Wegmans" or lean "Walmart". What I mean by this is leaning toward the Wegmans style of store design, cloned by H-E-B (and possibly others)--one with a huge perishable departments (and a lot of space to handle crowds, resulting in inflated square footage), possibly a beer and wine bar but not so much in merchandise mix (besides an expanded kitchen gear department like H-E-B has). The "Walmart" idea would be leaning to more of Kroger's "Marketplace" layout, which has fairly standard features but a larger selection of general merchandise (possibly in part to replace ShopKo's merchandise mix). The upscale store design certainly suggests the former, maybe they'll even use a new name to differentiate it. Either way, this looks like one to watch.
I have to wonder if Albertson's has been taking note of the superstore concept and is considering trying the format. Boise has not only Walmart, but also Fred Meyer in the picture. Kroger has been taking some of the Fred Meyer concept and applying it towards new stores in the midwest over the past few years to not only compete better with Walmart, but also stores such as Meijer.

Kmart (which has closed their last store in Boise) and Target have hit stumbling blocks with their grocery attempts, partly due to not having an established grocery infrastucture in place. Albertsons certainly would have no issue there. But it's hard to say if they could operate a general merchandise type of store that has competitive pricing. Kroger has the advantage of owning Fred Meyer, where Albertsons doesn't have a superstore format, which means less buying power on the general merchandise side.

In any case, this will be an interesting one to watch.
Topic's been discussed before but the problem with both Kmart and Target in their food attempts were different in so many aspects, with Kmart operating the best superstore food format (in comparison to Target and Walmart) but was too expensive to roll out for the problems that the company was having in the early 1990s and hamstrung by the fact that it used third party distributors while Target built SuperTarget as a novelty but never really thought about food until the 2000s when it started to re-merchandise its stores and even today never feels right in terms of product mix and pricing.

There is a Fred Meyer down the street, which probably will beat whatever Albertsons has to offer. However, if Fred Meyer tries to roll out the "Spokane Test" to the rest of the chain, it could erode traffic for the rest of the stores. I think it's certainly within reason for ABS to try, with being able to move around fixtures and reclaim space if ideas don't work out.
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by aroundtownbrown »

Rosauers Supermarkets will close its Meridian store on the corner of Eagle Road and Ustick at the close of business on Dec. 2.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/busi ... rylink=cpy
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by storewanderer »

The Rosauers seems to be pretty well-reviewed so it looks to me like they are clearly "bowing out" before this large Albertsons opens.

I think Super 1 Foods is the main thing driving volume for URM Stores at this time. Rosauers appears to be lagging a bit compared to where it was a decade ago.
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by Super S »

Too bad. I was kinda hoping that another grocery-only chain could somehow establish a presence in Boise. The competition has shifted from traditional grocery to low-cost stores such as WinCo as well as Walmart and Fred Meyer. Boise had a lot of price wars in the 1980s when Buttrey and Smith's were still in the picture, and Fred Meyer had barely established a presence. The independents such as D'Alessandro's and M&W also got into it. (Safeway was already out of the picture then) I still sometimes wonder how Albertsons can keep so many higher priced stores open there even considering that it is the "hometown" grocer. The Boise stores were certainly affected by problems Albertsons has had over the years.
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by pseudo3d »

Reading about Rosaeurs, it seems to be pretty high priced (even compared to Albertsons), which may have contributed in its demise. Most of the praise comes from Huckleberry's, a "store-within-a-store" that focuses on natural foods and supplements. Still, the Albertsons won't open for a while (or is it?), so why not at least try to stick around before it does?
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by storewanderer »

Rosauers is priced fairly comparably to Albertsons/Safeway. Some items more, some items less, on regular price goods. At this point, I would say they probably don't have as good of specials/promotions as Albertsons/Safeway.

Rosauers has a much wider merchandise mix than Albertsons, some in-store restaurants, large expansive produce departments that are well priced and push actual "Local" stuff with direct buys straight from smaller packers/direct from farms, (lots of items that aren't stickered since they are very much farm to store), and a large, very expansive, full scratch bakery.

They have a unique offering.

Why they opted to close now is anyone's guess...

I wonder if another grocer may take their space. One that may be more effective than they have been in the location. WinCo? Whole Foods? That could get interesting.

I don't really know, I think Rosauers home market (Spokane) is also a pretty price sensitive market and it actually has more competition than Boise has...
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by SamSpade »

Along with the new, larger "mega" Albertsons, the Boise Co-Op opened a location nearby in November 2015 which likely started further eating into Rosauers margins since they effectively offer all the high-end items (& more) that Huckleberry's would have.

In Hood River recently, I found Rosauers departments to be well maintained and their pricing to be fair (but not inexpensive). Maybe with the failure of expanding into the Treasure Valley, the cost of driving one truck down into that area from their Spokane warehouse became excessive. I don't think there were any URM member stores in that area.

At least with Hood River, they are servicing the small independent grocer in Cascade Locks and several other small communities along the I-84 / I-82 / US97 corridors. There is also only one other supermarket in Hood River, a Safeway, which is in a completely different part of town.
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Re: Largest Albertsons to open in Meridian, ID (former ShopKo)

Post by kr.abs.swy »

Regarding Rosauers ...

The article in the Statesman said that Rosauers had originally planned additional stores in Boise. A reasonable theory is that they opened the Meridian store with expectations to build other stores but found performance to be only marginal, thus insufficient to justify further expansion. So without a larger base of stores to spread costs over (distribution from Spokane and marketing in a medium-sized media market), they decided to exit the market. Presumably a new Albertsons down the street and another new WinCo in the area factored into the decision as performance at what I assume was only a marginal store was unlikely to get better. This certainly wasn't a high volume store; there were seldom more than two checkstands (and the customer service counter) open.

I suspect that they had identified an opportunity as, in 2012, Albertsons/SuperValu really had not been in the business of opening new stores for several years so there were areas of the Boise suburbs where a new conventional supermarket made sense. (The Eagle Island Fred Meyer filled one of these gaps.)

Employees were always friendly and produce was impressive. We found the Huckleberry's section to be quite compelling. But I also found that prices in the main grocery store were noticeably higher than at Albertsons and Fred Meyer and far above WinCo. I assume that there were other customers that did what we did: cherry pick certain items at Rosauers once a month or so but do most of our shopping elsewhere.

This store is on one of the busiest non-freeway highways in the state, but a street that has a surprising dearth of supermarkets (the Eagle and McMillan Albertsons, the Boise Co-Op and the Rosauers). The number of people driving by this store on their way home from work is off the charts. However, access is a pain. You always feel like you're taking your life into your hands trying to get back onto Eagle Road (50 mph speed limit and lots of cars). If you're commuting home from work and have an option of another store closer to home with easier access, I can easily see why you would drive right by this Rosauers.

Regardless, I can't imagine that someone isn't trying to get Whole Foods interested in assuming this lease. This store is on the other side of Boise from Boise's only Whole Foods store, is only about five years old, and would have plenty of space for Amazon to experiment with whatever changes they are (I assume) planning to the Whole Foods template (Amazon shipping lockers? A Kindle store? Who knows).
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