Main & Vine closing in January

[architect]

Wow, this is surprising:

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/busi ... 11523.html

From what I can tell, it seems that the selection at the store was somewhat similar to the product mix at The Fresh Market in other parts of the US. This likely put them in a position of not having an extensive enough mainstream selection to attract regular visitors, while also not having the extensive specialty pull that stores such as Central Market or Wegmans are able to pull. Also, a new Fred Meyer is set to open in Gig Harbor, which would likely pull many of the customers from this store who had stayed from its QFC days. It is still a huge surprise though, considering the extent which Kroger publicized this concept.

[klkla]

In all fairness they did say this was a test to begin with in a former QFC location which happens to be located near a new Fred Meyer that will open the day after this store closes.

An article I found says the new Fred Meyer is 65,000 sq. ft.

Isn't that small for a FM?

[storewanderer]

The product mix was nothing like The Fresh Market. Quality was not even close to The Fresh Market. Prices were probably lower. It was basically a standard smaller Kroger mix, minus ANYTHING Kroger brand. They had Private Selection, Mountain Dairy, Simple Truth (heavily) but no Kroger brand anything. There were a few more specialty items sprinkled in but nothing too different. Layout was much like a Sprouts.

Given all of the hype Kroger created when they opened this store, closing it does not look good. This was a concept they claimed to be looking to test, refine, and expand. This is a fairly significant failure.

Kroger needs to get to the root cause of what happened with this store. Was the concept flawed? Was it that Kroger's product quality on perimeter was not good enough to make this work (this issue is costing Smiths more and more of my business as I can find better fresh items elsewhere for less money)?

Was it mismerchandised? Was this store developed by the same arm of Kroger that came up with the Fred Meyer Spokane Test or the Fred Meyer Medford South downsizing of non food and widening of grocery aisles?

Maybe it is a good sign. Kroger has been lost the past couple years. Initiatives like this were losers that they did not know how to execute. Hopefully Kroger is getting back to focusing on the things it does well. Recent financial results are somewhat promising but from a customer standpoint I continue to be frustrated with some of their fresh product quality (and it isn't a store issue: it is that the stuff Kroger sends is garbage) and ongoing chronic issues with out of stocks on various items (regular price and sale items but oddly the regular price items seem to be worse).

Kroger needs to get back to how it did things for the successful decade of its growing same store sales in a lousy economy. They need to keep improving their operation, improving pricing, improving their quality, improving their efficiency, improving their merchandising. There is always room for improvement but the past couple years this company has taken a few steps back in a few of those regards and its sales results reflect that.

[pseudo3d]

In all fairness they did say this was a test to begin with in a former QFC location which happens to be located near a new Fred Meyer that will open the day after this store closes.

An article I found says the new Fred Meyer is 65,000 sq. ft.

Isn't that small for a FM?

There is a Fred Meyer "Marketplace" store (in FM's case, smaller than a regular FM) that was across from the QFC about a third of a mile away, across the highway. This probably had the more "traditional" supermarket experience all along. But if a "new" Fred Meyer is opening, that store is also probably closing. But as you pointed out, it's still not a full-line Fred Meyer.

[storewanderer]

The thing is this QFC was an okay performer as a QFC. So Kroger does this, blows all this money on a total gut and remodel/rebuild of an aging QFC, and now closes the store? I am surprised they didn't re-convert it back to QFC.

Meanwhile across the street from this store was a brand new Safeway, sold to Haggen, bombed, and then sold back to Albertsons and re-opened as Safeway. Safeway was also able to reclaim the gas station at that site which had been sold to United Oil. Looks like they won this intersection.

[pseudo3d]

The thing is this QFC was an okay performer as a QFC. So Kroger does this, blows all this money on a total gut and remodel/rebuild of an aging QFC, and now closes the store? I am surprised they didn't re-convert it back to QFC.

Meanwhile across the street from this store was a brand new Safeway, sold to Haggen, bombed, and then sold back to Albertsons and re-opened as Safeway. Safeway was also able to reclaim the gas station at that site which had been sold to United Oil. Looks like they won this intersection.

The new Fred Meyer, though, is catty-corner to the Safeway (no word on the other FM), so I wouldn't claim a victory for Albertsons just yet. But if the Main & Vine was supposed to be a "test" for Kroger, what actually happened? The highly limited merchandise mix probably did it no favors, but it did have an interesting prepared foods area which seemed to be liked despite some extremely high prices ($4 for a single slice?! That's more than Whole Foods!), which MAY see a return in the nearby Fred Meyer, but that's doubtful.

I think I remember saying on this board a while back that Main & Vine wasn't going anywhere after a year of being open, and maybe this is a good thing since Kroger is now stepping back on its changes and starts to trim back things that aren't working.

[storewanderer]

Oh, I did not realize how close in proximity the new Fred Meyer was to this store. I thought the new Fred Meyer was located near the old one.

Still I do not think the intention here was to gut, go telling Wall Street you have a new store concept, and spend a ton of money on an old QFC that performed okay, and close it in two years.

$4 pizza slice is what Whole Foods charges out west now. Yes it is too high and I will not pay it. The prepared food at Main and Vine, which I did not try, did not look all that great to me and I did not think the prices were very good. But they were in line with other "upper end" grocery store prepared food prices. I am not sure the quality was in line with other "upper end" grocery prepared foods though. In general prices up in Washington are pretty high now for a variety of reasons.

[pseudo3d]

Oh, I did not realize how close in proximity the new Fred Meyer was to this store. I thought the new Fred Meyer was located near the old one.

Still I do not think the intention here was to gut, go telling Wall Street you have a new store concept, and spend a ton of money on an old QFC that performed okay, and close it in two years.

$4 pizza slice is what Whole Foods charges out west now. Yes it is too high and I will not pay it. The prepared food at Main and Vine, which I did not try, did not look all that great to me and I did not think the prices were very good. But they were in line with other "upper end" grocery store prepared food prices. I am not sure the quality was in line with other "upper end" grocery prepared foods though. In general prices up in Washington are pretty high now for a variety of reasons.

Looking back, Main & Vine was supposed to supposed to apply Mariano's concepts to other markets and based on what I've heard, the prepared foods were not like Mariano's, plus the size difference (of the store) was vastly different. Kroger (in the article) claims to have implemented the "features and unique offerings" to other stores but it just seems odd. Maybe the plan really was to replace both QFC and the older Fred Meyer with a new Fred Meyer with more fresh offerings but the expensive remodel of QFC makes that questionable. This wasn't a "repaint, remerchandise, and open within a month or two" sort of thing, they spent nearly half a year re-doing the store with uncovering skylights and creating a whole new brand, only to discard everything in two years. And if QFC and the smaller Fred Meyer were able to co-exist prior to 2015, it raises the question of why they can't just remerchandise Main & Vine to a traditional QFC, and keep the things that they renovated (like the skylights). The other major concern is why is the Fred Meyer that they're opening so small? It's almost as if they want to streamline QFC and Fred Meyer into a single brand with only limited GM space...

[storewanderer]

I don't know. The timing of opening Main & Vine was about the same as when they purchased Mariano's. I feel like the development of Main & Vine and purchase of Mariano's sort of paralleled each other in time. They did not "cross" until Main & Vine actually opened.

Main & Vine reminded me nothing of Mariano's. It reminded me more of a Sprouts with larger perimeter areas and a more mainstream mix of items.

[marshd1000]

From what I remember, the reason that the new Gig Harbor Fred Meyer is not a full sized one is because of opposition to big box stores. A few years ago, Walmart tried to build a store in Gig Harbor and there was a huge outcry over that. I am assuming that the current Fred Meyer Marketplace aka “Northwest Best” is a bit smaller than the new one being built. It was actually a former Stock Market Foods that was acquired by Fred Meyer as part of the QFC acquisition.