Albertsons Market Street

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Albertsons Market Street

Post by Alpha8472 »

The new Albertsons Flagship store is an Albertsons Market Street. The decor is quite impressive as is the name. How do you feel about this decor? I like the font and the lighting seems to be less harsh again. Perhaps they are going back to the dimmer lighting similar to the Lifestyle decor. The new Safeway in D.C. seems quite large and that decor is different as well.

https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail- ... uee-stores
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by marshd1000 »

I do like the décor of this store. But it is not unique to the Meridian Albertsons Market Street. I have also seen a similar version of it on a actual United Market Street store in Dallas. The Broadway Albertsons in Boise has it as the article states, along with the Safeway in DC. But here in the Northwest, the Auburn Lake Tapps Haggen also sports this décor!
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

Albertsons should expand this Market Street concept to other areas to compete with Kroger Marketplaces.
Reasor's in Tulsa, as well as Hy-Vee, has stores toward the size of this concept. Albertsons should try and re-enter Oklahoma, and maybe Wichita, Omaha and Des Moines with these Market Street stores.
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by storewanderer »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: September 2nd, 2020, 1:42 pm Albertsons should expand this Market Street concept to other areas to compete with Kroger Marketplaces.
Reasor's in Tulsa, as well as Hy-Vee, has stores toward the size of this concept. Albertsons should try and re-enter Oklahoma, and maybe Wichita, Omaha and Des Moines with these Market Street stores.
The issue is execution. They are able to execute this format very well in Boise. They throw a ton of resources at it. I am not real confident in a lot of the old Safeway divisions to execute a format like this well...
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by pseudo3d »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: September 2nd, 2020, 1:42 pm Albertsons should expand this Market Street concept to other areas to compete with Kroger Marketplaces.
Reasor's in Tulsa, as well as Hy-Vee, has stores toward the size of this concept. Albertsons should try and re-enter Oklahoma, and maybe Wichita, Omaha and Des Moines with these Market Street stores.
I can't see Albertsons expanding organically anymore, and even acquisitions seem iffy at this point. The last push for acquisitions in 2015 and 2016 have been hit and miss: counting the "regular" stores (i.e. not upscale and/or specialty stores), there's been Paul's (bolstering the Boise market), G&G Supermarket (bolstering NorCal), some Lawrence Bros. stores (bolstering North Texas), and of course A&P...which aren't good performers and going nowhere in New York/North Jersey/CT.

Meanwhile, that one Albertsons store planned for Durant seems to be quietly cancelled, the closed-down car dealership they were supposed to tear down has reopened as an independent used car dealership, and the last-ditch effort to save the Florida market failed.

If Albertsons expands via acquisitions again, it will probably be in markets it already is in and/or immediately adjacent to, and if Oklahoma does end up getting an Albertsons-owned store for the first time since 2007, it would probably be the real Market Street opening a store or two. (I've thought about the possibility of them buying HAC, which would not only put former Albertsons stores back into their control but also United-OK...but HAC being employee-owned is a hard sell).
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: September 2nd, 2020, 6:18 pm
The issue is execution. They are able to execute this format very well in Boise. They throw a ton of resources at it. I am not real confident in a lot of the old Safeway divisions to execute a format like this well...
As somebody who lived in Boise at one point, I can say that they have ALWAYS thrown more resources at the Boise "home town" stores.

The differences are not quite as noticeable today, but the Boise stores always seem to be cleaner, better merchandised, and better staffed than Albertsons stores in other areas.

As the Albertsons brand has faded considerably in Washington and Oregon, I wonder if they could give that brand new life with a few stores in this area with the format, or at least try this with a few Safeway locations.
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by marshd1000 »

I know that the Albertsons in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood is going to re-brand as Safeway after a rebuild. Demographically that would be a neighborhood where a store like the Market Street formats could work. But not sure if there is the square footage for it. But I could see the Downtown Bellevue store and the Admiral store in West Seattle as candidates for something like this. It would be the closest to a Haggen that Seattle would ever see. I do see more existing store of Haggen going this way. But after the brand being damaged, only expansion in NW Washington would work. But a Haggen type store elsewhere would work with Safeway branding.
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

pseudo3d wrote: September 3rd, 2020, 4:23 am but HAC being employee-owned is a hard sell
That's not a bad thing either. Brings to mind Albertson's flirtation with purchasing Price Chopper in this area a few years back and the fact a decent amount of the company is employee owned was likely a contributing factor causing them to walk away. I'm sure employee ownership (even if it's just a portion of the company) has saved more than a few chains from acquisition and subsequently being either run into the ground or being homogenized beyond recognition of what made them distinctive in the first place.
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

Super S wrote: September 3rd, 2020, 8:01 am As the Albertsons brand has faded considerably in Washington and Oregon, I wonder if they could give that brand new life with a few stores in this area with the format, or at least try this with a few Safeway locations.
I think the remaining Albertsons stores in Western WA, with the exception of Kitsap County, should be rebranded as Safeway. The Safeway brand has clearly done better in Western WA. SVU did a terrible job with the Western WA Albertsons stores.
Why should Albertsons stay in Kitsap/Gig Harbor? Albertsons has generally done well there, with nice late 90's/early 2000's build stores.
If Albertsons brings the Market Street concept to the PNW, I wouldn't be surprised if the stores were Safeway-branded.
marshd1000, if Haggen is the "upscale" banner in Western WA, maybe Albertsons should go the Pavilions route with Haggen and remodel the remaining Haggens with Pavilions decor.
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Re: Albertsons Market Street

Post by pseudo3d »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: September 3rd, 2020, 10:05 am
pseudo3d wrote: September 3rd, 2020, 4:23 am but HAC being employee-owned is a hard sell
That's not a bad thing either. Brings to mind Albertson's flirtation with purchasing Price Chopper in this area a few years back and the fact a decent amount of the company is employee owned was likely a contributing factor causing them to walk away.
I don't think so. According to Wikipedia, the Golub family owns all the voting stock, and even if employees got something out of it, it wouldn't mean much. Furthermore, according to some research on the subject, employee-owned companies usually have some sort of trustee that would decide if members vote on a sale or not, so if, say, Albertsons went after HAC (or any other employee-owned companies), there's a chance that the employees would only get a small bonus when their stock is bought out and not getting a chance to vote on it.

On the subject of Market Street, I don't think we'll see it as a name except in the Boise market (and of course, Texas), if ever again. Appending it to the other names wouldn't sound right (and what about Safeway stores on Market Street in SF?), and that region of the country is the only place where Albertsons name has real dominance over any Safeway names. It's also a massive store...the former G&G Supermarket in Santa Rosa also exceeds 100k square feet, but is a pretty normal Safeway for all intents & purposes.

United has been expanding Market Street, of course, but stores are not nearly as nice (or large) as Albertsons Market Street in Boise. I'm not aware of any stores that have the AMS niceties: no raw bar, no "food court" of prepared foods, no macaron counter, no in-house sausages. They certainly can't integrate a full bar into the store, I believe that's disallowed by current Texas liquor laws.
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