Albertsons LLC Decor on the way out?

[storewanderer]

I went back to Elko, NV this week which still has an Albertsons run out of Intermountain. I was surprised how busy the store was but it was well stocked and well staffed and aside from produce the fresh departments all looked excellent.

Does Albertson's benefit from being the only store on the North side of the city?

Also, was that Roy's Market a Mayfair Market originally? It has the exact same floor that Mayfair used in their stores from 1980 to the end. It looks like a Mayfair from the outside, as well.

The being the only store at that east offramp may help them somewhat at this time, there are also many hotels surrounding the store and across the highway from the store (well over 1,000 rooms and a number of the hotels are under 5 years old on the other side of I-80 from the store) and mining groups often house temporary staff in the hotels. Most retail activity is at the west exit, including the other anchor in the center CAL Ranch who just moved into a sliver of the former Kmart (the building CAL Ranch occupied by the Albertsons is an old Rite Aid that closed in the early 00's, a massive former Payless). JC Penney is still near the Albertsons along with some other random retail though.

Yes, Roy's is the old Mayfair. Roy's only has shelves in about 30% of its space, those shelves are drugstore height, and a very pared down selection of all items. The store seems to have less and less merchandise (it was full aisles about 20 years ago the first time I went in there) every time, but it has enough to do a basic shop in if someone is not brand specific and prices are pretty reasonable. They have full pallet displays of DSD items in some of the open space. They had foot traffic yesterday afternoon when I went in though... steadily 5-8 shoppers inside, mostly small transactions coming and going quickly. The store seems to work. They run a base Associated Food Stores ad which has pretty good prices on private label items. Roy's runs a second store in Wells which I think has always been an independent but not always Roy's.

[retailfanmitchell019]

I went back to Elko, NV this week which still has an Albertsons run out of Intermountain. I was surprised how busy the store was but it was well stocked and well staffed and aside from produce the fresh departments all looked excellent. Much busier than the Elko Raleys (which is a nice store that got a major remodel/downsizing a few years ago but business today was really slow- and other stores there were all extremely busy) and a little less busy than Smiths. The Smiths is very run down inside and I am surprised it has not been remodeled in the past few years as it is a busy (offramp) and well located store. This is another spot where I think a Marketplace Store would do very well.

I'm surprised Raley's has kept this store, being isolated from the rest of their stores. Maybe Ridley's (supplied by AFS) should acquire it.

[storewanderer]

I went back to Elko, NV this week which still has an Albertsons run out of Intermountain. I was surprised how busy the store was but it was well stocked and well staffed and aside from produce the fresh departments all looked excellent. Much busier than the Elko Raleys (which is a nice store that got a major remodel/downsizing a few years ago but business today was really slow- and other stores there were all extremely busy) and a little less busy than Smiths. The Smiths is very run down inside and I am surprised it has not been remodeled in the past few years as it is a busy (offramp) and well located store. This is another spot where I think a Marketplace Store would do very well.

I'm surprised Raley's has kept this store, being isolated from the rest of their stores. Maybe Ridley's (supplied by AFS) should acquire it.

Raleys Elko was an unremodeled time warp to its 1987 opening until about 5 years ago when it got a major remodel. The store is now very nice and modern inside, and it was a very complete remodel. The remodel came because they downsized the store and Marshalls or something took the space they abandoned.

Raleys Elko just closed its pharmacy, There are now only 3 public chain pharmacies in Elko: CVS, Wal Mart, and Smiths. Raleys and Kmart pharmacies closed in the past year. There is also a Walgreens affiliated Take Care Clinic (no store) pharmacy but it is at a mining company clinic and it is not clear if it is open to the public or not.

I have heard Raleys Elko is a good performing store but based on the traffic I saw there yesterday it doesn't look like it is. I may have been there during a lull. I would think if they were marketing the store for sale they would keep the pharmacy open, many of those AFS supplied chains have a pharmacy inside their store, and given Elko has few pharmacies I would think it must have had traffic.

Albertsons Elko has no pharmacy for some reason. It seems like it could really use one.

[Super S]

Albertsons Elko has no pharmacy for some reason. It seems like it could really use one.

If the shopping center had a Rite Aid, it makes some sense. Albertsons often did not have pharmacies in stores that were located in strip malls where there was another drug store, sometimes a pharmacy was added after a drug store closed. This was the case with many Albertsons stores even into the 1990s, I remember a couple Albertsons stores opening in new strip malls during that time in Vancouver, WA, one shared the mall with PayLess, the other Hi-School Pharmacy. Both Albertsons in those cases had no pharmacy.

[storewanderer]

Albertsons pre ASC merger was sort of weird with pharmacy. They did not have pharmacy at all in their NorCal Stores (quite a few of those were late 80's model stores that opened with a pharmacy) pre-ASC merger supposedly having removed it at some point in the early 90's (some stores they kept/didn't divest off added it in after the ASC merger). Ralphs quickly added pharmacy to as many of the former Albertsons they bought that they could, but some must have had lease restrictions.

But in NV, Albertsons had pharmacy in store from 1992 on when they started to do replacements/expansions of the 70's and 80's stores.

I think in some cases a lease restriction will prevent a grocer from adding a pharmacy long after the drug store in the shopping center closes. This may be the case in Elko. Or for some reason it just isn't profitable to run a pharmacy out there and that is why Raleys closed its pharmacy, though it is interesting Kmart kept pharmacy until the end there, and it was supposedly a fairly busy pharmacy too.

[klkla]

I think in some cases a lease restriction will prevent a grocer from adding a pharmacy long after the drug store in the shopping center closes. This may be the case in Elko. Or for some reason it just isn't profitable to run a pharmacy out there and that is why Raleys closed its pharmacy, though it is interesting Kmart kept pharmacy until the end there, and it was supposedly a fairly busy pharmacy too.

Shopping centers built in the 1950's, 60' and 70's that had both a supermarket and a drug store almost always had lease restrictions giving exclusive rights for pharmacy operations to the drug store and fresh raw foods to the supermarket.

The clauses that allow the restrictions to remain in place even if a retailer closes their location didn't become popular until the late 1980's and was something WalMart was particularly good at. Drug stores overwhelming started building free-standing stores in that era so it's rare for a drug store to be able to restrict pharmacy operations in a shopping center they have vacated.

[retailfanmitchell019]

Albertsons pre ASC merger was sort of weird with pharmacy. They did not have pharmacy at all in their NorCal Stores (quite a few of those were late 80's model stores that opened with a pharmacy) pre-ASC merger supposedly having removed it at some point in the early 90's (some stores they kept/didn't divest off added it in after the ASC merger). Ralphs quickly added pharmacy to as many of the former Albertsons they bought that they could, but some must have had lease restrictions.

But in NV, Albertsons had pharmacy in store from 1992 on when they started to do replacements/expansions of the 70's and 80's stores.

I think in some cases a lease restriction will prevent a grocer from adding a pharmacy long after the drug store in the shopping center closes. This may be the case in Elko. Or for some reason it just isn't profitable to run a pharmacy out there and that is why Raleys closed its pharmacy, though it is interesting Kmart kept pharmacy until the end there, and it was supposedly a fairly busy pharmacy too.

There were exceptions to these lease restrictions though: In 1996, Albertsons built a store in Temecula in the same shopping center with a PayLess Drug. This Albertsons had a pharmacy. It was divested to Stater during the ASC acquisition.
In Oceanside, Albertsons built a store in 1987 (Mission Ave, same shopping center as a PayLess). The PayLess closed in this shopping center in the late 90's. The Albertsons got a remodel around that time (probably Blue & Green Awnings) when a pharmacy was put in.

[bryceleinan]

I think in some cases a lease restriction will prevent a grocer from adding a pharmacy long after the drug store in the shopping center closes. This may be the case in Elko. Or for some reason it just isn't profitable to run a pharmacy out there and that is why Raleys closed its pharmacy, though it is interesting Kmart kept pharmacy until the end there, and it was supposedly a fairly busy pharmacy too.

Shopping centers built in the 1950's, 60' and 70's that had both a supermarket and a drug store almost always had lease restrictions giving exclusive rights for pharmacy operations to the drug store and fresh raw foods to the supermarket.

The clauses that allow the restrictions to remain in place even if a retailer closes their location didn't become popular until the late 1980's and was something WalMart was particularly good at. Drug stores overwhelming started building free-standing stores in that era so it's rare for a drug store to be able to restrict pharmacy operations in a shopping center they have vacated.

It looks like Elko Albertsons is either getting a pharmacy or has one now - they have job postings for pharmacy clerks in Elko on the ABS job site. There really isn’t much on that side of town, so it’ll be good for Elko. My church just expanded their building out there and I’m thinking about going out in the next couple of months to check things out - may have to swing by.

[storewanderer]

It looks like Elko Albertsons is either getting a pharmacy or has one now - they have job postings for pharmacy clerks in Elko on the ABS job site. There really isn’t much on that side of town, so it’ll be good for Elko. My church just expanded their building out there and I’m thinking about going out in the next couple of months to check things out - may have to swing by.

I don't understand why that store didn't have a pharmacy for the past 15 years. They operated the Sav-On in Elko, which is where the Rite Aid prescriptions went when the Rite Aid closed in 2002 or whenever it closed. That store was subject to the Albertsons/Sav-On combo program like Reno was and it got the Sav-On drug department without getting a pharmacy inside (similar to the store on Oddie Blvd. in Sparks which also had no pharmacy and didn't get one then despite the neighboring Shopko which had a pharmacy and there was probably a lease clause being closed for a while at that point).

At this point especially after Raleys closed its pharmacy in Elko, Elko has a serious shortage of pharmacies for a town of its size: basically has the Wal Mart, Smiths, CVS (former Sav-On), and then at the hospital there is a pharmacy that Walgreens "operates" (not an actual store). Then Khoury has one pharmacy in Spring Creek, I think.

That Elko Store is an interesting case study. That was a downbeat run down blue gray store up until Albertsons LLC remodeled it. It looked run down before Supervalu but still had some traffic back then, but after Supervalu ran it for a while, traffic went down very far. LLC did that remodel and really cleaned the store up. The store is way, way busier now than it was before.