Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

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Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by Knight »

Ahold Delhaize is creating a new company to oversee its companies in the United States. Effective Monday, 1 January 2018, Ahold Delhaize USA will include supermarkets Food Lion, Giant (Landover, Maryland), Giant (Carlisle, Pennsylvania)/Martin's, Hannford, and Stop & Shop; online grocery delivery service Peapod; and support company Retail Business Services.

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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by pseudo3d »

So, it begins.

Will Hannaford get the fruit basket logo, or did only Giant-MD and Stop & Shop get that due to their ill-fated merger?
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by BillyGr »

Good question - nothing so far in that line (and since the Delhaize brands went through dropping the store names for My Essentials a few years back, then switched back to using the store name brands one wonders if that may influence any decisions).

The one thing I DID see, though, were a couple shelves of limited time items (being this time of year mostly Christmas flavors like peppermint and Gingerbread) which Stop & Shop has done for some time and they are from Foodhold brands (Ahold company).
This only makes sense as Hannaford didn't have much like this of their own, so why not have it as an additional offering (and probably make it a better deal for all the stores, as they could order larger quantities to be made with more stores to send it to)?
With that said, I don't know if it went to all Hannaford stores (we are in NY but kind of between the MA S&S and the few S&S stores in southern NY state, so that may make a difference vs., say, the Hannaford stores in ME/VT/NH where S&S isn't nearly as close).
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by BatteryMill »

Well, I guess they had to bolster their USA operations from their main company in Europe, but they seem to be continuing with turning them into a bland, large mass across the East Coast.

What exactly is their goal as a company? All the Ahold chains are slowly becoming one the same, fruitbowl-ized shops with no identity in any form. Now I wonder how Delhaize will wrap around since they have different store types within that range.
They don't seem to be fighting the acclaimed titans Wegmans and Publix are, neither outsmarting the discount kings Walmart and Aldi.

It's especially notable around D.C./Baltimore for Giant-MD, many people have complained of their downfall since the passing of Izzy Cohen. I can't remember for sure but I will say they tampered with the training experience and their bakery has received a downgrade.
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by arizonaguy »

BatteryMill wrote: December 9th, 2017, 7:58 am Well, I guess they had to bolster their USA operations from their main company in Europe, but they seem to be continuing with turning them into a bland, large mass across the East Coast.

What exactly is their goal as a company? All the Ahold chains are slowly becoming one the same, fruitbowl-ized shops with no identity in any form. Now I wonder how Delhaize will wrap around since they have different store types within that range.
They don't seem to be fighting the acclaimed titans Wegmans and Publix are, neither outsmarting the discount kings Walmart and Aldi.

It's especially notable around D.C./Baltimore for Giant-MD, many people have complained of their downfall since the passing of Izzy Cohen. I can't remember for sure but I will say they tampered with the training experience and their bakery has received a downgrade.
Giant-MD never had to be all that great even in the Izzy Cohen days. Their main competition was Safeway (which has never been anything special), Shoppers (which has been a train-wreck of ownership issues and format changes), and A&P (which was in a slow but steady retreat from the DC / Baltimore area). In the late 1990s - 2000s (around the time of the Ahold purchase) new, better competition like Wegman's, Harris Teeter, Whole Foods, etc. entered the scene which highlighted how mediocre Giant - MD was.
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by BatteryMill »

arizonaguy wrote: December 9th, 2017, 8:08 am Giant-MD never had to be all that great even in the Izzy Cohen days. Their main competition was Safeway (which has never been anything special), Shoppers (which has been a train-wreck of ownership issues and format changes), and A&P (which was in a slow but steady retreat from the DC / Baltimore area). In the late 1990s - 2000s (around the time of the Ahold purchase) new, better competition like Wegman's, Harris Teeter, Whole Foods, etc. entered the scene which highlighted how mediocre Giant - MD was.
How exactly do you say so for Giant-MD? I will admit for one that it may not have resembled such a grand store in the vein of Wegmans but it was a fondly remembered go-to for many residents in the area. But one thing I will admit is reach (surely not so fast), Wegmans makes large stores for whole towns while Giant and the like make one for your neighborhood and vicinity. Especially since they had to withdraw from Richmond in 1982 and later Super G up north.
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by pseudo3d »

BatteryMill wrote: December 9th, 2017, 7:58 am Well, I guess they had to bolster their USA operations from their main company in Europe, but they seem to be continuing with turning them into a bland, large mass across the East Coast.

What exactly is their goal as a company? All the Ahold chains are slowly becoming one the same, fruitbowl-ized shops with no identity in any form. Now I wonder how Delhaize will wrap around since they have different store types within that range.
They don't seem to be fighting the acclaimed titans Wegmans and Publix are, neither outsmarting the discount kings Walmart and Aldi.

It's especially notable around D.C./Baltimore for Giant-MD, many people have complained of their downfall since the passing of Izzy Cohen. I can't remember for sure but I will say they tampered with the training experience and their bakery has received a downgrade.
I think only Giant-MD and Stop & Shop share the fruitbowl logo since they were part of the actual same company are. But what I'm looking at most is Food Lion, especially since the vast majority spun off in the merger were Food Lion stores. My expectation was that the remaining stores would be closed as their leases ran out or they might be converted to other names. The exception where that wasn't the case seems to be when the Ahold stores were worth more, like Richmond. The valuable Martin's stores are sold to Publix, but there doesn't seem a way for Food Lion to compete in a market where Publix, Wegmans, Kroger, and of course Walmart operate, so I would expect those to close down. A few months ago, Food Lion announced it would move into Fairfield Shopping Center in Newark, DE where a Super Fresh operated (ACME was to buy it but ultimately passed, likely due to the store's poor physical condition). But that was before this holding company was created, and I would say there's a fair chance that the Super Fresh will reopen not as a Food Lion but as Giant-MD.
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by BillyGr »

pseudo3d wrote: December 9th, 2017, 8:48 am A few months ago, Food Lion announced it would move into Fairfield Shopping Center in Newark, DE where a Super Fresh operated (ACME was to buy it but ultimately passed, likely due to the store's poor physical condition). But that was before this holding company was created, and I would say there's a fair chance that the Super Fresh will reopen not as a Food Lion but as Giant-MD.
The only issue might be size - that Superfresh was an old A&P so it's on the small side. That would seem to make Food Lion a better fit (as they have had stores somewhat smaller than many chains over the years to do to having less departments).
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by buckguy »

Upthread is a pretty good summation of Giant. Their strengths in the Izzy Cohen days were in the deli & bakery, which is where Ahold cut back--they also tended to have better service than Safeway; they generally were seen as "the somewhat better store" in DC. They also had a history of merchandising innovations and fairly continuous investment in their stores. The meat and produce were lackluster and other than a price war in the 70s that helped enabled them to overtake Safeway in market share and contribute to the demise of smaller competitors, they long benefited from the lack of competitive pricing in the market. They and Safeway seemed to withdraw from direct competition with each other in DC proper during the 90s, which enabled Safeway to dominate inner city areas and charge more in DC than in the suburbs. Ahold has done some positive things: upgrading and enlarging stores in DC and inner ring suburbs (including well-off areas). In recent years, they've enlarged their footprint in DC proper (while Safeway largely has neglected theirs) and have been trying to do "Flagship stores" in a few areas (my Giant is quite unlike most others), but they're still a bit challenged in the fresh food areas and have never gotten their groove back with the delis. Shoppers was never a serious competitor---when they had a clearer identity, they had an odd collection of stores, mostly castoffs from other chains--including some that were a few blocks form each other. Their fresh areas were pretty awful but they had a clear target customer---young families and stocked the stores to appeal to them. They suffered from the issues related to the Haft family disputes and then from Super Valu's ineptitude. A&P was never a player in DC to the degree they were elsewhere in the Northeast---this was even true decades ago. Weis never made serious inroads, although they have done better in Baltimore. To their credit, Giant still has substantial market share despite Whole Foods, Harris-Teeter, et al. I haven't been to Wegman's but I'm pretty unimpressed with H-T and perhaps because WF is closeby, I've come to see their many limitations (including sharing the same produce suppliers as Giant for many of the more seasonal and less everyday produce items).
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Re: Ahold Delhaize creates Ahold Delhaize USA

Post by GeneRos »

That's interesting. Ahold Delhaize is a Dutch company, right? What do you think that'll do for those supermarkets?
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