The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

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The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by pseudo3d »

They built an Albertsons Express store (full line) at a store in Boise, Idaho. Gotta say I'm intrigued, and I wonder if Circle K is interested in selling back some of the former Albertsons Express stores that Valero bought in the LLC territories.
The operation includes 12 gas pumps and a 3,100-square-foot convenience store. The store, which was constructed on a pad that formerly held a Pizza Hut, sells doughnuts, fresh fruits and sandwiches brought from the grocery store, at the same prices as in the larger store.

The store has a walk-in beer cooler and a digital soda machine, offering Pepsi and Coke products as well as Gatorade. There’s hot espresso drinks and two kinds of cold-brew coffee, regular and a nitrogen-infused blend that is extra smooth and has the appearance of a Guinness beer.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/busi ... 25734.html
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by rwsandiego »

Nice-looking exterior. Thanks for posting - like the idea of the grocery store fuel center.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by Super S »

I was in a former Albertsons gas station/convenience store just a couple weeks ago in Salmon Creek, WA. Not sure who owns it now but they are selling Mobil gas now. Anyway, the convenience store just seemed really "off" to me in their merchandise mix, notably, they had no Pepsi products in the coolers, only Coca-Cola products. Gotta wonder though how many people see this in front of Albertsons and think that Albertsons still runs it.

I like the idea of the convenience store having the same prices as the main grocery store. Even considering the high prices Albertsons and Safeway can sometimes have, they aren't at the point where they are flat out gouging people, as is the case at some convenience store chains.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by storewanderer »

Safeway gouges horribly in its c-stores just like it does in its normal stores in NorCal. Their cigarette prices are dollar+ above other chain c-stores. Their price for bagged ice was 3.99 for years (think it may have been lowered to 2.99 or 3.49) for a small bag (maybe 10 pounds at the most). Their pricing for fountain drinks is at 1.59 for a 21oz. Same prices as in-store but still gouging, and far higher than other chain c-stores and higher than many independent c-stores as well.

Regarding the Mobil in Salmon Creek, WA. Tesoro purchased those sites from Supervalu. They operated them as corporate operated stations under the USA Gasoline Banner for a while, then assigned "operators" to the stores. This was 2-3 years ago when Tesoro said it was exiting the corporate operated retail station business. So the "operators" control the store and employees, while Tesoro continues to control the fuel and pays the "operator" a small commission to handle things. During this, Tesoro opted to "brand" many of the former USA sites as Mobil or Shell.

In July, Tesoro merged with Western Refining who owns a lot of corporate operated c-stores under the names Giant, Super America, and some others. At that time Tesoro announced they would be getting back into the corporate operated retail business again. A month or two ago, they formally announced some of their "operator" sites would be being reclaimed by the end of 2017, about 30 sites. I suspect that is what is happening at Salmon Creek. Tesoro is about to, or already has, booted the operator, and is in the process of shifting it back to being a corporate owned site.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by pseudo3d »

Super S wrote: December 21st, 2017, 9:28 pm I like the idea of the convenience store having the same prices as the main grocery store. Even considering the high prices Albertsons and Safeway can sometimes have, they aren't at the point where they are flat out gouging people, as is the case at some convenience store chains.
It's not a new idea, that's what the Kroger gas station near me does. (It isn't operating under the Kwik Shop name or anything, I've never been in the converted Albertsons Express to Kwik Shop locations in Houston so I wouldn't know)

I do wonder why they're doing Albertsons Express again, whether it's "best practices" coming out of United, which had the (full) United Express gas stations with similar features or solely an idea from corporate to bring back the glory days (probably both). As far as I know, this is the only non-United convenience store Albertsons offers (I wrote this before storewanderer's post, and I don't know if Safeway operates full convenience stores), and despite the fact that nearly all of the gas stations in Albertsons are from Safeway (adopted from Randalls/Tom Thumb, interestingly) they did open a few of their own. They recently brought back an Albertsons gas station (installed new pumps and everything) at the Sherman, TX store when they remodeled it last year (it never became a Valero, and the new signage simply says "Albertsons"), and there's also a few Express locations that were not closed by SuperValu (like an ACME Express in Philadelphia, though it too lacks a convenience store). In addition to opening questions if other chains can see convenience stores (both former Safeway and SuperValu chains) it also begs the question if they can potentially open stand-alone locations in their markets.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by storewanderer »

Safeway operates 3 full convenience stores in Reno, NV; Sparks, NV; and South Lake Tahoe, CA. These are very similar to the old Albertsons Express full size c-stores of the past.

These are the only "full" convenience stores I've seen Safeway operating. Safeway operates a lot of tiny c-stores (1/2 to 1/3 the size of these, such as in Lincoln, CA or Dixon, CA or Placerville, CA or Martell, CA) with an aisle of goods, tiny soda/coffee area, and not much more.

By "full" I am talking a walk in store, with a counter, a couple registers, a soda machine, icee machine, roller grill with hot dogs, etc., a few slot machines, a customer restroom, a couple dozen cooler doors, and a few aisles of merchandise.

Safeway built the Reno and Sparks ones by the Tahoe one was actually built by some unbranded gas station operator who later sold the site or leased it to Safeway.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: December 21st, 2017, 11:49 pm Safeway operates 3 full convenience stores in Reno, NV; Sparks, NV; and South Lake Tahoe, CA. These are very similar to the old Albertsons Express full size c-stores of the past.

These are the only "full" convenience stores I've seen Safeway operating. Safeway operates a lot of tiny c-stores (1/2 to 1/3 the size of these, such as in Lincoln, CA or Dixon, CA or Placerville, CA or Martell, CA) with an aisle of goods, tiny soda/coffee area, and not much more.

By "full" I am talking a walk in store, with a counter, a couple registers, a soda machine, icee machine, roller grill with hot dogs, etc., a few slot machines, a customer restroom, a couple dozen cooler doors, and a few aisles of merchandise.

Safeway built the Reno and Sparks ones by the Tahoe one was actually built by some unbranded gas station operator who later sold the site or leased it to Safeway.
Huh, I didn't realize Safeway HAD real convenience stores. Being in the Randalls territory and seeing the gas stations there, I believed they were a lot like other retail gas brands that were associated with a larger store--a walk-up with an attendant and only selling candy/gum and cigarettes, with a vending machine outside. [Also, in writing this post I didn't realize that the closest Randalls to me DOES have a full convenience store. Whoops.]

I think a problem with the original Albertsons Express is that the gas stations were always branded with (Shaw's/Albertsons/Jewel/ACME) Express but some had the convenience store and some didn't. The Albertsons Express that was built here in Boise probably has a significantly different merchandise mix than the Safeway convenience stores, and what might end up happening is that they'll start resetting the existing Safeway convenience stores with "Express" signage and a new line-up.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by storewanderer »

The reason Albertsons exited the convenience stores in the first place was because the stores were not doing well financially. The old Albertsons Express concept never did particularly well for whatever reason (I'm not really sure why, there was nothing wrong with the concept). I think a lack of strong gas pricing, lower than average traffic at Albertsons Stores in general, and a lack of promotion on c-store items probably caused this.

Also there has been an Albertsons Express operating this whole time (Supervalu didn't sell it) in Hillsboro, OR. So this is not really the "return" of the concept; the concept never actually went away. The other store where Supervalu kept fuel for some reason was in Centreville, MD.

Safeway has done a lot better with gas/c-stores due to the ongoing tie in with the club card and gas discount. Dumb policies instituted by the old Safeway, Inc. such as a 10 cent/gallon credit card use surcharge hurt their stations in more competitive markets (Denver/Phoenix, the latter of which has discontinued that surcharge) but don't seem to have hurt them much if at all in California where this is a fairly common practice at most gas stations. Their convenience stores are nothing special but I think they are reasonably effective in moving convenience store merchandise. I'm not sure how profitable the c-stores actually are as far as selling merchandise goes, but believe fuel overall is a profitable component of business for them.

Some quirks of their convenience stores is they always have two employees minimum, never close (stay open 24 hours even when the main store closes, like on Christmas), and they get a lot of their merchandise by walking it across the parking lot in a shopping cart from the main store. But they do use a c-store supplier (McLane I believe) for some items in the c-store so items like single roll paper towels are actually CVP brand and not Signature brand.
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: December 22nd, 2017, 7:20 am The reason Albertsons exited the convenience stores in the first place was because the stores were not doing well financially. The old Albertsons Express concept never did particularly well for whatever reason (I'm not really sure why, there was nothing wrong with the concept). I think a lack of strong gas pricing, lower than average traffic at Albertsons Stores in general, and a lack of promotion on c-store items probably caused this.

Also there has been an Albertsons Express operating this whole time (Supervalu didn't sell it) in Hillsboro, OR. So this is not really the "return" of the concept; the concept never actually went away. The other store where Supervalu kept fuel for some reason was in Centreville, MD.

Safeway has done a lot better with gas/c-stores due to the ongoing tie in with the club card and gas discount. Dumb policies instituted by the old Safeway, Inc. such as a 10 cent/gallon credit card use surcharge hurt their stations in more competitive markets (Denver/Phoenix, the latter of which has discontinued that surcharge) but don't seem to have hurt them much if at all in California where this is a fairly common practice at most gas stations. Their convenience stores are nothing special but I think they are reasonably effective in moving convenience store merchandise. I'm not sure how profitable the c-stores actually are as far as selling merchandise goes, but believe fuel overall is a profitable component of business for them.

Some quirks of their convenience stores is they always have two employees minimum, never close (stay open 24 hours even when the main store closes, like on Christmas), and they get a lot of their merchandise by walking it across the parking lot in a shopping cart from the main store. But they do use a c-store supplier (McLane I believe) for some items in the c-store so items like single roll paper towels are actually CVP brand and not Signature brand.
Hillsboro is a full Albertsons Express that did escape SuperValu's discarding of the stores (Centreville on the other hand, is just fuel pumps looks like). There is another article on Supermarket News that expands on it a little bit [http://www.supermarketnews.com/news/alb ... re-concept].

Key takeaways are noted:
- The store décor is completely unique and doesn't seem to rip off of LLC
- They mention that the store is the "first of its kind" and implicitly acknowledges that other Albertsons Express stores exist but are not like that one
- An Albertsons spokeswoman is quoted as saying “As our company grows and expands, we will review opportunities to open new fuel center/convenience stores similar to this one,” which implies that they don't have current plans to expand out with this concept specifically. That also implies that they'll probably stick with stores that accompany supermarkets and not new sites

Maybe the problem with the old Albertsons Express stores was it was less "Albertsons Express" and more "generic convenience store with the Albertsons name slapped on".
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Re: The return of the true "Albertsons Express"

Post by kr.abs.swy »

Some of you may have better information about the performance of the convenience stores, but I was always under the impression that the reason that SuperValu sold the Albertsons Express stores had more to do with SuperValu needing to raise cash than with the performance of the convenience stores. Given a need to raise money, it seems logical that they decided to liquidate stores that were less core than the supermarkets.

I didn't perceive that these stores performed any worse than a typical convenience store. I don't recall seeing any locations that closed after SuperValu sold them, although I don't doubt that there are a few.
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