storewanderer wrote:The "unacceptable" solution seems to have worked to a certain extent for Kroger. I don't know of any Food 4 Less decor stores in Smiths, Frys, King Soopers, or Dillons divisions that have closed. Call it a band aid but most of those stores are in neighborhoods long since abandoned by Safeway and Albertsons.
Maybe Fry's has done it better, but definitely the Kroger in Gulfton, Houston, TX was not a success and they haven't tried anything like that since in Houston. I'm not sure if it was just poorly marketed or if it just experienced severe shoplifting. I actually want to lean to the latter (considering it was open for eight years).
If Amigos is so great why haven't they expanded it elsewhere yet?
The last Amigos store opened in spring 2014, with currently four locations, and the full Amigos format as we know it today opened in 2008 after 8 years of testing. Considering that most other operators with this sort of format never got more than one location and that one location never lasted that long, I would say that Amigos would qualify as a mild success. After all, Publix only has 8 Sabor stores in a chain of over 1000 stores, and while it isn't a big part of the business, being able to stay open and expand is a good thing.
To me what Winn Dixie is doing is unacceptable. But maybe they can make this work. Maybe some 8/$1 avocados and 20/$1 limes will drive traffic. Great quality and well marinated meats and a good prepared food program (selling at fair prices, not giveaway prices) can get them some amazing sales volume and gross margin if they can execute it well and get foot traffic in...
I don't think that Winn-Dixie will ever get that sort of sales volume, especially since the newspapers already report that there will only currently be lower prices for certain products at W-D "for at least another next six months".
storewanderer wrote:The "unacceptable" solution seems to have worked to a certain extent for Kroger. I don't know of any Food 4 Less decor stores in Smiths, Frys, King Soopers, or Dillons divisions that have closed. Call it a band aid but most of those stores are in neighborhoods long since abandoned by Safeway and Albertsons.
If Amigos is so great why haven't they expanded it elsewhere yet?
To me what Winn Dixie is doing is unacceptable. But maybe they can make this work. Maybe some 8/$1 avocados and 20/$1 limes will drive traffic. Great quality and well marinated meats and a good prepared food program (selling at fair prices, not giveaway prices) can get them some amazing sales volume and gross margin if they can execute it well and get foot traffic in... hispanic format in FL (Publix Sabor) is a little different than the ones on the west coast. Cuban food is not quite the same as Mexican food.
Yes, hispanic foods have many different regional personalities. The two "main" groups are carriibean (high african influence) and central/south american (high indigenous people influence). Some argue that there is a clear distinction between central american (which includes mexico) and south american.
Again, Winn Dixie has another rare opportunity and they are letting it slip through their fingers. It's actually very disturbing the kinds of mistakes they continue to make given the tenure the brand has in grocery history.
Publix Sabor has a very limited presence commensurate to the hispanic population.
Sedanos is the most established and has not expanded commensurate to the increase in the hispanic population. It is also one of the most poorly run ethnic markets I have ever seen (categorically).
IMO, the hispanic market in Florida is very underserved by a savvy operator. Winn Dixie has enough stores (including some small former Kwik Cheks) to make a difference.
Just as Winn Dixie has turned its back on its core demographics (Florida's version of a Stater Brothers customer), they seem to be drowning in their incompetence with this hispanic market attempt.
rwsandiego wrote:Does anyone have a sense for what Hispanic shoppers think of this new market?
The lone Yelp review is a Hispanic shopper (some typos suggest that he did not learn English as a first language, and definitely not his mother, which he mentions), and he's unimpressed.
rwsandiego wrote:Does anyone have a sense for what Hispanic shoppers think of this new market?
The lone Yelp review is a Hispanic shopper (some typos suggest that he did not learn English as a first language, and definitely not his mother, which he mentions), and he's unimpressed.
Good grief, I can't believe I missed that. Interesting how he said Winn-Dixie already serves Hispanic shoppers well, or words to that effect.
In many ways that review highlights a lot of things wrong with Winn-Dixie. They have a fairly loyal and core market that never really went away during the bankruptcy but they do not connect with it like they should. They cannot be Sedano's, they cannot be Publix, and they cannot be Walmart. These new store concepts are going to erode that and will ultimately just harm the brand even further.
rwsandiego wrote:Does anyone have a sense for what Hispanic shoppers think of this new market?
The lone Yelp review is a Hispanic shopper (some typos suggest that he did not learn English as a first language, and definitely not his mother, which he mentions), and he's unimpressed.
Good grief, I can't believe I missed that. Interesting how he said Winn-Dixie already serves Hispanic shoppers well, or words to that effect.
pseudo3d wrote:In many ways that review highlights a lot of things wrong with Winn-Dixie. They have a fairly loyal and core market that never really went away during the bankruptcy but they do not connect with it like they should. They cannot be Sedano's, they cannot be Publix, and they cannot be Walmart. These new store concepts are going to erode that and will ultimately just harm the brand even further.
I believe you are correct and prescient.
Too much time has passed (many decades) and the consumers have been trained very well to shop where they shop. There was a time that W/D could have reestablished themselves as the Stater Brothers of Florida. That type of customer learned to be happy with the downgrade of Walmart or learned to love the upgrade of Publix (even with higher prices that a Florida income is put to the test).
WD, despite this one iteration of serving hispanic customers okay, has indeed never served hispanic customers well. Due to lack of competition in the Florida market they often turned out to be the de facto store to shop at. Often times a neighborhood would change pretty fast into a majority Cuban neighborhood and W/D was the closest store to shop at.
As I have mentioned before, Sedanos has been an under performer. If you look into how old the company is and how many stores they currently have along with the lack of capex into older stores you would be shocked. There was talk that they would merge with Navarro Drugs and create this awesome chain of hispanic (Cuban focus) combo stores. That never happened.
Despite SEG talking them up, the Fresco y Más stores appear to be underwhelming. The Yelp review of the original store never got beyond three stars, and other reviews seem to indicate that the store really isn't ready for primetime.
A comment on the latter article seems to indicate what I expected, that despite SEG's claim of marketing toward demographics, FyM and Harveys seem to be the loser stores on a track to oblivion, as an aging but renovated recently Winn-Dixie at S.W. 16th Ave. & Coral Way wasn't rebranded (and it is indeed old, dating back to at least 1956 as a Kwik-Chek), presumably because it's still a profitable, good store (though Yelp reviews indicate otherwise).
I'm also going to call SEG out and actually learning from the Hialeah store and making improvements, because they haven't been open long enough to really see what works and what doesn't. I'd be surprised if any of these stores are open a year from now.
