3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

klkla wrote:This article as more information. It looks like 20 stores are closing:
http://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-f ... tructuring

- Closing 20 stores
- Laying off some store department heads (no details given)
- Renovated 90 of it's 730 stores last year (12.3%)
- Sales fell 7% last year
- Same store sales down 3.6%
- Blames WalMart and other competitors, deflation and changes in food stamp program.
- Trying to refinance it's debt (never a good sign especially when interest rates have been so low for so long).
Closing 20 stores - not too bad when you consider the number of BI-LO stores out there, however, not reopening the damaged Baton Rouge stores is a bad sign, a company's in trouble when they don't reopen stores like that
Laying off some store department heads - could mean anything though it could undermine operations further
Renovated 90 of 730 stores - doesn't break down remodeling, there was few like the prototype, basically repainting everything doesn't really count as a remodel
Sales down 7%/same store sales down 3.6% - THIS is the real problem. McLeod's been touting Down Down as a success (larger basket sizes, etc.) even though the profit is taking a hit. But now it looks like those aren't working at all. -3.6% is pretty bad even considering the deflationary atmosphere, and with McLeod's "big turnaround" going on.
Blames competition - Walmart has been a thorn in Winn-Dixie's side in the late 1990s, and most retailers managed to adapt to that. I don't think it's an excuse anymore. Except for Aldi and maybe Publix, the "competitors" are better than it. Why go to Winn-Dixie or BI-LO when there's an Albertsons or Kroger nearby?

It looks like things are slowly but surely going "Down Down the drain" and I wouldn't be surprised if McLeod's heading out the door soon. At this point, any turnaround is going to require some market exits and hard decisions.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by wnetmacman »

klkla wrote:This article as more information. It looks like 20 stores are closing:
http://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-f ... tructuring

- Closing 20 stores
- Laying off some store department heads (no details given)
- Renovated 90 of it's 730 stores last year (12.3%)
- Sales fell 7% last year
- Same store sales down 3.6%
- Blames WalMart and other competitors, deflation and changes in food stamp program.
- Trying to refinance it's debt (never a good sign especially when interest rates have been so low for so long).
Even better, the three stores I referenced in this post aren't listed in the article.
pseudo3d wrote:Closing 20 stores - not too bad when you consider the number of BI-LO stores out there, however, not reopening the damaged Baton Rouge stores is a bad sign, a company's in trouble when they don't reopen stores like that
Laying off some store department heads - could mean anything though it could undermine operations further
Renovated 90 of 730 stores - doesn't break down remodeling, there was few like the prototype, basically repainting everything doesn't really count as a remodel
Sales down 7%/same store sales down 3.6% - THIS is the real problem. McLeod's been touting Down Down as a success (larger basket sizes, etc.) even though the profit is taking a hit. But now it looks like those aren't working at all. -3.6% is pretty bad even considering the deflationary atmosphere, and with McLeod's "big turnaround" going on.
Blames competition - Walmart has been a thorn in Winn-Dixie's side in the late 1990s, and most retailers managed to adapt to that. I don't think it's an excuse anymore. Except for Aldi and maybe Publix, the "competitors" are better than it. Why go to Winn-Dixie or BI-LO when there's an Albertsons or Kroger nearby?

It looks like things are slowly but surely going "Down Down the drain" and I wouldn't be surprised if McLeod's heading out the door soon. At this point, any turnaround is going to require some market exits and hard decisions.
The damaged stores not reopening happened rampantly throughout New Orleans and the surrounding areas after Hurricane Katrina. It was not limited to one company; even Walmart didn't reopen two stores that were badly damaged. Neither did A&P, Winn Dixie, Kmart and others.

I'm surprised there are any department heads left to lay off. Renovating stores isn't unusual; they need to do way more. The Lafayette store closing is operating on its 1997 remodel, which was a 1992 package. Albertsons has remodeled stores twice since then, and Walmart is on their third turn.

Sales down isn't a surprise, because Down Down is a gimmick, not a written in stone policy. Not everything that went down stayed down.

Walmart isn't the problem. Walmart has been hailed as the solution. Stores that fight them head on win, like Kroger and Albertsons. Stores that try gimmicks and to say Walmart isn't giving them the same thing lose, and that's what Winn Dixie did.

I don't see McLeod going anywhere soon, because he has folks believing that things are changing. 23 stores out of around 1000 is a relatively small number. I do agree on a market exit, and I think Louisiana/Mississippi is that market. Look for the announcement.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:
klkla wrote:This article as more information. It looks like 20 stores are closing:
http://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-f ... tructuring

- Closing 20 stores
- Laying off some store department heads (no details given)
- Renovated 90 of it's 730 stores last year (12.3%)
- Sales fell 7% last year
- Same store sales down 3.6%
- Blames WalMart and other competitors, deflation and changes in food stamp program.
- Trying to refinance it's debt (never a good sign especially when interest rates have been so low for so long).
Even better, the three stores I referenced in this post aren't listed in the article.
pseudo3d wrote:Closing 20 stores - not too bad when you consider the number of BI-LO stores out there, however, not reopening the damaged Baton Rouge stores is a bad sign, a company's in trouble when they don't reopen stores like that
Laying off some store department heads - could mean anything though it could undermine operations further
Renovated 90 of 730 stores - doesn't break down remodeling, there was few like the prototype, basically repainting everything doesn't really count as a remodel
Sales down 7%/same store sales down 3.6% - THIS is the real problem. McLeod's been touting Down Down as a success (larger basket sizes, etc.) even though the profit is taking a hit. But now it looks like those aren't working at all. -3.6% is pretty bad even considering the deflationary atmosphere, and with McLeod's "big turnaround" going on.
Blames competition - Walmart has been a thorn in Winn-Dixie's side in the late 1990s, and most retailers managed to adapt to that. I don't think it's an excuse anymore. Except for Aldi and maybe Publix, the "competitors" are better than it. Why go to Winn-Dixie or BI-LO when there's an Albertsons or Kroger nearby?

It looks like things are slowly but surely going "Down Down the drain" and I wouldn't be surprised if McLeod's heading out the door soon. At this point, any turnaround is going to require some market exits and hard decisions.
The damaged stores not reopening happened rampantly throughout New Orleans and the surrounding areas after Hurricane Katrina. It was not limited to one company; even Walmart didn't reopen two stores that were badly damaged. Neither did A&P, Winn Dixie, Kmart and others.

I'm surprised there are any department heads left to lay off. Renovating stores isn't unusual; they need to do way more. The Lafayette store closing is operating on its 1997 remodel, which was a 1992 package. Albertsons has remodeled stores twice since then, and Walmart is on their third turn.

Sales down isn't a surprise, because Down Down is a gimmick, not a written in stone policy. Not everything that went down stayed down.

Walmart isn't the problem. Walmart has been hailed as the solution. Stores that fight them head on win, like Kroger and Albertsons. Stores that try gimmicks and to say Walmart isn't giving them the same thing lose, and that's what Winn Dixie did.

I don't see McLeod going anywhere soon, because he has folks believing that things are changing. 23 stores out of around 1000 is a relatively small number. I do agree on a market exit, and I think Louisiana/Mississippi is that market. Look for the announcement.
The article only lists 15 stores (including the flooded stores), so there's still 2 more to go. In terms of flooded stores, when a company doesn't reopen them it means that if they're not on the ropes (there was a Kmart that was damaged in a blizzard I believe a few years ago and never reopened despite repairs), it means the store was doing badly enough to close. After Ike, I know Macy's closed Northwest Mall, Dillard's closed at the Mall of the Mainland, and (oddly) H-E-B closed their Galveston store, exiting the island entirely (it was a Pantry store--and H-E-B actually repaired another Pantry store recently). But even if specific stores and not the whole company, how many more Winn-Dixies in Louisiana (or the whole company) are so mediocre that if disaster struck, they would just give up?

As for the others, I think Down Down will devolve to just marketing even as everyday prices rise save for a few loss leader advertised specials, but I doubt that McLeod's career is that safe. I'll even reckon that there's a lot of discontent inside SEG that McLeod is destroying the company and needs to go, and even pulling out of LA/MS may not be enough (probably in the works for a while, note that LA/MS got skipped out on Harveys/FyM rebrands) to really save the company.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:The article only lists 15 stores (including the flooded stores), so there's still 2 more to go. In terms of flooded stores, when a company doesn't reopen them it means that if they're not on the ropes (there was a Kmart that was damaged in a blizzard I believe a few years ago and never reopened despite repairs), it means the store was doing badly enough to close. After Ike, I know Macy's closed Northwest Mall, Dillard's closed at the Mall of the Mainland, and (oddly) H-E-B closed their Galveston store, exiting the island entirely (it was a Pantry store--and H-E-B actually repaired another Pantry store recently).
Ike vs. Katrina is a poor comparison. None of the areas affected by Ike suffered from 6 weeks of flooding after. Over half of New Orleans and points east were flooded for that time. The damaged stores you refer to from Ike were indeed on the fringe. The Wal-Mart *and* Sam's Club on Bundy Road at I-10 in New Orleans East were *quite* popular. They were not rebuilt because the company saw a shift in population from that area after Katrina that still plagues it today. Similarly, Kmart stores in Arabi, LA and Long Beach, MS were fully bulldozed, and no mention of a rebuild ever happened. Several A&P stores faced the same fate, and that was 2 years before they exited the market.
pseudo3d wrote:But even if specific stores and not the whole company, how many more Winn-Dixies in Louisiana (or the whole company) are so mediocre that if disaster struck, they would just give up?
Right now, they're right at 40 stores, and I don't know if that counts closing locations.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

Looks like the other closing stores include a Winn-Dixie at 110 Paul Russell Road in Tallahassee FL and at 4404 Altama Ave., Brunswick, GA. Surprised more of the smaller, older BI-LO stores aren't getting the axe.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

Was the Slidell store branded to Jitney Jungle before it was sold? I read that Jitney Jungle did rebrand a small group of Delchamps as Jitney Jungle, and Winn-Dixie bought only Jitney Jungle stores, so it looks like Slidell went Delchamps -> Jitney Jungle -> Winn-Dixie.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:Was the Slidell store branded to Jitney Jungle before it was sold? I read that Jitney Jungle did rebrand a small group of Delchamps as Jitney Jungle, and Winn-Dixie bought only Jitney Jungle stores, so it looks like Slidell went Delchamps -> Jitney Jungle -> Winn-Dixie.
Wrong. WD bought both. Several Delchamps stores became WD, including one in Metairie. This store was always branded Delchamps before. The rebranding was mostly in MIssissippi. Some Delchamps Premier stores were built, and were identical to the Jitney Premier stores they had built around Jackson.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:Was the Slidell store branded to Jitney Jungle before it was sold? I read that Jitney Jungle did rebrand a small group of Delchamps as Jitney Jungle, and Winn-Dixie bought only Jitney Jungle stores, so it looks like Slidell went Delchamps -> Jitney Jungle -> Winn-Dixie.
Wrong. WD bought both. Several Delchamps stores became WD, including one in Metairie. This store was always branded Delchamps before. The rebranding was mostly in MIssissippi. Some Delchamps Premier stores were built, and were identical to the Jitney Premier stores they had built around Jackson.
Hm, it does look like Winn-Dixie bought both Delchamps and Jitney Jungle stores, including other concepts including MegaMarket and Sack n Save (MegaMarket was a warehouse foods store from what I've heard, not sure about SnS). Where I probably got confused was this article where it says the 48 Jitney Jungle (a portion of the stores they bought) became Winn-Dixie. I don't know when they converted Delchamps, but at some point they must have.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:Hm, it does look like Winn-Dixie bought both Delchamps and Jitney Jungle stores, including other concepts including MegaMarket and Sack n Save (MegaMarket was a warehouse foods store from what I've heard, not sure about SnS). Where I probably got confused was this article where it says the 48 Jitney Jungle (a portion of the stores they bought) became Winn-Dixie. I don't know when they converted Delchamps, but at some point they must have.
Megamarket and Sack n Save were essentially similar concepts. The stores were among the first to offer Gas in a kiosk in the parking lot among mainstream grocers. SnS was more prevalent through the JJ marketing area. Most of the SNS and MM stores became SaveRite. All of the remaining JJ and Delchamps stores were immediately rebranded as WD. There was no holdover on any of them. WD wanted that old name off as soon as possible, though many of those stores were closed during the 2005 Bankruptcy.
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Re: 3 more Louisiana Winn-Dixies to close

Post by pseudo3d »

wnetmacman wrote:All of the remaining JJ and Delchamps stores were immediately rebranded as WD. There was no holdover on any of them. WD wanted that old name off as soon as possible, though many of those stores were closed during the 2005 Bankruptcy.
They probably did it for legal reasons. Remember, despite Winn-Dixie commonly being viewed as a successor to the Jitney Jungle chain (being a good chunk of the stores and keeping them open), even the Wikipedia chain erroneously says they bought the company, they actually just bought the stores and not the names.
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