Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by cathandler »

BillyGr wrote:Although, how much would they have been anyway? The areas that A&P had stores only slightly overlapped the fringes of Price Chopper/Market 32 areas (a few in southern NY, the ones in CT are probably closer to NY than most of the PC locations in the state, maybe some in PA) - PC isn't in NYC, NJ or anywhere south (DE/MD) that A&P still was.

So likely that even if they had bid they wouldn't have gotten much (with someone like Acme being involved in many of the closer stores and willing to bid on a much larger bunch of locations)??
No doubt the number of potential A&P locations they would have been interested in would be limited to those contiguous to their existing footprint. They weren't a player in the Hannaford/Stop & Shop selloffs, either, even with the locations going for fire sale prices.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by BillyGr »

cathandler wrote:
BillyGr wrote:Although, how much would they have been anyway? The areas that A&P had stores only slightly overlapped the fringes of Price Chopper/Market 32 areas (a few in southern NY, the ones in CT are probably closer to NY than most of the PC locations in the state, maybe some in PA) - PC isn't in NYC, NJ or anywhere south (DE/MD) that A&P still was.

So likely that even if they had bid they wouldn't have gotten much (with someone like Acme being involved in many of the closer stores and willing to bid on a much larger bunch of locations)??
No doubt the number of potential A&P locations they would have been interested in would be limited to those contiguous to their existing footprint. They weren't a player in the Hannaford/Stop & Shop selloffs, either, even with the locations going for fire sale prices.
And those would have made more (potential) sense, being both areas are in/near existing PC areas, and that it was a smaller number of stores (5 that Tops got in NY and I know 1 Tops and 8 Big Y in MA) being offered where the sellers would have been more likely to sell a couple to this one and that one if offered better deals.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by storewanderer »

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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote:And as expected:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-price ... SKBN13P061
Admittedly, Albertsons was a bit of a left-field choice, partly because they're not a great grocer to begin with and afaik, the company still loses money. It certainly would close up the gap between Shaw's and ACME plus some, but there's too many unanswered questions. Would it have a greater degree of autonomy like United in north Texas? What are they going to do about Market 32? Would any stores be reflagged as ACME to prevent overlapping stores? Would they keep the perishable-heavy ~90k square feet Market Bistro store? How can Albertsons save it if Golub sold out in the first place? Why can't Albertsons use the money to improve the chain's operational or pricing problems?

But I was right, you know...
I find a little suspicious that after news broke of a possible sale, the "official" source says "Deny deny deny Market 32 is going great"
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by BillyGr »

pseudo3d wrote:Admittedly, Albertsons was a bit of a left-field choice, partly because they're not a great grocer to begin with and afaik, the company still loses money. It certainly would close up the gap between Shaw's and ACME plus some, but there's too many unanswered questions. Would it have a greater degree of autonomy like United in north Texas? What are they going to do about Market 32? Would any stores be reflagged as ACME to prevent overlapping stores? Would they keep the perishable-heavy ~90k square feet Market Bistro store? How can Albertsons save it if Golub sold out in the first place? Why can't Albertsons use the money to improve the chain's operational or pricing problems?

But I was right, you know...
I find a little suspicious that after news broke of a possible sale, the "official" source says "Deny deny deny Market 32 is going great"
I don't know that there are many issues between their stores & Acme - Price Chopper has a few stores in PA (mostly around Scranton and the Delaware Water Gap area) - not sure if that overlaps at all? and only a small number in the southern areas of NY where Acme picked up A&P locations. Also, the PC CT stores are more north than the few Acme picked up there from A&P.

They probably have more of an overlap with the Shaw's side in the Worcester, MA area and in some of the areas in VT/NH (for instance Manchester VT has those two markets only, so one would expect they would need to sell one to maintain competition in town).
Without looking too closely, I might think of someone like Tops being involved in taking stores such as that (they already have some in VT from the old Grand Union chain, but not likely to be the same areas as they only got ones where Shaw's did NOT take them, so you probably have either Shaw's/PC or Tops/PC but not all three, plus they bought that one seemingly odd MA store in the S&S/Hannaford deal which would make much more sense if they were to take some of the stores in that area).

Good question on what they would do name wise - they could continue the switchover, do that only in areas where they aren't now (like most of NY, maybe eastern MA) and convert the others to an existing name in that area, or simply get rid of both names totally and convert them all to something else?

Market Bistro is really just a bigger store - they could (I suppose) just cut back on the "extras" and convert it to a more regular store, or keep it as is. Or go really far out (since one would think that a sale might end the "supposed agreement" that may or may not really exist)... Larger store, more perishables, who does that sound kind of like???
(That just might make everyone in the entire Albany region really happy).
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by pseudo3d »

BillyGr wrote:
pseudo3d wrote:Admittedly, Albertsons was a bit of a left-field choice, partly because they're not a great grocer to begin with and afaik, the company still loses money. It certainly would close up the gap between Shaw's and ACME plus some, but there's too many unanswered questions. Would it have a greater degree of autonomy like United in north Texas? What are they going to do about Market 32? Would any stores be reflagged as ACME to prevent overlapping stores? Would they keep the perishable-heavy ~90k square feet Market Bistro store? How can Albertsons save it if Golub sold out in the first place? Why can't Albertsons use the money to improve the chain's operational or pricing problems?

But I was right, you know...
I find a little suspicious that after news broke of a possible sale, the "official" source says "Deny deny deny Market 32 is going great"
I don't know that there are many issues between their stores & Acme - Price Chopper has a few stores in PA (mostly around Scranton and the Delaware Water Gap area) - not sure if that overlaps at all? and only a small number in the southern areas of NY where Acme picked up A&P locations. Also, the PC CT stores are more north than the few Acme picked up there from A&P.

They probably have more of an overlap with the Shaw's side in the Worcester, MA area and in some of the areas in VT/NH (for instance Manchester VT has those two markets only, so one would expect they would need to sell one to maintain competition in town).
Without looking too closely, I might think of someone like Tops being involved in taking stores such as that (they already have some in VT from the old Grand Union chain, but not likely to be the same areas as they only got ones where Shaw's did NOT take them, so you probably have either Shaw's/PC or Tops/PC but not all three, plus they bought that one seemingly odd MA store in the S&S/Hannaford deal which would make much more sense if they were to take some of the stores in that area).

Good question on what they would do name wise - they could continue the switchover, do that only in areas where they aren't now (like most of NY, maybe eastern MA) and convert the others to an existing name in that area, or simply get rid of both names totally and convert them all to something else?

Market Bistro is really just a bigger store - they could (I suppose) just cut back on the "extras" and convert it to a more regular store, or keep it as is. Or go really far out (since one would think that a sale might end the "supposed agreement" that may or may not really exist)... Larger store, more perishables, who does that sound kind of like???
(That just might make everyone in the entire Albany region really happy).
After looking at a map again, it doesn't seem like ACME and Price Chopper interact at all. Shaw's only intersects in Worcester, MA, looks like, and the few stores that are there aren't that close to each other. Then again, there doesn't seem to be a lot of other choices in the market, so it's possible that the Shaw's there would be sold off. There does seem to be another crossover in Burlington, Vermont, where a PC and a Shaw's are across from each other.

One of the things I saw from reading the comments is that Price Chopper has been alienating customers with higher prices, and it was the Market 32 conversions that was hurting the company, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the biggest thing to happen will be that Market 32 ceases to exist as a new brand and both stores will become essentially the same. Heck, they may even rebrand Market 32 as Price Chopper (with an updated logo). As for Market Bistro, I'm not sure. I know that many stores that try this sort of thing end up downscaling it to a normal store (the H-E-B Marketplace store in San Antonio, a 90k square feet early 1990s store that more or less was a Wegmans knockoff). Either way, none of the Price Chopper/Market 32 stores hold a candle to the 100k+ square feet stores of Wegmans.

If they are talking to Albertsons, then something obviously went very wrong with Price Chopper to make them sell out. I read that they were talking about $2.5 billion for the chain, and now that's talked down to $1B.

The brand names seem to be in question, the drug store mix seems to be Top Care (which is likely to be replaced with Signature and another blow to TopCo, though they should be working with them due to problems in the mix), a new brand called "Pics" which kind of reminds me of Archer Farms, and "Simply Done" for household goods like Ziploc-style brands, which will probably be wiped in favor of Signature. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if a few of those products were turned into Signature.

Since Shaw's seems to be on the edge of Price Chopper, I wonder if it will make logistical sense to convert the remaining Shaw's in the Boston area to Star Market, convert the stores in Delaware to Price Chopper, and sell off the stores in Vermont and Maine? Maybe they don't have to. If you combined Shaw's/Star Market and Price Chopper/Market 32, you'd get 288 stores (likely less due to divestments) which is less than the 300+ division SoCal has (Vons/Pavilions/Albertsons), and frankly, the PC team could probably inject some fresh ideas into Shaw's/Star Market.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by Knight »

Price Chopper selling itself to Albertson's removes another participant from the northeastern United States.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

The main problem was/is their reinventing themselves into something they clearly are not and should not have even considered being. They're not Wegman's or Whole Foods or Fresh Market. They are Price Chopper plain and simple who for years ran (and still do run) very good stores. As I write this, I have to wonder how much of the fact Shop-Rite's returning to their home territory played into the entire rationale to sell. Yes, they do compete with them in other markets and it is relatively speaking only a handful of stores but it's out there as one more element of the thought process on the part of the Golub family. As far as Albertson's, all I can say is please help us here who actually have to shop in those stores if the sale goes through. I'm fearful of another Dominick's and/or Genuardi's situation where Safeway went in and bought well-run family chains and pretty much ran them into the ground in rather short order. At least we'll still have Hannaford (with much better pricing than PC) and Shop-Rite as options to where to spend our food dollars here in Northeastern NY.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by pseudo3d »

TW-Upstate NY wrote:The main problem was/is their reinventing themselves into something they clearly are not and should not have even considered being. They're not Wegman's or Whole Foods or Fresh Market. They are Price Chopper plain and simple who for years ran (and still do run) very good stores. As I write this, I have to wonder how much of the fact Shop-Rite's returning to their home territory played into the entire rationale to sell. Yes, they do compete with them in other markets and it is relatively speaking only a handful of stores but it's out there as one more element of the thought process on the part of the Golub family. As far as Albertson's, all I can say is please help us here who actually have to shop in those stores if the sale goes through. I'm fearful of another Dominick's and/or Genuardi's situation where Safeway went in and bought well-run family chains and pretty much ran them into the ground in rather short order. At least we'll still have Hannaford (with much better pricing than PC) and Shop-Rite as options to where to spend our food dollars here in Northeastern NY.
I'm sure that Albertsons will put a hard brake on Market 32, at least Market 32 as Price Chopper sees it.

As for another Dominick's/Genuardi situation, I think Albertsons has averted that for most part. United Supermarkets kept the staffing, scratch cooking, and other items that Safeway would've gotten rid of. Even one Randalls offers some grilled items like hamburgers, which Safeway had taken away the equipment for. The big problem with Dominick's, Genuardi's, and Randalls/Tom Thumb was that they were three unique grocery stores that Safeway tried to make like Safeway, and failed. The question is how much autonomy will it have. Will it keep its stance against tobacco products, for instance?

When Albertsons does start remodeling stores, will it have more of the ABS influence or the SWY influence? They haven't even seemed to coordinate their décor programs yet, with Safeway getting Colorful Lifestyle or the Florida Decor, and Albertsons still milling on LLC.
Last edited by pseudo3d on November 30th, 2016, 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Post by pseudo3d »

Ah, here's one more question that might affect things--according to another article I read on a current renovation to a Price Chopper store (to become a Market 32 store), Price Chopper is privately owned but more than that is 45% of that is employee owned, meaning they can't just schmooze up to Safeway shareholders like they did a few years back, they would have to individually collect those employee-held savings. Of course, if Albertsons gets majority, they'll have the say, but such an arrangement means that they might have problems integrating other divisions into it. The fact that Albertsons got into "advanced" talks suggests that they already resolved that issue, though. If Golub had been buying up employee stock, someone may have known about it by now. Maybe that's where the rumor originated in the first place.
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