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Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 21st, 2017, 8:48 am
by cathandler
They say they'll take the learnings from their small-format stores and adopt them in their mainstream formats
http://www.supermarketnews.com/news/aho ... t-strategy

Re: Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 22nd, 2017, 8:06 am
by pseudo3d
What were they thinking? Everything Fresh in Philadelphia has much lower margins than a convenience store and with a Target a few blocks away (offering more of the same) they would basically have to have constant foot traffic for it to be popular. (I imagine there are lots of stores like that in New York City, but I'm not sure it would work anywhere else, even Philadelphia).

bfresh with its ~10,000 square foot stores jumped on far too late on the "small stores" trend. It seemed like that was the "thing" for a while with Fresh & Easy rolling in, and a lot of grocers either planning to make small-format stores or a line of small-format stores (besides Trader Joe's, ALDI, and Sprouts). Safeway opened a few "The Market" stores, Meijer opened a scaled-down store, and Publix even announced making a much smaller store. (At least one of the smaller Meijer stores ended up closing, and I don't think Publix ever opened theirs). But the dream died by 2013-2014, with bfresh hopping on several years too late. No wonder they couldn't gain traction.

Re: Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 26th, 2017, 11:00 am
by Knight
bfresh has been a troubled banner. Its first store lasted six months before folding.

Re: Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 26th, 2017, 11:03 am
by Knight
pseudo3d wrote: November 22nd, 2017, 8:06 amSafeway opened a few "The Market" stores, Meijer opened a scaled-down store, and Publix even announced making a much smaller store. (At least one of the smaller Meijer stores ended up closing, and I don't think Publix ever opened theirs.).
Publix had considered a 20,000-square-foot prototype. Its 28,000-square-foot prototype stores are nice.

Re: Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 26th, 2017, 1:19 pm
by storewanderer
Small format has been tough for a lot of operators. At least they kept it going this long... longer than many did.

Re: Ahold Delhaize to end bfresh

Posted: November 30th, 2017, 8:43 pm
by mbz321
I forgot about this concept completely. From what I understand, the Philly store was well received and has overall excellent reviews. And Philly is growing tremendously, so I'm not sure how this store wasn't profitable, but there are a lot of other small format specialty grocers in the area. I know Giant only has one large store in the city itself (barely in the city) and they faced a lot of backlash from the Union chains.