marshd1000 wrote: ↑May 4th, 2019, 9:02 pm
Just wondering what is the pricing at Pavillions? Is it much higher than Vons?
My experience with Pavilions vs VONS is the prices are similar on similar items. The difference is Pavilions carries more upscale items and the items are priced accordingly. For example, if both VONS and Pavilions sell Morton sea salt, the price would be the same. Pavilions would also sell a naturally-dried, imported sea salt and it would be priced higher.
marshd1000 wrote: ↑May 4th, 2019, 9:02 pm...Since the botched Haggen expansion involved former Safeway and Albertsons, I am not sure that would work unless the price point on items they have in common were the same!! But I keep thinking about the Gig Harbor Safeway that had been converted to Haggen. Demographically Gig Harbor should have supported a Haggen. Also that particular made a very attractive Haggen but it flopped! But physically and demographically speaking, Gig Harbor, Admiral (West Seattle) and Bellevue would be great candidates to be a Haggen, if the previous Haggen expansion as an independent hadn’t happened!
As @storewanderer points out below, the stores that were converted to Haggen had the name plastered above the door, but were not really Haggens. I remember walking into the Del Mar Haggen thinking "this looks less appealing than the un-remodeled VONS up the freeway." It actually looked less upsclae than the Albertsons it replaced.
storewanderer wrote: ↑May 4th, 2019, 10:23 pm
I think Haggen is very damaged from the botched Albertsons/Safeway purchases (and was already somewhat damaged from the various store closures and flopped Top Foods to Haggen conversions) and should not be expanded beyond its current store base at this point....
The Yelp reviews do not bear that out. The lowest review is three stars (the Olympia, WA store) and that's due to two one-star reviews that resulted from seemingly one-time incidents (a rude stocker and the meat saw being down one day)
storewanderer wrote: ↑May 4th, 2019, 10:23 pm...Maybe a real, true, top of the line Haggen would have some potential in some of those higher income areas in the Pacific Northwest. The real problem is Haggen has already been there and the stores are now closed, so they seem to have failed.
It is still odd to me how Haggen can do so well in some spots yet fared so poorly in others. That Olympia Store is the most interesting. Look how well that does. I really don't understand quite why things went how they went for the original group of Haggen Stores ...
It seems that the failure of the pre-acquisition Haggen stores was the result of expansion beyond the company's means. The conversion of discount stores to upscale ones didn't help, either. Not sure why the company didn't foresee that one.
storewanderer wrote: ↑May 4th, 2019, 10:23 pm...the ones purchased from Albertsons/Safeway I absolutely understand why those failed. Those were not real Haggen Stores, they did not offer the product quality of a real Haggen Store, and did not offer the atmosphere of a real Haggen Store.
Haggen did what Mariano's did when they bought up a bunch of closing Dominick's stores in Chicago. Jewel picked up a handful (I think five initially and a sixth a year after the merger), Whole Foods took a handful, Heinen took two, and Mariano's picked up eleven. After a quickie reset and thorough deep-cleaning , Jewel opened the stores and eventually remodeled all of them to bring them up to their standards. Whole Foods took months to convert the stores to their model and Heinen did the same. Mariano's closed the stores for a while and re-opened them looking virtually identical to the previous Dominick's without the prepared foods that made them a hit with shoppers.