mjhale wrote: ↑June 8th, 2023, 6:07 pm
pseudo3d wrote: ↑June 8th, 2023, 5:07 pm
Exactly. There were things that Albertsons did that their competitors didn't and that ended up running them out of many areas. One example was copying the California policy to have only half of their lights on. So while their competitors are doing their usual business in a brightly lit store, Albertsons is trying to pull traffic in with dim lights, which only compounded existing problems (smelly seafood departments, etc.) further.
Probably the reason why Wegmans has stalled out in its crawl down the East Coast is the refusal to make adaptations to the local markets.
At least in the case of the DC area, Wegmans opened their first stores when Giant-MD was weak from Ahold's own troubles, Walmart hadn't started converting stores to Supercenters and there wasn't another viable mid to high level competitor. Despite having NY influence in their brands - Upstate Farms Dairy, Perry's Ice Cream are two I remember - and their product naming with things like donuts being called frycakes, the Wegmans experience was so much better than anything else that they excelled. Now that there is a lot more competition at all levels and the local competitors have righted themselves Wegmans isn't the massive attraction that it once was. Don't get me wrong, they still attract very strong crowds but there are good other options. As Wegmans gets further from its base or areas that have knowledge of them, people aren't going to want to shop a NY state grocer that is located in NC or SC or TN. It sounds a lot like when Giant-MD tried expanding to the Philly area with their Super G stores. They were carbon copies of the stores that Giant operated in their home market down to the products that were being sold in a market that had specific tastes and brands of their own. No surprise that Super G ultimately failed in PA and NJ. Ahold closed and sold off the stores to local competitors.
North Carolina has lots of Northeastern transplants, who I'm sure appreciate finding a decent bagel in a super market,
Wegman's DC area competition may have opened more stores, but I'd disagree that they've gotten much stronger. Giant-Landover's historic strength was the deli-bakery, which was one of things that went downhill with Ahold. Giants have gotten a bit better--more realistic pricing, somewhat better service, but the bakeries and delis are nothing like they once were and they don't do the volume they once did. H-T is really nothing special and the prepared foods are just awful--none of the stores I've seen in the DC seems to do a lot of volume and I wouldn't be surprised if the Rockville Wegman's is what finally closes the anemic one in "North Bethesda". Whole Foods has always been uneven, especially in the deli-bakery and prepared foods areas. Wegman's doesn't doesn't do everything well---the pizza is almost as bad other places, but the baked goods generally are much better than anywhere else. The center store can be eccentric---heavy on the house brand in areas like pasta, but the pricing is generally good and the produce, at its best, beats Whole Foods.
Wegman's seems willing to experiment and they've had some successes like the Prince Georges County store which was something that no one else would have attempted. The Natick store sounds like it had a number of problems--the size, the multiple levels and being attached to a dying mall that was throwing a number of things against the wall to see what sticks.
A few other malls have been experimenting with destination supers, but I think these do better in a power center complex or a diversified retail corridor. Malls had supers in the 60s---sometimes as a junior anchor, sometimes in a convenience wing. Outparcel stores were common in the 70s. But all of these disappeared during the 80s. The conventional wisdom came to be that a lot of grocery shopping was part of the journey to work, which helps explain why one-stop shopping didn't work for everyone and mall stores lost ground over time. Destination stores like Wegman's theoretically could do better than this, but my guess is that they still aren't compatible with a mall trip and a store with an emphasis on perishables often is its own trip or the end of a varied shopping trip. That malls became so specialized and apparel-oriented probably makes them a poor place for a super, whereas they sometimes work in other countries, where malls have much more diversified selections of stores.
The homogenization of malls was probably a productive short-term strategy back in the 80s and 90s, but it's also a big part of why malls have died---the same stores, the same price points, and the same limited range of merchandise was really the beginning of the end, making it easier for power centers and the lifestyle centers predicated on accommodating different uses over time.