Save A Lot Sells All Stores

[Romr123]

Save-A-Lot didn't have enough nearby presence in the west to support anything but a huge deployment of these stores in the west...the test markets were close enough to their existing supply chains (remember they were formerly Wetterau based in St. Louis and were south and east of St. Louis focused) to do a test.

In other words right space wrong place....

[storewanderer]

Save-A-Lot didn't have enough nearby presence in the west to support anything but a huge deployment of these stores in the west...the test markets were close enough to their existing supply chains (remember they were formerly Wetterau based in St. Louis and were south and east of St. Louis focused) to do a test.

In other words right space wrong place....

They used Supervalu's distribution in OR/WA. Not sure how they were handling CA when they left CA, as Supervalu wasn't there yet or had just gotten there, I thought they had a small warehouse of their own.

They tried to expand out west just like other regions with a combination of corporate operated and franchise operated stores. Too many of the franchisees sunk and the corporate stores didn't do that great either. The franchisees that did well in CA seemed to only want one store (which was not the model Save a Lot goes after- they want franchisees who will run 15-25 stores). Also at the time in CA/NV/AZ Supervalu was not a wholesaler in the market so they did not have existing Supervalu customers to sell franchises to.

In OR/WA/AK/MT at that time Supervalu had a decent wholesale book and should have been able to find some operators to take some Save a Lot franchises as they did in various other regions, but given how poorly Save a Lot was doing in the CA/NV territory I think it spooked a lot of those operators from buying Save a Lot franchises...

I wonder if they had focused on OR/WA/AK/MT only and focused on making it work (they have always tinkered this format quite a bit by market/franchisee) if they would have been able to build a legitimate Save a Lot operation run by existing Supervalu customers like they did in so many other territories. Still once they separated from Supervalu they would have had to do something (or maybe they wouldn't have- maybe they could have just kept using the space).

[Bagels]

Even after Save-A-Lot was acquired by SuperValu, it operated more like a Grocery Outlet than an Aldi - much of its merchandise was close outs and overstocks. This started to change in the 2000s

Successful Save-A-Lots are generally in urban food deserts. It’s also a risky business model — many eventually close due to high levels of theft.

Meanwhile, Aldi in the USA has found its biggest success in operating stores that mimics traditional super markets in product assortment. They also name brands where it matters (soda, etc.). And instead of food deserts, the stores are located in affluent neighborhoods.

[storewanderer]

By the time I saw Save a Lot, it was already running like an Aldi. Just an inferior, and in my view, more expensive one.

But if we go back to the 90's level of Supervalu it sort of makes sense-
They had Cub which was a discount/full format supermarket
Then they had Shopko which was general merchandise but spun that off in 1991
Then they had this Save a Lot thing which could be like the clearance center but didn't own that until 1994

But like with all things Supervalu they managed to screw up, sell things off at strange times, not run other things properly, change strategy every couple weeks, so they got nowhere with any of it.

So it seems Supervalu's screwing around in the 90's back when they were involved with all of those promising formats that could have worked together but never got the chance to was repeated when they got the Albertsons assets and screwed all of those up too.

[Romr123]

S-A-L got started and was based in St. Louis, where in the 80s both A&P and Kroger withdrew. Although National and Schnucks ended up with most of the core stores, there were both very urban and relatively rural locations which were not taken---hence the origins of S-A-L.

Layering in Shop and Save in metro St. Louis was probably an interesting strategy for Super Valu.

A tired old 15k sqft store was pretty much their sweet spot for most of their existence.