99 Ranch Market Coming To Shops at Santa Anita

[J-Man]

This is a hugely successful mall (formerly owned by Westfield) in an area with a substantial Asian population and a lot of Asian-related stores and restaurants, in addition to many traditional mall tenants. (Anchors are Macy's, JCPenney, and Nordstrom.) The 99 Ranch is going into the old Robinson's wing, on the lower level of the Forever 21 store, which has downsized to occupy only the second floor. It will be interesting to see how successful they will be. I believe there's a tradition of having supermarkets or hypermarkets in malls in some Asian countries, but they're still unusual here. And this is a very crowded mall with challenging parking at times. Hopefully they will have considered this and will have ways to mitigate any issues.

It looks like the store may be divided by an entrance/exit corridor into two sections. It should be opening soon so we'll find out shortly.

[ClownLoach]

This is a hugely successful mall (formerly owned by Westfield) in an area with a substantial Asian population and a lot of Asian-related stores and restaurants, in addition to many traditional mall tenants. (Anchors are Macy's, JCPenney, and Nordstrom.) The 99 Ranch is going into the old Robinson's wing, on the lower level of the Forever 21 store, which has downsized to occupy only the second floor. It will be interesting to see how successful they will be. I believe there's a tradition of having supermarkets or hypermarkets in malls in some Asian countries, but they're still unusual here. And this is a very crowded mall with challenging parking at times. Hopefully they will have considered this and will have ways to mitigate any issues.

It looks like the store may be divided by an entrance/exit corridor into two sections. It should be opening soon so we'll find out shortly.

They will be a massive, crazy success. Seafood City runs one of their top volume stores at Westfield Southcenter in Seattle area. Same kind of configuration.

I sound like a broken record today, but the fact is that these ethnic operators serve a need in the marketplace that conventional stores don't fill. One of the biggest problems right now in the entire food business is the money spent to close doors to others... Lease restrictions... Deed covenants... Etc. They can't get space because it's perfectly acceptable for say Ralphs to close and continue to pay rent for years, even decades, on their closed location to keep grocery stores out. All they're doing by forcing them to these more distant and inconvenient locations like a mall is basically ensuring that the customer makes even bigger shops, full baskets and stocks up so there will be no need to pick up some extra meat or produce at the Vons closer to their house later in the week. Furthermore, since they have to pay higher rents for locations like this they will require a greater return on the investment. That means they will add more conventional goods so that their store appeals to a broader audience and thus becomes an even greater competitor. If they would back off these preposterous non-compete clauses they would see these chains happily open smaller and more specialized stores that only carry ethnic product lines and really don't compete. Heck, a 99 Ranch next to a large Albertsons might bring them more traffic and thus improve their business but it's not possible due to the lease exclusions.

[J-Man]

Interestingly, there's an existing 99 Ranch Market in Arcadia about 1.5 miles away from the new mall location. It's in a location that was at one time a Pantry store that closed when Vons built one the first Pavilions literally next to it. (It's been turned into a Vons.) There's also an Aldi across the street from the Pavilions. There's also an HMart nearby (former Hughes/Ralphs.)

[ClownLoach]

Interestingly, there's an existing 99 Ranch Market in Arcadia about 1.5 miles away from the new mall location. It's in a location that was at one time a Pantry store that closed when Vons built one the first Pavilions literally next to it. (It's been turned into a Vons.) There's also an Aldi across the street from the Pavilions. There's also an HMart nearby (former Hughes/Ralphs.)

It looks pretty small from the pictures and no room to expand. I'm sure the big H-Mart up the street is hurting them, and Vons isn't going to give up their site even though it's pretty obviously limping along. Nowhere else to go in the area and I'm sure developers would love to tear down their existing location to build massive apartments. That's why the mall makes sense whether it's a relocation or a second location.

[buckguy]

This is a hugely successful mall (formerly owned by Westfield) in an area with a substantial Asian population and a lot of Asian-related stores and restaurants, in addition to many traditional mall tenants. (Anchors are Macy's, JCPenney, and Nordstrom.) The 99 Ranch is going into the old Robinson's wing, on the lower level of the Forever 21 store, which has downsized to occupy only the second floor. It will be interesting to see how successful they will be. I believe there's a tradition of having supermarkets or hypermarkets in malls in some Asian countries, but they're still unusual here. And this is a very crowded mall with challenging parking at times. Hopefully they will have considered this and will have ways to mitigate any issues.

It looks like the store may be divided by an entrance/exit corridor into two sections. It should be opening soon so we'll find out shortly.

They will be a massive, crazy success. Seafood City runs one of their top volume stores at Westfield Southcenter in Seattle area. Same kind of configuration.

Super markets are common in malls in the parts of Asia I have visited. Most often they are part of department stores rather than on their own---some are full line stores, others are a mix of specialty items with a bakery or prepared foods. They turn up in department stores at varied price points. The very upscale flagship Central department store in Bangkok at the Chidlom Skytrain stop has a huge super market with prepared foods and a complete range of groceries emphasizing international brands, along with some Thai brands. It originally was part of their joint venture with Ahold. I've seen more convention super markets in malls in Latin America. When malls became a monoculture dominated by a apparel in a narrow range of prices, it was pretty much the beginning of the end.

[ClownLoach]

This is a hugely successful mall (formerly owned by Westfield) in an area with a substantial Asian population and a lot of Asian-related stores and restaurants, in addition to many traditional mall tenants. (Anchors are Macy's, JCPenney, and Nordstrom.) The 99 Ranch is going into the old Robinson's wing, on the lower level of the Forever 21 store, which has downsized to occupy only the second floor. It will be interesting to see how successful they will be. I believe there's a tradition of having supermarkets or hypermarkets in malls in some Asian countries, but they're still unusual here. And this is a very crowded mall with challenging parking at times. Hopefully they will have considered this and will have ways to mitigate any issues.

It looks like the store may be divided by an entrance/exit corridor into two sections. It should be opening soon so we'll find out shortly.

They will be a massive, crazy success. Seafood City runs one of their top volume stores at Westfield Southcenter in Seattle area. Same kind of configuration.

Super markets are common in malls in the parts of Asia I have visited. Most often they are part of department stores rather than on their own---some are full line stores, others are a mix of specialty items with a bakery or prepared foods. They turn up in department stores at varied price points. The very upscale flagship Central department store in Bangkok at the Chidlom Skytrain stop has a huge super market with prepared foods and a complete range of groceries emphasizing international brands, along with some Thai brands. It originally was part of their joint venture with Ahold. I've seen more convention super markets in malls in Latin America. When malls became a monoculture dominated by a apparel in a narrow range of prices, it was pretty much the beginning of the end.

You see this in Canada as well.

[storewanderer]

US grocers have turned away from malls. They were never really in them in the first place, but there are some examples in the past. Or situations where the grocer threw a store out in the parking lot or something. Malls have turned away from "essential business" type tenants in favor of teen-focused soft good focused tenants and this is a big reason why US malls are so irrelevant to a giant chunk of the population at this point. I think this is a lose-lose both for the grocers and for the malls. Maybe these ethnic grocers are the answer to get a solution that will work out for all parties involved.

n Bloomingdale, IL I found a Woodman's Store in what is largely a dead mall. But the store is completely detached from the mall and is a new building. So I don't really count that.

[buckguy]

US grocers have turned away from malls. They were never really in them in the first place, but there are some examples in the past. Or situations where the grocer threw a store out in the parking lot or something. Malls have turned away from "essential business" type tenants in favor of teen-focused soft good focused tenants and this is a big reason why US malls are so irrelevant to a giant chunk of the population at this point. I think this is a lose-lose both for the grocers and for the malls. Maybe these ethnic grocers are the answer to get a solution that will work out for all parties involved.

n Bloomingdale, IL I found a Woodman's Store in what is largely a dead mall. But the store is completely detached from the mall and is a new building. So I don't really count that.

Supermarkets were in all of the very first enclosed first malls in the 60s and in all of the non-enclosed regional shopping centers that preceded them. It was not unusual for early regional shopping centers to have multiple supermarkets, as well as multiple variety and drug stores and it was not unusual for these arrangements to continue for decades, even as stores got larger. Kroger had long-term relationships with a number of developers and located in their malls well into the 60s and they weren't the only chain to do this. Kroger seemed particularly close to Debartolo which had started out building strip malls. Mall supermarkets later moved to "convenience wings" with hardware stores and service businesses or outlots, which were common during the 70s.

A number of supermarket chains set-up shopping center subsidiaries which usually developed neighborhood-grade shopping centers, but also regional centers. Food Fair and Grand Union each developed some of the first regionals centers with multiple department store anchors in the DC area and Grand Union managed another, which had Giant as well as Grand Union as a tenant---each store had an anchor like location, which was commonplace. Take a look at the Mall Hall of Fame site and you'll see what early malls looked like and how they were tenanted.