Island Pacific to open San Francisco Store

[storewanderer]

https://progressivegrocer.com/island-pa ... ead-h-mart

I thought this was a former nice/newer Albertsons on Alemany that has been multiple Asian grocers but I see the unit Island Pacific is taking is actually the former Pacific Super which was there forever. This may be a former Cala/Bell site from the 90's or something.

Island Pacific runs mostly former Fresh & Easy Stores. Remodeling efforts have been rather minimal but they do a lot of work to get service seafood, service hot food, and service bakery into the stores but try to keep center store/aisles the same as Fresh & Easy left them.

Island Pacific is very uneven, they're pretty good in Las Vegas but in Sacramento I was not at all impressed. They have a small private label program and loyalty program.

[veteran+]

https://progressivegrocer.com/island-pa ... ead-h-mart

I thought this was a former nice/newer Albertsons on Alemany that has been multiple Asian grocers but I see the unit Island Pacific is taking is actually the former Pacific Super which was there forever. This may be a former Cala/Bell site from the 90's or something.

Island Pacific runs mostly former Fresh & Easy Stores. Remodeling efforts have been rather minimal but they do a lot of work to get service seafood, service hot food, and service bakery into the stores but try to keep center store/aisles the same as Fresh & Easy left them.

Island Pacific is very uneven, they're pretty good in Las Vegas but in Sacramento I was not at all impressed. They have a small private label program and loyalty program.

They must have money to have refitted F&E stores. No easy task given Tesco's weird bespoke buildings (the ones they built from the ground up).

[storewanderer]

https://progressivegrocer.com/island-pa ... ead-h-mart

I thought this was a former nice/newer Albertsons on Alemany that has been multiple Asian grocers but I see the unit Island Pacific is taking is actually the former Pacific Super which was there forever. This may be a former Cala/Bell site from the 90's or something.

Island Pacific runs mostly former Fresh & Easy Stores. Remodeling efforts have been rather minimal but they do a lot of work to get service seafood, service hot food, and service bakery into the stores but try to keep center store/aisles the same as Fresh & Easy left them.

Island Pacific is very uneven, they're pretty good in Las Vegas but in Sacramento I was not at all impressed. They have a small private label program and loyalty program.

They must have money to have refitted F&E stores. No easy task given Tesco's weird bespoke buildings (the ones they built from the ground up).

They closed quite a few stores.

The way they do a F&E retrofit is they basically leave the configuration of produce and the dry grocery aisles the same.

Back wall gets converted to service seafood (old F&E bakery etc.).

They build a maybe 10 foot or so (from front wall to where it goes out into the sales floor) service bakery directly to the left when you enter facing the produce wall then on the other side of that a big service hot food counter takes up the rest of the space from there to the old frozen side wall and that counter faces out into the aisles and has a reasonable line up space. There is a small entryway that remains. There are 4 checkstands squeezed into the entryway, almost no line up space for them.

[veteran+]

Interesting.

But the infrastructure should have been challenging with all the mixed up European components being forced to work with American components (electricity, plumbing and more).

Yes it passed inspections but, for example: Carboard compactors shorting out the store's electricity grid because the components were not compatible.

[storewanderer]

Interesting.

But the infrastructure should have been challenging with all the mixed up European components being forced to work with American components (electricity, plumbing and more).

Yes it passed inspections but, for example: Carboard compactors shorting out the store's electricity grid because the components were not compatible.

I wonder how much Island Pacific replaced. Maybe they had to re-do wiring to support the additional juice needed to support the extra fresh departments/service counters?

From how the stores look/feel, Island Pacific replaced as little as possible.

I'm not sure who funds Island Pacific. They call themselves Tiger.

[ClownLoach]

Interesting.

But the infrastructure should have been challenging with all the mixed up European components being forced to work with American components (electricity, plumbing and more).

Yes it passed inspections but, for example: Carboard compactors shorting out the store's electricity grid because the components were not compatible.

I have heard that many of the Asian supermarkets do the same thing Tesco did and try to import foreign equipment. They have a lot of experience with this. Remember that everything outside of the US is metric, and if we switched to metric components for homebuilding it would drive down this uniquely American "surcharge" by enabling the import of many parts especially plumbing. Of course it would also put all the American vendors out of business which is why we do what we do, although again these stores will sneak it in anyway if it's something that won't be inspected. For example the large aquariums installed for live seafood departments are usually imported and metric standard because I'm not aware of any American companies that make aquariums designed for live fish retail, maybe a lobster tank and that's it.

Voltage is a US standard so the compactor situation sounds odd since they're leased 99.9% of the time by the local monopolized trash hauler who usually won't accept anything else (learned this by experience with a corporate screwup on a new store, after emptying a compactor from the wrong vendor they were ready to literally sue us); you can't get "different electricity" here. I'm less familiar with foreign power standards but the voltage is different in some countries, again the stores would have been built to US standards per building codes on that. Probably more an issue of Tesco trying to do something halfway due to being cheap and it backfired, like trying to get away with inadequate electric service since they thought their new-at-the-time mini T5 and other expensive power saving equipment wouldn't need that much electricity (again I can't remember the exact terms, I think it's so many Volts of power, even your American house can wind up with this problem if you want to add too many electrical devices. I've heard of the illegal Marijuana grow houses and they basically create a second power system with solar panels and even hook up natural gas generators to get enough power because upgrading the service with the utility where they basically bring a whole extra power line to the house would reveal the illegal operation.)