Valley Center Albertsons canceled

[storewanderer]

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/t ... eculation/

[ClownLoach]

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/t ... eculation/

Doesn't necessarily exclude a future chain grocer. The Tribe could be the landlord and develop the site for another chain. Stater Bros?

Stuff like this happens all the time. There are chains that have stores that "sit" in proposed development for years and then something happens resulting in cancelation. The difference is food stores generally get more attention and news coverage.

[retailfanmitchell019]

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/t ... eculation/

Maybe the land will be another casino…
The San Pasqual Band of the Diegueño (Kumeyaay) indigenous tribe is headquartered in Valley Center.

Valley Center Foods (the small independent in VC) must be pleased with this news. They are supplied by UNFI (successor to Unified in SoCal).

Perhaps Albertsons will find another land site within town.

[storewanderer]

Knowing how Kroger is about new stores out west........ can't help but wonder if the developer got spooked about what may happen if Kroger got control here and decided to just sell the site. Plus Albertsons kept delaying and delaying which was odd as well.

At least NorCal Safeway is continuing to develop new stores. And they're pretty quick from announcing to opening... year or two... which is quick by California standards.

[reymann]

Safeway is looking to expand inland with Save Mart stagnating. They may be looking to build new stores in the Stockton and Modesto areas where bay area residents are transplanting to along with the Sacramento area.

[CalItalian]

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/t ... eculation/

Doesn't necessarily exclude a future chain grocer. The Tribe could be the landlord and develop the site for another chain. Stater Bros?

Stuff like this happens all the time. There are chains that have stores that "sit" in proposed development for years and then something happens resulting in cancelation. The difference is food stores generally get more attention and news coverage.

It's going to be an independent market run by the tribe.

They already own Horizon Fuel Center https://horizonfuelcenters.com/ and are licensing the brand to other tribes
https://tribalbusinessnews.com/sections ... her-tribes
. It's a very large gas station down the mountain from their Valley View Resort Casino. Currently and normally the lowest priced gas in Valley Center.

They recently replaced Qdoba with Chester's Fried Chicken. It's inside their Pit Stop Market at the gas station. Currently under construction on the same lot is a Ziggi's coffee shop with drive thru. Chester's also has a drive-thru. https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/z ... el-center/

Nearby Harrah's Resort SoCal which is owned by The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians recently built a new Rincon Market to replace a smaller, older one that was demolished and is now the parking lot.
https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/r ... pen-feb-1/

[ClownLoach]

https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/t ... eculation/

Doesn't necessarily exclude a future chain grocer. The Tribe could be the landlord and develop the site for another chain. Stater Bros?

Stuff like this happens all the time. There are chains that have stores that "sit" in proposed development for years and then something happens resulting in cancelation. The difference is food stores generally get more attention and news coverage.

It's going to be an independent market run by the tribe.

They already own Horizon Fuel Center https://horizonfuelcenters.com/ and are licensing the brand to other tribes
https://tribalbusinessnews.com/sections ... her-tribes
. It's a very large gas station down the mountain from their Valley View Resort Casino. Currently and normally the lowest priced gas in Valley Center.

They recently replaced Qdoba with Chester's Fried Chicken. It's inside their Pit Stop Market at the gas station. Currently under construction on the same lot is a Ziggi's coffee shop with drive thru. Chester's also has a drive-thru. https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/z ... el-center/

Nearby Harrah's Resort SoCal which is owned by The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians recently built a new Rincon Market to replace a smaller, older one that was demolished and is now the parking lot.
https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/r ... pen-feb-1/

I'm familiar with some of their enterprises like Horizon. Any idea who the developer was that fell through on developing the site? Also the article says they intend to build a market, but again they could be just the developer and not necessarily the operator. The story is vague. Few retailers develop their own properties these days, the PDC division of Safeway/Albertsons is no longer.

[CalItalian]

Doesn't necessarily exclude a future chain grocer. The Tribe could be the landlord and develop the site for another chain. Stater Bros?

Stuff like this happens all the time. There are chains that have stores that "sit" in proposed development for years and then something happens resulting in cancelation. The difference is food stores generally get more attention and news coverage.

It's going to be an independent market run by the tribe.

They already own Horizon Fuel Center https://horizonfuelcenters.com/ and are licensing the brand to other tribes
https://tribalbusinessnews.com/sections ... her-tribes
. It's a very large gas station down the mountain from their Valley View Resort Casino. Currently and normally the lowest priced gas in Valley Center.

They recently replaced Qdoba with Chester's Fried Chicken. It's inside their Pit Stop Market at the gas station. Currently under construction on the same lot is a Ziggi's coffee shop with drive thru. Chester's also has a drive-thru. https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/z ... el-center/

Nearby Harrah's Resort SoCal which is owned by The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians recently built a new Rincon Market to replace a smaller, older one that was demolished and is now the parking lot.
https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/r ... pen-feb-1/

I'm familiar with some of their enterprises like Horizon. Any idea who the developer was that fell through on developing the site? Also the article says they intend to build a market, but again they could be just the developer and not necessarily the operator. The story is vague. Few retailers develop their own properties these days, the PDC division of Safeway/Albertsons is no longer.

I was in Valley Center today.
They plan on operating the market themselves or with a partner who has their values - for the community and tribal members and employing a number of tribal members. They aren't simply going to build a shopping center for other operators. They're trying to expand beyond their primary source of income, employment being from the casino.

If you read about Ziggi's, that was a major search for them to become a partner, franchise. Their first. That build out is substantially completed.

The one thing I will say about the Horizon gas station is it was a great build. One of the best new gas station builds I've seen in California. BUT they are not maintaining it well. Stop by any day, as I was there today, and you will find multiple pumps not operating or there are issues with some of them such as not accepting credit cards while others do. It is a very busy station, heavily visited but still this is an ongoing issue.

The funniest thing is for well over 18 months the time of day which is displayed on every pump is over 20 minutes behind the current time. Even with time changes.

I don't know much about Qdoba but many times it was just closed during the middle of the day in their Pit Stop Market.

[ClownLoach]

It's going to be an independent market run by the tribe.

They already own Horizon Fuel Center https://horizonfuelcenters.com/ and are licensing the brand to other tribes
https://tribalbusinessnews.com/sections ... her-tribes
. It's a very large gas station down the mountain from their Valley View Resort Casino. Currently and normally the lowest priced gas in Valley Center.

They recently replaced Qdoba with Chester's Fried Chicken. It's inside their Pit Stop Market at the gas station. Currently under construction on the same lot is a Ziggi's coffee shop with drive thru. Chester's also has a drive-thru. https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/z ... el-center/

Nearby Harrah's Resort SoCal which is owned by The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians recently built a new Rincon Market to replace a smaller, older one that was demolished and is now the parking lot.
https://www.valleycenter.com/articles/r ... pen-feb-1/

I'm familiar with some of their enterprises like Horizon. Any idea who the developer was that fell through on developing the site? Also the article says they intend to build a market, but again they could be just the developer and not necessarily the operator. The story is vague. Few retailers develop their own properties these days, the PDC division of Safeway/Albertsons is no longer.

I was in Valley Center today.
They plan on operating the market themselves or with a partner who has their values - for the community and tribal members and employing a number of tribal members. They aren't simply going to build a shopping center for other operators. They're trying to expand beyond their primary source of income, employment being from the casino.

If you read about Ziggi's, that was a major search for them to become a partner, franchise. Their first. That build out is substantially completed.

The one thing I will say about the Horizon gas station is it was a great build. One of the best new gas station builds I've seen in California. BUT they are not maintaining it well. Stop by any day, as I was there today, and you will find multiple pumps not operating or there are issues with some of them such as not accepting credit cards while others do. It is a very busy station, heavily visited but still this is an ongoing issue.

The funniest thing is for well over 18 months the time of day which is displayed on every pump is over 20 minutes behind the current time. Even with time changes.

I don't know much about Qdoba but many times it was just closed during the middle of the day in their Pit Stop Market.

Seems foolish. They will likely make less on this market than they would have collected in rent from Albertsons.

[storewanderer]

There are government grants available to tribes to open businesses like this so it is possible they will get funding to build an entire "market" for free. These grants are often used for gas stations and smaller businesses. I found it interesting the article explicitly stated this will NOT include a gas station.

I went into one of these Tribe operated gas stations out in Shingle Springs just last week. They have a very nice casino and a really nice medical facility. They make a lot of money.

The gas station was pretty nice when it opened, it had a Peet's counter inside and quite a bit of hot food. This week the gas station has the Peet's just self serve like any other gas station coffee, poor hot food, inside their store in the middle of the afternoon they had one clerk and a line of 5 customers. The line moves glacially slow as they use the same point of sale system that the restaurants in the casino use instead of a proper gas station point of sale system. I was even given a slip with a line for "gratuity" when I paid them with a credit card, though they did not have me sign it or collect a signature. They also charged me sales tax on a purchase of candy, not sure if that is a tribe thing for their specific tribe over there, but that is definitely not consistent with CA rules if you were in a normal business in CA.

Typically these groups start the business off well but then when the business doesn't make as much money as expected operations start to really fall off. The other difficulty is management as sometimes they will not hire non Tribal management and if someone who they have hired is knowledgeable and leaves it can be difficult to replace them. Further with Tribal politics when the board elections come up even if people are in place who are knowledgeable if they are "on the wrong side" of a newly elected board they will also be gone.

I have not seen tribes successful in the grocery business in many cases. However I don't know of any examples where a store actually closed...

The only case I have seen a tribe successful in the grocery business is Firelake Discount Foods in Shawnee, OK. This store is VERY high volume and VERY successful. This store is run very well. They actually use multiple wholesalers to try to get the best deal and most SKUs. They got people to run this thing who understand the grocery business and they employ a lot of tribal members in the store as well. I think there are a few reasons for this- first, lack of real competition there in Shawnee. There are a couple Homelands in outdated old Safeway or Food Lion buildings and then you have Wal Mart Supercenter (quite far away). They probably have Aldi and Save a Lot as well.