buckguy wrote:Jewel has been in and out of Milwaukee more than once. The usual attribution was that they didn't like Chicago chains in Milwaukee, although National had a long run there. Jewel has a long history in NW Indiana but I don't think they ever had a huge presence. National had a similar history during their time. There's a long history of having a lot of local competition and because Chicago has sprawled to incorporate what used to be fairly independent towns, there always have been operators in the fringes that have had at least a good run for awhile--like Gromer's from Elgin which expanded into the NW suburbs.
National was, well, national at one time (well not true national, but definitely a number of spread-out divisions), with the divisions in St. Louis and New Orleans lasting into the 1990s. I don't really buy the "Chicago chains" excuse for the other reason being that the only thing I've read in regards to that are the same people who get angry when a Starbucks sets up shop in their neighborhood, but I would blame its failure on two reasons.
1) It really was too expensive, thinking back to one of storewanderer's posts from the Roundy's/Kroger thread:
storewanderer wrote:Metro Market was the prototype for Mariano's in Chicago but wasn't executed as well and wasn't nearly as popular as Mariano's. Part of what makes Mariano's tick is the urban dense locations and Milwaukee is not really the same as Chicago and not nearly as dense as Chicago. So while the stores sort of feel like Mariano's and have some similarities they are just in general lacking.
Obviously Jewel isn't like Mariano's, but given that the other main choice, Pick 'n Save, was said to be rather hit and miss (to put it likely) still dominated lends credence to that theory, not to mention the pricing problem that plagues Albertsons.
2) Albertsons just flat-out had them in the wrong locations.
Remember, when they pulled out in 2007, it wasn't 5 it was 15 (they entered the market with the purchase of four Cub Foods and a Pick 'n Save, though they had Osco Drug in the area), though ASC had done the task of buying 5 with the intent of building 5 more soon after. (Their earlier attempt at Milwaukee ended in 1978, but never had more than 13 stores). Since ASC built the other five they were going to in late 1998 and early 1999, Albertsons built more on top of that, possibly also within the time period of 2-3 years (since Albertsons' store growth was dramatically stunted from 2002 on), and that's assuming no stores closed around that time as well, then when SuperValu pulled the plug, nearly two-thirds of the stores went without owners! Compare to that to the Houston Division, which had its share of bad locations but they were able to sell off a majority of the stores (between Kroger, H-E-B, and Randalls, about 60% of the stores were purchased, not even counting purchases by independents). In Milwaukee, no store was older than 10 years, and the oldest stores had been remodeled before becoming Jewel-Osco. So clearly something stank in Milwaukee and it wasn't just "We don't like Chicago chains".
It was probably for the best in the case of Milwaukee. During the SuperValu era I remember reading how bad Jewel-Osco was but SuperValu could get away with it because it had a big market share, Mariano's was not yet a thing, and Lifestyle was not going to help Dominick's. I doubt that since Milwaukee was only 10 years ago and is now much harder due to a larger and better organized Pick 'n Save, Jewel-Osco could gain a meaningful grip in Milwaukee. But they aren't entering Milwaukee. They're expanding in northwest Indiana, which can mean anything. In between the "mystery buyer" and "surprise, surprise, it's Jewel", Jewel-Osco got a new president, and I assume that he's going to try to prevent the new stores from crashing and burning, possibly with a semi-separate management group.