Retail Watchers

Here's an interesting article I found on the CBC's website about food offerings at Shopper's Drug Mart. I am thinking that before the original Albertsons was broken up they did some expanded food offerings at a Sav-On Drugs in Boise?


http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/shopper ... -1.3700945

marshd1000 wrote:Here's an interesting article I found on the CBC's website about food offerings at Shopper's Drug Mart. I am thinking that before the original Albertsons was broken up they did some expanded food offerings at a Sav-On Drugs in Boise?


http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/shopper ... -1.3700945

Can't speak for Boise, but back in the 1990's Jewel converted a bunch of smaller Jewel and Jewel-Osco stores into Osco stores with a fresh food mart. At the time, the local Chicago news was abuzz because its corporate siblings Acme and Lucky retained older, smaller stores.

My guess is Albertsons replicated the concept with SavOns in Boise.

I've seen Walgreens do this at their Times Square location and I'd assume other high volume Walgreens/Duane Reade stores in the city do this as well. Most drug stores just don't have the volume for this though.

I should be able to pull up an article that says something along the lines of where they introduced "Osco with Albertsons Food Mart".

Drug stores offering food is quite rare, even high volume CVS stores I've been to lack food beyond a basic dry foods offering.

Osco, Sav-On, and Longs all handled fairly large food programs in some of their stores involving fresh produce, extensive dairy items, and the vendor items available like bread, etc.

The Sav-On in Boise took it a step more by adding a hot food program.

Rite Aid has hundreds of stores in CA with the ice cream counters. Rite Aid also has extensive programs for nursery and for Christmas Trees (in the west).

Longs used to run a ton of random canned foods in odd off brands (they had a lot of deals with the canneries in central California) and in some cases even had produce in some of their stores. It was also not unusual for Longs to bring watermelons into most locations for the summer holidays. CVS has stopped all that stuff.

Flowers in the summer, Christmas Trees in December, pumpkins in October, Longs was very sales driven. What is funny about the last three things I mentioned is up here in Reno/Sparks there are 2 former Longs who still handle all those items but the other 16 or however many former Longs we have do not handle any of it anymore. Sav-On never really handled those items.

CVS from what I have seen has not continued these programs much at all. In Springfield, MO the large CVS there (which has since cut its floor space in half so it is no longer having a large sales floor) which previously got a ton of food from Albertsons, once it became CVS, started to order expanded food from Associated Wholesale Grocers. That pretty much stopped and now the store just has the usual little old CVS food mix but spread out over a very large area.

It is easy for drug stores who are connected to a grocer to add in more food. They already have the distribution in place it is just a matter of placing the order and adding some labor to keep the product rotated properly.

storewanderer wrote:Osco, Sav-On, and Longs all handled fairly large food programs in some of their stores involving fresh produce, extensive dairy items, and the vendor items available like bread, etc.

The Sav-On in Boise took it a step more by adding a hot food program.

Rite Aid has hundreds of stores in CA with the ice cream counters. Rite Aid also has extensive programs for nursery and for Christmas Trees (in the west).

Longs used to run a ton of random canned foods in odd off brands (they had a lot of deals with the canneries in central California) and in some cases even had produce in some of their stores. It was also not unusual for Longs to bring watermelons into most locations for the summer holidays. CVS has stopped all that stuff.

Flowers in the summer, Christmas Trees in December, pumpkins in October, Longs was very sales driven. What is funny about the last three things I mentioned is up here in Reno/Sparks there are 2 former Longs who still handle all those items but the other 16 or however many former Longs we have do not handle any of it anymore. Sav-On never really handled those items.

CVS from what I have seen has not continued these programs much at all. In Springfield, MO the large CVS there (which has since cut its floor space in half so it is no longer having a large sales floor) which previously got a ton of food from Albertsons, once it became CVS, started to order expanded food from Associated Wholesale Grocers. That pretty much stopped and now the store just has the usual little old CVS food mix but spread out over a very large area.

It is easy for drug stores who are connected to a grocer to add in more food. They already have the distribution in place it is just a matter of placing the order and adding some labor to keep the product rotated properly.

The store in Springfield was a former huge Katz store, and I always wondered when Albertsons had real stores in Springfield why they didn't convert it to a full Albertsons. The former Boise store looks like it was closed between its opening and the sale to CVS. I wonder what it is now.

The Bogus Basin Road SavOn lasted as a SavOn for a few years. I believe that Ridley's operated it briefly afterward, then an independent (Crane Creek Market?) operated it briefly (possibly only taking part of the space). It is now a church (Pursuit). For whatever reason, no one was able to make that store work. It started as a Smith's, was another independent (Shavers?), SavOn, Ridley's, and another independent. It's a shame that no one can make that location work because there are a lot of homes in that neighborhood. Albertsons might have had the best idea of all (they shrunk the footprint of the original Smith's store and seemed to make a diligent effort to craft that location to the neighborhood). My guess is that they just decided that there was no real hope of getting enough SavOns in Boise to have meaningful market share compared to Walgreen's and Rite Aid and pulled the plug.

I am not 100% certain that I have that sequence right, or the names (Shavers in particular) so if I am wrong, hopefully someone will correct me.

A freestanding, more traditional SavOn was built at the corner of Eagle and Chinden. That is now a Walgreen's.

Now knowing that it was a former supermarket, I wonder why Albertsons couldn't make it work as a smaller Albertsons store or a hybrid concept? After all, they had a ton of smaller-format stores after the American Stores purchase (many of which are still open today). Of course, if several operators fail at a location, maybe it's just one of those stores that really don't work as supermarkets for one reason or another.

Did that store at Eagle and Chinden actually operate as Sav-On? If so I am thinking it was really brief...

Drug stores in Canada are a little different than we are used to here in the US. London Drugs features a computers department, for example.

Loblaws Shoppers Drug Mart has expanded food mixes in all locations compared to a US Drugstore but just how expanded it is varies by location. Some have fresh foods, some don't. President's Choice items are all over the place and they are somewhat promotional on these items. I generally really like Loblaws interesting diverse formats and their private label program is my favorite (Superstore, Warehouse Club, No Frills, Loblaws City Market) but their Shoppers Drug Mart pales in comparison to London Drugs; the expanded food mix makes their food area perhaps better in some ways than London Drugs but that does not make up for London Drugs having a much larger overall mix of items and simply being a more interesting place to shop.