Sonoma County’s G&G Supermarkets purchased by Safeway

[Super S]

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/6 ... artslide=0

G&G had a good reputation in the area. It is sad to see an independent disappear, especially when it is being sold to a huge chain that has a rapidly tarnishing reputation.

But at least they are agreeing to hire all of the G&G employees according to the article.

[storewanderer]

These were actually very good stores, large and a heavy mix. Good volume. This purchase is unfortunate but it sounds like the owners wanted to retire so it makes sense. It's too bad Raleys or Nugget couldn't work a deal for these stores but in any case it's good the stores will remain open and employees kept on.

[pseudo3d]

I'm not entirely sold on the idea. G&G Supermarkets looks to at least be heavily influenced by Asian supermarkets and merchandise mix, Safeway has historically been pretty awful on ethnic foods and localization, and Albertsons hasn't instilled me with a whole lot of confidence in the whole management aspect.

I'm intrigued about the possibility of a 96k square foot Safeway, though!

(EDIT: Some recent Yelp reviews note that service has gone really downhill recently, even before the buyout was announced)

[Super S]

I'm not entirely sold on the idea. G&G Supermarkets looks to at least be heavily influenced by Asian supermarkets and merchandise mix, Safeway has historically been pretty awful on ethnic foods and localization, and Albertsons hasn't instilled me with a whole lot of confidence in the whole management aspect.

I'm intrigued about the possibility of a 96k square foot Safeway, though!

(EDIT: Some recent Yelp reviews note that service has gone really downhill recently, even before the buyout was announced)

I have never visited the Petaluma store but have been to the Santa Rosa store several times. The store was always clean, well staffed, and well stocked. I didn't catch the Asian influence, in fact, the stores overall seemed pretty mainstream as far as their merchandise mix. Admittedly, I did not go in there looking for Asian food in the first place.

I do know that there is at least one former Albertsons in Santa Rosa, but I think they left before the merger.

[storewanderer]

G&G had more ethnic foods than usual (helped to fill the large space). They also heavily had ethnic produce items, well priced.

We will see how Safeway does with this. I will keep my mouth shut until seeing what they do. Maybe they will do something different here vs. their past behavior. It is never too late to change.

These two stores are a major loss for Unified. This is an example of Unified being a poor wholesaler who has not properly supported its independents and the result being NorCal has no other independents available to pick these stores up so now Unified will lose this supply business and really it just weakens the entire Unified NorCal group.

Albertsons divested two stores to Ralphs in the merger in Santa Rosa; one Lucky (Coddingtown, now Whole Foods) and a perhaps mid 80's Albertsons on Story Point (now Oliver's). There was a fairly new Albertsons elsewhere in Santa Rosa that opened in 1997 or so, and that store is still open as Lucky today. They also kept a former Lucky in a not great neighborhood that was closed at some point.

Safeway is already dominant enough in Santa Rosa that I am surprised their adding any more stores is allowed by the FTC. Albertsons seems to know how to get around the FTC and add a high concentration of stores in given markets.

[pseudo3d]

Albertsons divested two stores to Ralphs in the merger in Santa Rosa; one Lucky (Coddingtown, now Whole Foods) and a perhaps mid 80's Albertsons on Story Point (now Oliver's). There was a fairly new Albertsons elsewhere in Santa Rosa that opened in 1997 or so, and that store is still open as Lucky today. They also kept a former Lucky in a not great neighborhood that was closed at some point.

I don't know how many legacy leases Albertsons has held onto. Circa 2002, they still had a lease in Houston that was operated by Lucky's Eagle Supermarkets division back in the 1980s. And I have proof that they held onto their Waco store for another 10 years as they leased to a school after it closed under LLC in 2006.

Safeway is already dominant enough in Santa Rosa that I am surprised their adding any more stores is allowed by the FTC. Albertsons seems to know how to get around the FTC and add a high concentration of stores in given markets.

The Safeway stores are really close to G&G (one is 1 mile away, the other 2). But then again, in parts of the country where Albertsons has sold stores over the years, like to Kroger or Publix, those have created some concentrated areas too (even more so).

[storewanderer]

I think they will keep operating... Petaluma is a brand new Safeway also, less than five years old (replaced an older store).

[storewanderer]

Even more interesting to read the 183 comments on this article.

Safeway's reputation is absolutely terrible. To have this amount of negative commenting in the home market (NorCal) is pretty pathetic. And it has only gotten worse under Albertsons.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/6 ... artslide=0

[pseudo3d]

Even more interesting to read the 183 comments on this article.

Safeway's reputation is absolutely terrible. To have this amount of negative commenting in the home market (NorCal) is pretty pathetic. And it has only gotten worse under Albertsons.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/6 ... artslide=0

Actual problems aside, I have a sneaking suspicion that the people in comments are the ones that cry the loudest about these sorts of things. In comments regarding articles about Harris Teeter or Roundy's being taken over by Kroger, you'd think Kroger was a poorly-run company that would run the stores into the ground, but we all know neither of those is the case.

[storewanderer]

Kroger in Raleigh was not very good and Kroger in Atlanta also isn't very good so I can understand why there were negative reactions to them taking over Harris Teeter. The difference is even if Kroger has operational shortfalls in sloppy stores and iffy customer service in those markets, at least Kroger has competitive prices and properly staffed stores.

You know full well the situation at Safeway NorCal. All you have to do is go onto various online sites to see what is going on in that division with the store level issues.

Safeway basically fails on all fronts. Prices are so far out of line it is beyond belief, in NorCal Division anyway. Service levels are terrible due to understaffing and this is well documented all over various online review sites (Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc.).

The FTC should be looking at these deals but they aren't for some reason.