HCal wrote: ↑June 4th, 2022, 2:12 am
From what I understand, Raley's primarily buys through Topco. I haven't seen similar changes at other Topco-supplied stores, so this is probably their own choice. I wonder if they get a better price when buying more of one brand. This seems like a good move to me, but I'm not the type of person who is loyal to brands. I imagine they may lose some customers whose favorite brand product disappeared, but they make it up in efficiencies.
There is no widescale program going on at Raleys that is involving cutting SKUs or eliminating certain brands. They do these resets every year. Raleys always carries significantly more SKUs than Safeway in given categories especially those noted in this thread like tea and ethnic foods. In a lot of cases because Raleys will carry SKUs that other stores do not carry, those SKUs end up being discontinued by the manufacturer but then new items pop up and Raleys jumps on those and picks them up to replace the items that go away. So Raleys will often have more "clearance" items when they do category resets, than competitors out west have.
The bigger entire center store resets are on a store by store basis. Raleys has its stores segmented into a number of different merchandising models (ONE, "Premium," and various base models) based on their loyalty card data. Stores move from one segment to another from time to time but that tends to be a more major process.
Raleys gets most dry groceries from the same warehouse as Save Mart (SSI) but handles some items in its own distribution center as well, particularly perishables. Raleys gets most natural/organic/ethnic from UNFI/Supervalu (old Certified Market Center). Raleys slots Top Care for drug/HBA per contract with Topco and that is also coming from UNFI/Supervalu (they are slotting that stuff special for Raleys in CA due to the agreement Raleys has with Topco to carry Topco brands, and due to the agreement Raleys has with UNFI/Supervalu to buy non food from them; it is not an optimal arrangement as UNFI/Supervalu wants to sell their Equaline items, not Topco items). Raleys own private label is very extensive and has standard groceries, Organic, and limited drug/HBA (vitamins and soap). They do slot Topco labels for drug (as described above), pet and paper products (finally consistent with Save Mart on those categories so they can pull from SSI).
I have seen a few instances where Raleys will do a widescale SKU cut to a given store. To give an example, there is a store in Sparks on Pyramid and McCarran. This used to be a very busy store. What felt like a 10 year roadwork project in front of the store (I think it was more like a 4 year road work project) absolutely killed business at the store for a number of years. This store is a big store and it was very heavily merchandised. After a year or two into the road work this store was in awful shape in terms of customer traffic and was having massive spoilage; they covered some of the produce cases up, pulled out aisles, didn't fill entire perimeter, and did major center store resets cutting out a ton of SKUs because the store no longer had the traffic to justify the mix it once had. Since the road work finally completed the store has been picking traffic up again and they have recovered most of the perimeter but so far center store is not yet what it once was, but even a cut center store mix at Raleys is more extensive than a Safeway center store mix.
Another store I've seen Raleys do widespread SKU cuts to is the store at Stateline at South Lake Tahoe (casino area). This store is basically a tourist snack and liquor store, not a place people go do full shops at. So this store also has gone through multiple widescale SKU cuts over the years.
So it is possible the store lake is referring to is doing something like re-segmenting itself (moving from a base model to a premium model, eliminating some Natural items since a ONE is opening nearby if it is in Roseville, etc.) or something has happened in a localized manner that is causing these changes.