Sak N Save (Raleys) Closing Reno, NV

[storewanderer]

This store was part of the Scolaris package that Raleys bought in early 2018. This was the largest and highest volume store in that package.

For the first time I have witnessed, Raleys is actually having a store closing liquidation sale (complete with a banner out front). So far they are 50% off "red tagged Hispanic Foods" (whatever that means), 50% off General Merchandise, and 50% off Frozen Foods. I've never seen Raleys do this before.

The store isn't in a great neighborhood and is immediately rather underserved. But various other options a mile away.

The building is very old and run down and has been for some time. It has gotten significantly worse under Raleys.

Raleys proceeded to do its thing it likes to do to stores it seems to dislike (not unlike how they tried to kill their Winnemucca Store by closing departments/cutting hours/finally saying they'd just close the store, though Ridleys saved that one from closing) here at Sak N Save by cutting services/cutting hours... did not offer the post office/money order/bill pay counter when they took the store over from Scolaris, just said they were discontinuing those services. May have installed a "bill pay kiosk" that nobody knew how to use (maybe they only did that in Fernley and Yerington, I forget now). Next up they closed the pharmacy. Then they got a tenant to come in and operate a money transfer booth and that kiosk has survived but is never lined up with customers like the bill pay/money order/post office counter was under Scolaris. Then they decided to close the service deli/service bakery which is odd as those were busy departments, but still made a limited assortment of self serve prepack items and ran the tortilla machine sometimes (under Scolaris it ran daily, much of the day, due to volume). Also the produce department which had the best assortment and freshness in town under Scolaris was reduced to a sad shadow of its former self by Raleys, with higher prices, lower quality, less assortment, and a lot of empty floor space.

I don't even know why Raleys bought this store. They did one thing after another to kill this store and finally they are officially shutting it down. This also would have been an excellent conversion to the Food City format.

Interesting now this is the third closure for Raleys in Reno/Tahoe in the past few years. Raleys continues to let that ONE format kill volume at what was previously a super high volume/high profit store for them in South Reno (they currently are proud the ONE is doing more than double the business it did a couple months after it first reopened as ONE citing that as progress and successful growth for the ONE format, I wonder if anyone ever talks about what % sales are down from when it was a normal Raleys - I am sure still down at least 20%, 40%, what %?, whatever, the new Safeway appreciates all the customers who got displaced). And they're about to get a new Natural Grocers and new Grocery Outlet at Incline Village which is a very high profit Raleys and even if those two stores collectively only do $225k/sales a week between them (which may even be an overestimate given it is going to be an undersized Grocery Outlet and Natural Grocers hardly do any business), the majority of those sales are coming straight from the Incline Village Raleys, so we will see how that shakes out.

[storewanderer]

Realized I never got photos of this one when Scolaris ran it. This one always had 2-3 security on duty at any given time, so I didn't want any issues being "caught" back then. Unfortunate as it looked a lot better then.

Anyway this is how the store looks. They received a lot of new inventory as recently as last week.

Typical Raleys does not stock "Jubilee" paper or "Niagara" water but they load these Food Source (or in this case Sak N Save) units up with trailer loads of those products.

Tried to do this photos in order of what you see at entry- then walk around the perimeter- first through produce, then meat, then dairy deli liquor back wall, then bakery/deli back corner, then pharmacy front corner, then slots/front end front wall. Then some back in the middle of the store.

Too bad to lose this dive store but it clearly got more than its useful life.

This building was originally some kind of discount department store type of place. I think the name was Fantastic Fair. That was in the 1960's.

The aisle hangers and "thank you for shopping" banner were all installed by Raleys, The previous decor is leftover from Scolaris, and the store was remodeled around the mid 90's.

The other thing Raleys did was there have been a lot of areas of the floor where tiles broke and just fell out so there were giant gaps in the floor all over. Rather than replace the floor tiles, Raleys had someone come in and lay cement or something to fill in the gaps from broken tiles so that is the giant white spaces seen all over the floors throughout the store.

[veteran+]

YUK!

[storewanderer]

YUK!

You really have to appreciate this type of place. It has a very unique vibe. Feels like a zombie movie or something, from the 80s. Hardly any customers, loud 80s music blaring out of echo chamber type bullhorn speakers, no windows. I couldn't believe Raleys ran this and let it fall into such extreme disrepair.

[storewanderer]

YUK!

You really have to appreciate this type of place. It has a very unique vibe. Feels like a zombie movie or something, from the 80s. Hardly any customers, loud 80s music blaring out of echo chamber type bullhorn speakers, no windows. I couldn't believe Raleys ran this and let it fall into such extreme disrepair.

I don't know how many banners were on this store. This was store 3 for Warehouse Market the predecessor to Scolaris. Mostly stores 1-14 which built starting in the 70s followed the same prototype a standard conventional store 35k square feet no bakery or deli. A few were bought from other parties. Store 11 was also a Sak N Save. Store 11 had the Shop n Kart banner at one point.

[jamcool]

Raley’s hasn’t done squat with their Bashas’ acquisition. No TV/radio ads, no store refurbishment. Even AlbertSafeway has more media ads than Bashas’-unlike the 1000s of Fry’s ads on all electronic media outposts in Phoenix.

[storewanderer]

Raley’s hasn’t done squat with their Bashas’ acquisition. No TV/radio ads, no store refurbishment. Even AlbertSafeway has more media ads than Bashas’-unlike the 1000s of Fry’s ads on all electronic media outposts in Phoenix.

They did open that new headquarters for Bashas. The art gallery still operates out of the old one.

[storewanderer]

From research it appears this opened as Fantastic Fair in late 1963.

That store had a full general merchandise assortment and also appears to have had groceries.

It is unclear who owned Fantastic Fair, or how large of a chain it was.

[bryceleinan]

I'm a Native Nevadan, lived in the area since 1983. I have only been in that store a handful of times, having always gone to the Sak n Save on Plumb Lane under Scolari's ownership, since it was close to Costco. @storewanderer is absolutely right about this place being a zombie. However, the store fulfilled a purpose for those in that area. The only traditional grocery store left in the area is Winco. However, it looks like Hank's Farmers Market might be moving into a demised part of the old K-Mart (https://aca-prod.accela.com/ONE/Cap/Cap ... nspection=), and if this shows anything, the vacancy will be short-lived, as El Super has permits for signage on the old Sak n Save:

https://aca-prod.accela.com/ONE/Cap/Cap ... nspection=

[storewanderer]

I don't like El Super at all but that is an excellent fit for the Sak N Save. Also pretty neat El Super is skipping over NorCal entirely and just coming into Reno. Kind of odd, but okay. Salinas is their northern-most store, they took over from someone else some time ago (it is a former Nob Hill, a very large late 90's build by Raleys).

At least we are getting El Super instead of Smart & Final Extra. El Super is definitely a better format/option than Smart & Final Extra if we have to get another one of that company's questionable quality stores in the area.

I have no idea what Hank's Farmer Market is. Looking at their current 2 stores one in San Diego is a former hispanic independent store and the other in Jurapa Valley is a former Fresh Choice Marketplace unit (small chain in SoCal). Not sure why they'd be opening in Sparks but they might have a chance if they pull product from Associated Utah and supplement it with more specialty imported products from a warehouse of their own in SoCal (as Marketon is doing in Reno) instead of pulling from a CA wholesaler. If Hank's pulls from a CA wholesaler they may as well not bother, they'll fail due to the pricing issue with the CA wholesalers.

However the prospect of adding two new chains to the area is GREAT news. Especially with this Safeway/Kroger merger pending which is going to mean either Safeway or Smiths goes. I'm not counting the prospect of a store or two sold to C&S being the entry of a new chain because I don't expect that operation to survive long if it even happens.

Very odd Raleys would let this go to El Super instead of convert it into a Food City given Raleys said when they bought Bashas they'd be bringing Bashas formats like AJ's and Food City into other markets.