Oxnard Albertsons Transformed Into Lucky

[Alpha8472]

The Oxnard Albertsons has been transformed into the sixth Southern California Supervalu Lucky.

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2 ... sons-into/

It appears to still be a full service supermarket, but with slightly more bulk products like a Food4Less type store.

[krogerclerk]

SuperValu continues to tweak the Lucky brand, but still does not seem to grasp that Lucky is associated with a full-service supermarket that appealed to all demographics by aiming squarely at the middle of the market. The old Lucky had a strong price image, but carried a variety of merchandise to appeal to everyone, thus specialty spices and organics would not be out of place if the old Lucky model was adopted. Lucky was never viewed as being in the same league as Vons or Ralphs for fresh food, but matched them very well on center store on variety with much better pricing.

The rollout of the Lucky banner probably has as much to do with the Albertson's name being "damaged goods" in Southern California since the 03 strike, and really since the elimination of Lucky in favor of Albertson's. Albertson's and Lucky were very similar stores, but Lucky had a successful loyalty card program that ABS eliminated, only to bring their own out later, and a much better price image among Southern Californians. At least SVU is choosing viable locations for Lucky, as opposed to converting the poorest locations as happened in Las Vegas, and is moving away from using Lucky as a SuperSaver type format as the earliest SoCal stores were.

[storewanderer]

This one is a former Smiths.

I expect more conversions going forward. Maybe they will get around to converting them all one by one.

[Alpha8472]

I think that Supervalu will realize that just changing the name to Lucky will increase foot traffic tremendously. They don't need to reduce the number of spices that they sell or get rid of the organic selections. Hopefully, Supervalu will realize this and rebrand more Albertsons stores to Lucky and keep the full service/full selection format.

It is amazing what a simple name change will do for business. The Lucky name is the most valuable thing that Supervalu has going for them.

[storewanderer]

Maybe in these neighborhoods they did need to get rid of some of the spices and the organics. In other neighborhoods, maybe they need to ramp up the selection of these items. One thing about the old ASC Lucky was a good ability to cater to all middle class shoppers (lower middle and upper middle) though usually not via the same store location.

By converting stores one at a time, it gives them a chance to really analyze (hopefully) the individual store they are converting and (hopefully) make changes that will help improve the store performance.

I am assuming after the Las Vegas episode they are taking things more seriously.