Winnemucca Raleys Closing

[storewanderer]

Not much of a surprise but they formally announced this store will close in September.

This year they closed service deli entirely, basically closed floral, eliminated everything from bakery but cakes, donuts, and any thaw and sell items, and reduced store hours to 7 AM to 9 PM, all the while insisting they were not closing...

The only competition is Wal Mart, Uptown Market (5,000 sq ft independent supplied by Associated Salt Lake City but has all departments) and Khourys (former Albertsons NorCal Store, supplied by Associated Salt Lake City).

[Talon1939]

It was revealed this week that a new tenant for the building to be vacated by Raley's has been found. It will be a Ridley's Family Market. Details regarding the opening date have yet to be made public. It is expected to have all usual departments and re-model the existing building.

[storewanderer]

That is excellent news. Raley's was struggling in Winnemucca due to high pricing and not so great store conditions. Ridley's is a great fit for Winnemucca. I think Smiths would have done well there also but I guess Kroger has other interests. I am not sure what this will mean for the other large Associated customer there (Khourys, former Albertsons). It probably would not impact the smaller Associated customer there much (Uptown).

I wonder if Ridley's may also take over the Elko Raley's. Raley's spent a lot of money remodeling and downsizing Elko last year but I don't think it is a great performer and it is so far from the rest of the chain, it may be time to call curtains on that.

The remaining Scolari's Stores may also be of interest to Ridley's if they want to push even deeper into Nevada... I think they could increase volumes pretty well in those stores.

[storewanderer]

I went into this store today and it was much busier than it was as Raleys but by no means busy. Since the store has been open now for six weeks and also that it is toward the end of the month I think it is fairly indicative that this store is doing quite a bit better than Raleys did. The produce, bakery, newly reopened deli, and meat areas all looked drastically better than Raleys with a larger mix and lower pricing, and were being shopped heavily. They also have the store hours at 7 AM to 10 PM (Raleys was closing at 9 PM).

Center store is a real mess, understocked, still a lot of Raleys items sitting around (along with many Raleys shelf tags) but there were 3 employees restocking. Pricing is all over the place with some good prices and some not so good prices but many sale items are priced below Wal Mart. It is interesting to see Raleys items next to Western Family items and see the exact same item with a different label (same manufacturing codes) in the Raleys brand with a regular retail of close to double what the Western Family item sells for. Just an example of how out of whack the grocery pricing in northern California is vs. the Utah pricing feed that Ridleys is using from its wholesaler Associated Salt Lake. I will look forward to seeing how this store looks once it is fully remerchandised. It is about 65,000 square feet so it is probably the largest Ridleys.

The conversion seems to be a real work in progress. The carts all still say Raleys. They didn't repaint the exterior where the Raleys sign was. They didn't repaint the interior where the Raleys logos were taken down from the wall.

I took some photos inside: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7636026@N04/

I also went to the other large independent there (a former NorCal Division Albertsons) and it seemed to have a similar traffic level to what it had in the past. So I have to believe the increased customer count at the former Raleys is coming directly from Wal Mart.

[storewanderer]

Ridleys looks just as it did right after they took over from Raleys. Raleys name is still visible on the outside sign (not painted over) and on some things inside. However they have sectioned off about 6 aisles in the former drug department (this is about 1/4 of the store) and they are adding an Ace Hardware to the store. The existing Ace Hardware in Winnemucca is currently having a "moving sale."

The store had 2 registers open mid-day today and some customers. Not too many. It must be doing well enough for them to proceed with adding Ace to the store. The store looks better now with part of it being converted to Ace; as Raleys it was full of dead space and Ridleys never got the shelves on that side of the store filled up (maybe the Ace was planned all along).

Great prices. 3 cases of Western Family 24pk water for $5.