Another new Tom Thumb announced - this time in East Dallas

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pseudo3d
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Re: Another new Tom Thumb announced - this time in East Dallas

Post by pseudo3d »

Bagels wrote: November 8th, 2020, 12:03 pm When Albertsons and Safeway merged 5 years ago, many analysists predicted the combined Dallas operations would be sold off to HEB as a way to reduce debt. Albertsons has closed numerous stores and lost a few points in market share, but it's great to see them opening new stores.
I see net counts/major rebuilds/remodels in stores in Albertsons' market areas as a general indicator of how well the stores are actually doing, even accounting for generally slower growth of grocery stores across the country. Dallas-Fort Worth is still a bright star in the Southern Division's base, and the only division with what could be considered modern and large stores. (Austin's store base has lots of small, outdated stores as it maintains a distant second to H-E-B, Houston's has been circling the drain for over a decade, and Louisiana has been losing ground to Rouses as it moves into new markets).

I always thought the analysts were largely wrong about the Safeway/Albertsons merger and how they predicted abandoning markets, especially Dallas since Albertsons not only kept a small base of stores there but invested in the area with United.
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Re: Another new Tom Thumb announced - this time in East Dallas

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: November 9th, 2020, 1:18 pm

I always thought the analysts were largely wrong about the Safeway/Albertsons merger and how they predicted abandoning markets, especially Dallas since Albertsons not only kept a small base of stores there but invested in the area with United.
I think there is still a risk of them abandoning markets but between Kroger's missteps when they centralized everything a few years ago (ironically right at the same time Bob Miller at Albertsons started to decentralize a number of the very things that Kroger decided to centralize) and their ability to drive sales into their stores I think that risk is much less now than it was at the time of the merger. Their stores are running much higher foot traffic than before. As time goes on they close fewer and fewer stores. I think they are turning around stores now vs. letting stores just die off.

There are still a lot of weak areas at Albertsons/Safeway, notably their overall everyday shelf pricing and their disjointed and odd/inconsistent private label program but they maintain quality on their perimeter, they run strong promotions primarily on brand name items which eases both the pricing issue and the private label product issues, and have invested significantly in labor to improve the service levels in their stores compared to how the old Safeway did things.

Now if Albertsons under its new non-grocery management goes on a sudden re-centralization kick this story may change very quickly... but I think enough old grocers are still around Albertsons to keep that from happening.
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Re: Another new Tom Thumb announced - this time in East Dallas

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: November 9th, 2020, 5:55 pm
pseudo3d wrote: November 9th, 2020, 1:18 pm

I always thought the analysts were largely wrong about the Safeway/Albertsons merger and how they predicted abandoning markets, especially Dallas since Albertsons not only kept a small base of stores there but invested in the area with United.
I think there is still a risk of them abandoning markets but between Kroger's missteps when they centralized everything a few years ago (ironically right at the same time Bob Miller at Albertsons started to decentralize a number of the very things that Kroger decided to centralize) and their ability to drive sales into their stores I think that risk is much less now than it was at the time of the merger. Their stores are running much higher foot traffic than before. As time goes on they close fewer and fewer stores. I think they are turning around stores now vs. letting stores just die off.

There are still a lot of weak areas at Albertsons/Safeway, notably their overall everyday shelf pricing and their disjointed and odd/inconsistent private label program but they maintain quality on their perimeter, they run strong promotions primarily on brand name items which eases both the pricing issue and the private label product issues, and have invested significantly in labor to improve the service levels in their stores compared to how the old Safeway did things.

Now if Albertsons under its new non-grocery management goes on a sudden re-centralization kick this story may change very quickly... but I think enough old grocers are still around Albertsons to keep that from happening.
Actually canvassing the area to create a merchandise mix shows admirable effort that the old Albertsons (and certainly the old Safeway) would've never done. I'm not sure about any re-centralization or any other efforts of the current Sankaran administration...he seems to not want to mess around with the company too much (as opposed to Larry Johnston, whose constant tinkering with the chain almost killed it).
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