New Safeway for Reno

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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by jamcool »

HCal wrote: May 27th, 2021, 8:11 pm
storewanderer wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 5:33 pm
At this point these 7 stores in Nevada are the only ones that Albertsons is driving stuff out of California to supply. Maybe it is too few stores to even care. Eventually the increased regulations of products specific to CA and other costs will force the decision. Also the situation on the roads between Reno and Tracy isn't getting any better; frequent congestion and accidents all year, and weather issues throughout the winter. The road from Reno to Salt Lake by contrast is smooth sailing with few issues and about 75% of the route is 80 MPH speed limit.

While both Supervalu and Safeway supplied Las Vegas from SoCal, that was moved to Arizona pretty quickly after Albertsons took the stores over, and that was at least 40 stores.
I'm not sure where the warehouses were exactly, but Las Vegas is approximately equidistant from Los Angeles and Phoenix, so that makes sense. I'm surprised that Safeway supplied Vegas from SoCal for that long when they had a large presence in Phoenix.

But for Reno, I'm just not seeing it. Salt Lake City is over twice as far as the bay area. The extra transport cost won't be worth it, even with California's higher operating costs. Gas is getting more expensive, and trucks use a ton of it. Those trucks can't go 80 MPH anyway
LA to Las Vegas is all freeway and is a faster drive than Phoenix to Vegas, which is still part 2-lane highways
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

jamcool wrote: May 27th, 2021, 10:48 pm LA to Las Vegas is all freeway and is a faster drive than Phoenix to Vegas, which is still part 2-lane highways
Interstate 11 is being built from PHX to Vegas.
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by storewanderer »

Supposedly it eventually will connect up to Reno too. Who knows when that will be.

Smiths supplies dry grocery to Reno from Las Vegas (Henderson) and perishable still comes from Utah. Until 2019 it all came from Utah and was that way for 30+ years.
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by klkla »

jamcool wrote: May 27th, 2021, 10:48 pm
HCal wrote: May 27th, 2021, 8:11 pm
storewanderer wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 5:33 pm
At this point these 7 stores in Nevada are the only ones that Albertsons is driving stuff out of California to supply. Maybe it is too few stores to even care. Eventually the increased regulations of products specific to CA and other costs will force the decision. Also the situation on the roads between Reno and Tracy isn't getting any better; frequent congestion and accidents all year, and weather issues throughout the winter. The road from Reno to Salt Lake by contrast is smooth sailing with few issues and about 75% of the route is 80 MPH speed limit.

While both Supervalu and Safeway supplied Las Vegas from SoCal, that was moved to Arizona pretty quickly after Albertsons took the stores over, and that was at least 40 stores.
I'm not sure where the warehouses were exactly, but Las Vegas is approximately equidistant from Los Angeles and Phoenix, so that makes sense. I'm surprised that Safeway supplied Vegas from SoCal for that long when they had a large presence in Phoenix.

But for Reno, I'm just not seeing it. Salt Lake City is over twice as far as the bay area. The extra transport cost won't be worth it, even with California's higher operating costs. Gas is getting more expensive, and trucks use a ton of it. Those trucks can't go 80 MPH anyway
LA to Las Vegas is all freeway and is a faster drive than Phoenix to Vegas, which is still part 2-lane highways
I think distribution was switched to Phoenix because they closed two distribution centers in SoCal after the merger. Moving the Las Vegas distribution helped to relieve some pressure off the two remaining warehouses. Also, the Arizona DC is underutilized .
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

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klkla wrote: May 28th, 2021, 8:32 pm
I think distribution was switched to Phoenix because they closed two distribution centers in SoCal after the merger. Moving the Las Vegas distribution helped to relieve some pressure off the two remaining warehouses. Also, the Arizona DC is underutilized .
Arizona DC also lost some stores when they shifted Albuquerque to United-TX. But I think it picked up a lot more volume from Las Vegas/St. George, than it lost from losing Albuquerque. Also before the merger Albertsons LLC was supplying the Colorado Albertsons and Utah Super Savers from Arizona.

New Safeway was packed with customers mid-day today. Deli had a steady line of 5-8 customers (3 clerks). Bakery had steady traffic of 4-6 customers (had 5 employees on duty). Meat counter steadily had a couple of customers. 6 checkouts open with 1-2 in line plus self checkouts. Easily 100-150 customers shopping in the store heavily skewed toward mid 50's looking couples driving high priced vehicles that used to be seen at Raleys. Looking in their baskets you see all name brand products, Organic Produce, and higher cost meat cuts/fish and rarely a total under $100. Safeway has struck gold (thanks to Raleys ONE).

Went over to Raleys ONE after to see how things were going. Place was a ghost town. Liquor department wasn't even staffed (unbelievable before a holiday weekend for this store to not staff the large liquor department). No more than 15 customers inside shopping. Markdowns all over meat, about 15 heavily "seasoned" steaks now available (can't tell how fresh they are as they are literally caked in seasoning), produce continues to be poorly rotated but slowly they are pulling off old stuff, bakery/deli are dead of customers and prepared food fixtures aren't even being fully filled where they used to have salad and hot food bars. At one point when I paid they got a bit of a line and opened up a 2nd checkstand, also 1 of the 4 self checkouts is broken (again) so there was a small line there at one point. eCart area looked to have 1-2 orders staged in its storage area, but I did see a clerk walking around picking an order also. Did not see any actual traffic; previously this store did dozens of eCart orders in a day (probably around 100 some days if the traffic I observed and amount of staged orders that used to be in storage was any indication). Absolutely fantastic failure here. I have never seen firsthand and on an ongoing basis a practice like this of a high volume grocery store killed in this manner before so willfully. This makes the Albertsons-Lucky conversions look minor in their customer loss. I am not sure things would have gone this badly, had Safeway not opened up... but I still think they would have lost a lot of customers.
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

klkla wrote: May 28th, 2021, 8:32 pm I think distribution was switched to Phoenix because they closed two distribution centers in SoCal after the merger. Moving the Las Vegas distribution helped to relieve some pressure off the two remaining warehouses. Also, the Arizona DC is underutilized .
No, the Las Vegas Albertsons were switched to SW Division because that division has a better price structure. Las Vegas is a price sensitive area.
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by storewanderer »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: May 28th, 2021, 10:10 pm
klkla wrote: May 28th, 2021, 8:32 pm I think distribution was switched to Phoenix because they closed two distribution centers in SoCal after the merger. Moving the Las Vegas distribution helped to relieve some pressure off the two remaining warehouses. Also, the Arizona DC is underutilized .
No, the Las Vegas Albertsons were switched to SW Division because that division has a better price structure. Las Vegas is a price sensitive area.
Las Vegas was in trouble under Supervalu. Though they had pretty good market share there, they had a lot of stores that were low-medium volume. Smiths and Wal Mart were eating their lunch. They needed the better ads and stronger sales drive that the Southwest Division had going on (pre Safeway merger). Store volumes have gone up for them significantly under Southwest Division in the locations with the Albertsons banner. Not sure how the Vons are doing. There is some segment of customers who likes a CA product mix and is willing to pay CA prices and I think a few of the Vons had captured that customer while Vons failed miserably in general in that market. Vons was the last of the CA Supermarkets in Las Vegas after Kroger pulled F4L out (not counting the ethnic operators).
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by bryceleinan »

It was pretty funny going in there last night - ran into my recently retired boss in there. He was wondering what I was doing in his nice, new Safeway, lol. The place was still pretty well merchandised - I noticed the bakery was a little lackluster, as was produce. They’re making a mint from the customers migrating from Raley’s.
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Re: New Safeway for Reno

Post by storewanderer »

bryceleinan wrote: June 15th, 2021, 9:09 pm It was pretty funny going in there last night - ran into my recently retired boss in there. He was wondering what I was doing in his nice, new Safeway, lol. The place was still pretty well merchandised - I noticed the bakery was a little lackluster, as was produce. They’re making a mint from the customers migrating from Raley’s.
I've been noticing that too on bakery and produce. They are doing a very good job keeping center store stocked though. Also product freshness is still excellent. I've also heard some not very positive comments about the deli from others, mainly service and wait time issues. I have only purchased from the deli twice and did not have any service concerns on those two trips.
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