(City of) Malibu Grocery Store Report - Article

[CalItalian]

Fun little read. Whole Foods opened in June and Ralphs did a second remodel in as many years just prior to their opening. For a city of 13,000, they have a lot of grocery shopping choices now.

https://www.malibumag.com/new-blog/wpiu ... sqlt-bw6d6

The writer doesn't seem to know the history of Malibu grocery stores.
Ralphs was originally a newly built Hughes Market which moved from their long time location in another shopping center.
Pavilions was once a Westward Ho Market.

[klkla]

The writer doesn't seem to know the history of Malibu grocery stores.
Ralphs was originally a newly built Hughes Market which moved from their long time location in another shopping center.
Pavilions was once a Westward Ho Market.

Actually both stores started out as Mayfair Markets.

The one in Point Dume that is currently a Pavilions was Mayfair Market > Westward Ho > Cooke's Family Market > Pavilions

The shopping center in Malibu Colony originally opened with a Mayfair Market in 1958 (In the spot where CVS is now), which closed in the early 1980's. The shopping center was redeveloped in the late 80's or early 90's with a new Hughes Market being built to the west of where Mayfair was. And Ralphs kept the location after acquiring Hughes.

There's a photo of that Mayfair here:
https://calisphere.org/item/a8f67fd4526 ... 0e91c45e8/

[SamSpade]

Wow. Y'all pay a lot for Dave's Killer Bread there.
Looks like SoCal is squeezed on price vs. local ownership, too.

I never understand why they include Trader Joe's in these surveys unless they are going to include a "store brand" alternative. I think in their last podcast Q&A about this they explained how over 90% of the store is their 'own brands.'

[Bagels]

Last month, I visited the Malibu Ralphs for the first time in roughly three years. I hadn't noticed the store had been remodeled (let alone twice).... I did notice they yanked most of the "fancy" prepared foods and the high-end baked goods, both of which were unique to this store. It now looks like a regular Ralphs...

[klkla]

I did notice they yanked most of the "fancy" prepared foods and the high-end baked goods, both of which were unique to this store. It now looks like a regular Ralphs...

That doesn't seem like a very bright idea considering a brand new Whole Foods opened recently just a couple blocks away.

[storewanderer]

I did notice they yanked most of the "fancy" prepared foods and the high-end baked goods, both of which were unique to this store. It now looks like a regular Ralphs...

That doesn't seem like a very bright idea considering a brand new Whole Foods opened recently just a couple blocks away.

Well, Kroger needs to ensure the Ralphs customer experience is just as consistent there in Malibu as it is over in some other neighborhood with radically different demographics and competition. So why not just dumb down the store that had better stuff. It makes perfect sense (not). What is funny is you have the upper end stores like Whole Foods outdoing them in Malibu then in the lower demographic neighborhoods you have the hispanic formats or places like Superior outdoing them with scratch bakeries, more store prepared hot food, etc. Meanwhile the mediocre (that is a nice way to put it) Kroger bakery deli product just sits.

I find I almost never buy bakery deli product anymore at Kroger. It is just not good enough. I think Wal Mart may have a better bakery. It really stands out when visiting other areas too. In recent visits to Fred Meyer I have been floored at how poor the bakery has gotten. Fred Meyer used to have a really nice bakery program with a number of store prepared desserts in beautiful looking service cases. Now they do still have it, but have scaled it way back. Many items are long gone that used to be there. I guess since the fixtures are there, they have to fill them with something.

Beyond Boar's Head lunchmeats, Kroger's bakery and deli program is just, well, no need to go into detail: bad. The hot foods are particularly horrible. I think it may be even worse than that of Wal Mart. Some Private Selection items are okay, when you can find them (lunchmeats, cookies, pies). To make matters more interesting, Kroger doesn't do much promotion on bakery deli. I find other stores like Raleys and Safeway who do frequent promotions on bakery deli items and generally have much better quality product are often cheaper than Kroger.

[Bagels]

Well, Kroger needs to ensure the Ralphs customer experience is just as consistent there in Malibu as it is over in some other neighborhood with radically different demographics and competition. So why not just dumb down the store that had better stuff. It makes perfect sense (not). What is funny is you have the upper end stores like Whole Foods outdoing them in Malibu then in the lower demographic neighborhoods you have the hispanic formats or places like Superior outdoing them with scratch bakeries, more store prepared hot food, etc. Meanwhile the mediocre (that is a nice way to put it) Kroger bakery deli product just sits.

I find I almost never buy bakery deli product anymore at Kroger. It is just not good enough. I think Wal Mart may have a better bakery. It really stands out when visiting other areas too. In recent visits to Fred Meyer I have been floored at how poor the bakery has gotten. Fred Meyer used to have a really nice bakery program with a number of store prepared desserts in beautiful looking service cases. Now they do still have it, but have scaled it way back. Many items are long gone that used to be there. I guess since the fixtures are there, they have to fill them with something.

Beyond Boar's Head lunchmeats, Kroger's bakery and deli program is just, well, no need to go into detail: bad. The hot foods are particularly horrible. I think it may be even worse than that of Wal Mart. Some Private Selection items are okay, when you can find them (lunchmeats, cookies, pies). To make matters more interesting, Kroger doesn't do much promotion on bakery deli. I find other stores like Raleys and Safeway who do frequent promotions on bakery deli items and generally have much better quality product are often cheaper than Kroger.

In fairness, I've only been to two Ralph's that had expanded hot foods: the Malibu store as well as the one on Pico St. in Los Angeles. The latter, though, is all kosher offerings -- and even its selection has appeared to slim down in recent years. That said, I've read about at least one Ralph's -- I can't remember the location, but it may be by UCLA or USC -- that recently introduced a restaurant quality hot bar.

I fully agree with you that Kroger's prepared foods and baked goods are both lacking and overpriced. They are adding brick oven pizza kitchens to some locations as they remodel, but the prices are competitive with Whole Foods. One interesting tidbit: Food4Less, which used an outside vendor for much of its packaged deli and baked goods, is now carrying the same Kroger-branded products as Ralph's, in different packaging and at a lower cost.

I also agree Albertsons/Vons has a better product, but it's even less consistent than Ralphs. There are several Albertsons nearby -- one has a hot wings bar, one has a soup & salad bar and another has a made-to-order sushi bar. Some locations carry the whole assortment of baked goods, while others carry practically nothing (in fact, at one location, they recently removed most of the bakery cases and replaced them with the sandwich case + Mochi ice cream case that had been in the middle). IMO, their prices are high, anyway -- $4 for a slice of cake, cheesecake or brownie, $6 for a small tart, etc. In contrast, Pavilions has an outstanding selection of prepared and baked goods. I love their Boar's Head sandwich and salads -- easily the best prepared offering -- but most everything else is overpriced (on par with Whole Foods).

Stater Bros. falls in between. Most of their stuff is clearly from Topco -- the cakes, cake wedges, etc. are very clearly the same thing my parents purchased from Meijer when I was growing up.

[storewanderer]

Kroger has really gotten away from the different divisions having different/unique bakery deli offerings in the past few years. There are still some unique offerings by division, but it seems to be less and less. The Colorado division still has a lot of unique offerings, but who knows how much longer. They are on this kick of wanting to make things consistent across the divisions. It comes off like a strategy failed under Albertsons in the early 2000's and failed by Safeway, Inc. shortly thereafter. But Kroger's product is very inferior so it is that much worse. It would be one thing if they replaced with better product, but that does not seem to be what they are doing in a lot of cases.

Does Ralphs not have Boar's Head product? I thought they did... in Nevada, almost all of the Smiths have Boar's Head except very rural stores like Elko and Wendover and some of those former F4L Stores in Las Vegas. But Smiths does not have a custom sandwich program for some reason. Ralphs used to have an excellent custom sandwich program in the past... Most of the Ralphs Fresh Fare locations also used to have roasted slabs of meat in the deli hot case and would do plates/sandwiches with that meat (tri tip, pork loin, turkey, etc.) or just sell it by the pound, which was usually very good. Kroger has a lot of different pizza programs going selling very similar thin crust pizzas in many different ways and the pizza is decent enough; I've seen pizza by the pound, pizza by the slice, "personal" pizzas... they need to go take the Harris Teeter pizza program and go with that everywhere. Most recently I had heard Kroger's prepared food counters (they have Mexican, pizza, BBQ, burger, and "Chicken Co.") which had been set up like a fast food menu and the entire program dictated down to the stores by Ohio (divisions had no control over the programs at all) had been put on hold (except for "Chicken Co.") due to slow sales where it had been installed. No surprise given the high prices, poor quality, and lack of flexibility with the programs.

[CalItalian]

Kroger has really gotten away from the different divisions having different/unique bakery deli offerings in the past few years. There are still some unique offerings by division, but it seems to be less and less. The Colorado division still has a lot of unique offerings, but who knows how much longer. They are on this kick of wanting to make things consistent across the divisions. It comes off like a strategy failed under Albertsons in the early 2000's and failed by Safeway, Inc. shortly thereafter. But Kroger's product is very inferior so it is that much worse. It would be one thing if they replaced with better product, but that does not seem to be what they are doing in a lot of cases.

Does Ralphs not have Boar's Head product? I thought they did... in Nevada, almost all of the Smiths have Boar's Head except very rural stores like Elko and Wendover and some of those former F4L Stores in Las Vegas. But Smiths does not have a custom sandwich program for some reason. Ralphs used to have an excellent custom sandwich program in the past... Most of the Ralphs Fresh Fare locations also used to have roasted slabs of meat in the deli hot case and would do plates/sandwiches with that meat (tri tip, pork loin, turkey, etc.) or just sell it by the pound, which was usually very good. Kroger has a lot of different pizza programs going selling very similar thin crust pizzas in many different ways and the pizza is decent enough; I've seen pizza by the pound, pizza by the slice, "personal" pizzas... they need to go take the Harris Teeter pizza program and go with that everywhere. Most recently I had heard Kroger's prepared food counters (they have Mexican, pizza, BBQ, burger, and "Chicken Co.") which had been set up like a fast food menu and the entire program dictated down to the stores by Ohio (divisions had no control over the programs at all) had been put on hold (except for "Chicken Co.") due to slow sales where it had been installed. No surprise given the high prices, poor quality, and lack of flexibility with the programs.

Ralphs has Boar's Head in all locations - a number with dedicated signage. Fresh Fare locations carry a larger assortment but variety and quantity vary from store to store. Redondo Beach (a former Marketplace), Westwood, Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica are 4 that come to mind that are fairly extensive.

Kroger pizza's are frozen. They just thaw them out at most locations and sell them to bake at home in the service deli area. A few Ralphs sell them frozen (Murrieta, for example). Very few Ralphs sell hot pizza in the store. They're more into the Chicken Co. in the last couple of years. Overcook chicken, for the most part. Ralphs really doesn't have an extensive hot foods area (except Westwood Village). The self-serve hot foods area in Westwood Village is quite extensive but only seems to do well during the weekday lunch hour.

[Bagels]

Thought it was worth mentioning that the Pavilions I've visited recently have removed their hot bar. They've also cut back on the prepared foods offered within the deli case and completely removed the prepared "meal idea" section from the meat department (that carried stuffed bell peppers, stuffed pork chops, pinwheels, etc. ready for cooking). Guess it's not just Ralph's having a hard time with this stuff...

I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised - it was way overpriced. If a 2 lb. bag of large raw shrimp is on sale for $5, who's going to pay $12.99/lb. to buy the same shrimp served with a garlic butter sauce? Or $8.99/lb. for marinated chicken breasts, when unmarinated is on sale for 99c/lb.