New Save Mart Modesto

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New Save Mart Modesto

Post by ninersdd »

Appears this will be their flagship store. This appears to be a relocation of sorts.

https://www.modbee.com/news/business/bi ... 26147.html
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Re: New Save Mart Modesto

Post by storewanderer »

Save Mart is seemingly doing everything right. They are remodeling stores, trying new concepts, they have an extensive price cut program in place. Yet I still just cannot bring myself to doing any serious shopping there. I try. I go walk through their stores, I spend 20-30 minutes inside. I can't find anything I want to buy. I usually end up walking out with one random item, like a drink or a banana or something. Then when paying the coupon machine frequently spits out a coupon for $6 off $30 purchase, $2 off $5 produce purchase, $1.50 off $5 bath tissue purchase, or some other seemingly great offer that, at any other store, I would be able to easily go use. Between unappealing fresh departments that are either understocked or products that do not look fresh, and a center store with painfully weak private label items that is oddly organized and somehow seems to have great prices on items I don't buy and high prices on items I would be interested in buying, it just does not seem to ever work out. And their Food Maxx concept as it has been run up here in Nevada, is the absolute worst quality store I have encountered.

From my point of view as a customer they are so far behind Safeway and Raleys on product mix, ads, merchandising, and product quality, there is just no comparison. Add in the other options like Trader Joe's, Sprouts, and Whole Foods that also do it better from a quality perspective and often times cheaper and I really do not see a place for them when any of the above competitors are around.

But they must be doing better since they continue these remodels. If they were not getting an ROI from them, they would not have the money to continue the remodel program.
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Re: New Save Mart Modesto

Post by SamSpade »

Also in Reno-Sparks you have WinCo, which does a good job of being cheap and carrying a decent product mix due to their store size.
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Re: New Save Mart Modesto

Post by storewanderer »

SamSpade wrote: October 3rd, 2019, 8:01 am Also in Reno-Sparks you have WinCo, which does a good job of being cheap and carrying a decent product mix due to their store size.
Reno has been a great market for WinCo; the North Reno one (opened as Cub in the mid 90's) was one of their best stores for years. Not sure where it falls now but it is an extremely high volume operation.

WinCo has caused significant damage to Save Mart and Food Maxx. But Food Maxx seems to have figured out how to compete with WinCo because they co-exist in a number of places not very far apart, mostly medium sized markets. Luckily for them, WinCo does not seem to be opening as many stores in California as they were 5-10 years ago, instead focusing on more distant geographies.

Reno/Sparks has always been a great grocery market if you like to have a choice of stores. Beyond the chains mentioned, Winco with 2 stores, Sprouts with 2 stores, Smart & Final Extra with 1 store, Marketon with 1 store, Scolaris with 2 stores, Grocery Outlet with 4 stores, Trader Joe's 1 store, Whole Foods 1 store, Natural Grocers 1 store. For some reason this has always been a market where a lot of people are willing to operate small store counts with low market share and quite a few low-medium volume stores. Slot machine revenues helped prop up a lot of zombie stores over the years in the 90's, and later after the smoking ban in those slot areas was passed, growth in the market helped. Safeway has failed miserably again and again in the immediate Reno market (closed 5-6 stores in the 70's and 80's after Raleys and Albertsons came in and blew them away with larger stores but like clockwork every 10-15 years they try again with a new store, currently the only stores they have open are the 1989 Reno Store and the 2003 Sparks Store which are both solid mediumish volume type operations; the 1996 Reno Store closed). Albertsons was very stable in this market over the years with excellent locations and did well, until Save Mart took over and killed volumes but only one store closed (though two converted to Food Maxx).

Save Mart has great staying power and they have largely remained true to their long term strategy of not closing stores until the situation becomes dire (though I think a few of their closures of larger stores the past 5-7 years may have been due to other tenants willing to pay more for their spaces, and also think another few may have been efforts to prop up volumes at nearby Food Maxx locations that were not doing particularly well). The problem is this creates some really awkward stores. Other than Food Lion, I have never seen a chain operate stores that are as low volume as some of the Save Marts.
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Re: New Save Mart Modesto

Post by Grocery101 »

storewanderer wrote: October 5th, 2019, 12:07 am
SamSpade wrote: October 3rd, 2019, 8:01 am Also in Reno-Sparks you have WinCo, which does a good job of being cheap and carrying a decent product mix due to their store size.
Reno has been a great market for WinCo; the North Reno one (opened as Cub in the mid 90's) was one of their best stores for years. Not sure where it falls now but it is an extremely high volume operation.

WinCo has caused significant damage to Save Mart and Food Maxx. But Food Maxx seems to have figured out how to compete with WinCo because they co-exist in a number of places not very far apart, mostly medium sized markets. Luckily for them, WinCo does not seem to be opening as many stores in California as they were 5-10 years ago, instead focusing on more distant geographies.

Reno/Sparks has always been a great grocery market if you like to have a choice of stores. Beyond the chains mentioned, Winco with 2 stores, Sprouts with 2 stores, Smart & Final Extra with 1 store, Marketon with 1 store, Scolaris with 2 stores, Grocery Outlet with 4 stores, Trader Joe's 1 store, Whole Foods 1 store, Natural Grocers 1 store. For some reason this has always been a market where a lot of people are willing to operate small store counts with low market share and quite a few low-medium volume stores. Slot machine revenues helped prop up a lot of zombie stores over the years in the 90's, and later after the smoking ban in those slot areas was passed, growth in the market helped. Safeway has failed miserably again and again in the immediate Reno market (closed 5-6 stores in the 70's and 80's after Raleys and Albertsons came in and blew them away with larger stores but like clockwork every 10-15 years they try again with a new store, currently the only stores they have open are the 1989 Reno Store and the 2003 Sparks Store which are both solid mediumish volume type operations; the 1996 Reno Store closed). Albertsons was very stable in this market over the years with excellent locations and did well, until Save Mart took over and killed volumes but only one store closed (though two converted to Food Maxx).

Save Mart has great staying power and they have largely remained true to their long term strategy of not closing stores until the situation becomes dire (though I think a few of their closures of larger stores the past 5-7 years may have been due to other tenants willing to pay more for their spaces, and also think another few may have been efforts to prop up volumes at nearby Food Maxx locations that were not doing particularly well). The problem is this creates some really awkward stores. Other than Food Lion, I have never seen a chain operate stores that are as low volume as some of the Save Marts.
How do you know the volumes of the SaveMart stores in Nevada? Just curious.
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Re: New Save Mart Modesto

Post by storewanderer »

Grocery101 wrote: October 6th, 2019, 9:58 pm
storewanderer wrote: October 5th, 2019, 12:07 am
SamSpade wrote: October 3rd, 2019, 8:01 am Also in Reno-Sparks you have WinCo, which does a good job of being cheap and carrying a decent product mix due to their store size.
Reno has been a great market for WinCo; the North Reno one (opened as Cub in the mid 90's) was one of their best stores for years. Not sure where it falls now but it is an extremely high volume operation.

WinCo has caused significant damage to Save Mart and Food Maxx. But Food Maxx seems to have figured out how to compete with WinCo because they co-exist in a number of places not very far apart, mostly medium sized markets. Luckily for them, WinCo does not seem to be opening as many stores in California as they were 5-10 years ago, instead focusing on more distant geographies.

Reno/Sparks has always been a great grocery market if you like to have a choice of stores. Beyond the chains mentioned, Winco with 2 stores, Sprouts with 2 stores, Smart & Final Extra with 1 store, Marketon with 1 store, Scolaris with 2 stores, Grocery Outlet with 4 stores, Trader Joe's 1 store, Whole Foods 1 store, Natural Grocers 1 store. For some reason this has always been a market where a lot of people are willing to operate small store counts with low market share and quite a few low-medium volume stores. Slot machine revenues helped prop up a lot of zombie stores over the years in the 90's, and later after the smoking ban in those slot areas was passed, growth in the market helped. Safeway has failed miserably again and again in the immediate Reno market (closed 5-6 stores in the 70's and 80's after Raleys and Albertsons came in and blew them away with larger stores but like clockwork every 10-15 years they try again with a new store, currently the only stores they have open are the 1989 Reno Store and the 2003 Sparks Store which are both solid mediumish volume type operations; the 1996 Reno Store closed). Albertsons was very stable in this market over the years with excellent locations and did well, until Save Mart took over and killed volumes but only one store closed (though two converted to Food Maxx).

Save Mart has great staying power and they have largely remained true to their long term strategy of not closing stores until the situation becomes dire (though I think a few of their closures of larger stores the past 5-7 years may have been due to other tenants willing to pay more for their spaces, and also think another few may have been efforts to prop up volumes at nearby Food Maxx locations that were not doing particularly well). The problem is this creates some really awkward stores. Other than Food Lion, I have never seen a chain operate stores that are as low volume as some of the Save Marts.
How do you know the volumes of the SaveMart stores in Nevada? Just curious.
Beyond simply the number of customers present, the staffing levels compared to competitors, perimeter department assortment, staffing, operating hours, and condition compared to competitors, odd department closures or scale backs not seen at competitors (like the one in South Carson that largely closed its bakery and has flowers in the old self serve cold cake case, has stopped using parts of service deli and service seafood by covering those areas of the glass case with big marketing stickers; other various locations also have parts of department cases covered up with big stickers too).

Compared to the competitors in the market, they are running some real low volume stores. If these were little 30k square foot stores with no or limited perimeters it would be different, but for 55k square foot stores with full perimeters, the volumes are not there and the condition of the stores speaks to that.

But, again, they are trying. They are doing store remodels and have a program of price reductions. Some of the locations are older but near where good infill developments are going and will be helped by those developments. They obviously see a future here, or they would not be doing these remodels. The stores are a sad shadow of what they were when they were Albertsons.
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