Safeway opening four new stores in NorCal this year

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storewanderer
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Re: Safeway opening four new stores in NorCal this year

Post by storewanderer »

Bagels wrote: March 26th, 2020, 1:05 am

Both locations near me are owned by different franchisees, and both have notices posted when you walk in advising you that they're opting out of certain sales. They read something like 'We're a family owned store, owned by the Jones Family, Southern California natives who've lived in Orange County for over blah, blah, blah. We want to bring you the lowest price possible, but our ad is national and we are local and independent, therefore we were unable to negotiate with suppliers on XXX..." It's usually limited high-volume loss leaders, like soda, eggs, etc. One location doesn't even carry the 20/24 packs of soda that are frequently on sale.
That is very poor form and misleading for how Grocery Outlet works. Grocery Outlets get most of their items from the corporation's warehouse and the inventory is consigned to the store operators. I read the Irvine one recently changed ownership (reading between the lines though it does not explicitly say it anywhere, it does not sound like the store was doing too well). Was that one of the ones that did not honor the ad? Maybe the new owners honor the ad.

Some items like soda would come from a vendor but I think dairy all comes from Grocery Outlet's warehouse or otherwise controlled supply chain. One Grocery Outlet operator in Reno and Sparks (best operator I've ever seen) has a thing going with the local Coke vendor and gets lots of short coded Coke products into one of his stores. .25 20oz bottles, etc., displayed by the pallet.
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Re: Safeway opening four new stores in NorCal this year

Post by Bagels »

klkla wrote: March 26th, 2020, 7:47 amThis phenomenon never ceases to amaze me. Almost every company that has expanded here has failed.
Very true, even Walmart (!) failed in its push to build Neighborhood Markets. Aldi seems to be getting a lot more foot traffic, but they've also started focusing their attention back to the Midwest.
storewanderer wrote: March 26th, 2020, 7:31 pmThat is very poor form and misleading for how Grocery Outlet works. Grocery Outlets get most of their items from the corporation's warehouse and the inventory is consigned to the store operators. I read the Irvine one recently changed ownership (reading between the lines though it does not explicitly say it anywhere, it does not sound like the store was doing too well). Was that one of the ones that did not honor the ad? Maybe the new owners honor the ad.

Some items like soda would come from a vendor but I think dairy all comes from Grocery Outlet's warehouse or otherwise controlled supply chain. One Grocery Outlet operator in Reno and Sparks (best operator I've ever seen) has a thing going with the local Coke vendor and gets lots of short coded Coke products into one of his stores. .25 20oz bottles, etc., displayed by the pallet.
It is the Irvine location, so that makes some sense. The other location is in Lake Forest, but I've only been in it a few times. I read awhile ago where they were almost evicted for unpaid rent. Grocery Outlet was a Wall Street darling and rapidly expanded, but I suspect many of those stores might be a dud.
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Re: Safeway opening four new stores in NorCal this year

Post by submariner »

This is your "on-topic" reminder. Discussions not relating to the subject should be in their own thread. Thanks!
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