Albertsons Store Closures

[J-Mac]

I thought I would open up some discussion here on Albertsons/Supervalu So Cal division.

The following stores closed Friday:

Lakewood --
Canoga Park
Chula Vista
Encinitas

I know Lakewood was a former Smiths property that was acquired, it appears, via Vons. Anyone know the pedigree of these other stores?

Also, just FYI, April 9, Albertsons will also close stores in San Diego, Cathedral City, Lancaster, Rancho Cucamonga and Temple City.

(BTW, thanks for taking on the headache Aaron.)

[submariner]

I know Lakewood was a former Smiths property that was acquired, it appears, via Vons. Anyone know the pedigree of these other stores?

I'll have to look into the San Diego locations, quite a few Albertsons down here were Alpha Beta-turned-Lucky stores.

...but that's history

[runchadrun]

The Canoga Park store is a former Lucky.

[luckysaver]

KNBC in its report on these closures said after all 9 closed, Albertsons will have 275 stores in the Southern California division (excludes the 3 Lucky stores, which operates as part of the division).

Canoga Park had their interior shown last week on the KTLA Morning News. It has the 1998 Lucky decor package. When the cameras showed the inside, it looked very much empty and sad as customers (many of whom waited in line outside) crowed around the few remaining shelves and refrigerated coffins digging through merchandise marked as much as 90% off. The Savon Pharmacy was dark and closed off, all that was left was a sign saying that the prescriptions were transferred to a nearby Walgreens.

Rancho Cucamonga currently has 3 locations - Foothill/Vineyard (ex-Lucky-Savon combo store, which happens to be the largest in the city and has a standalone gas station/Express C-Store), Archibald/Baseline (the oldest branch, dating to the late 1970's and the one that's scheduled to close this April), and Milliken/210 Freeway. Archibald/Baseline currently has the early 1990's blue-grey decor package, one of only a few stores left with either a Lucky or blue-grey decor. The closure of the Archibald store will not hurt the city much because later this year the city welcomes a Fresh & Easy.

Encinitas was most likely the Skaggs Alpha Beta featured/pictured on Groceteria.

A post on Groceteria last week mentioned 2 Albertsons locations that Supervalu will convert to the Lucky warehouse format.

Today's ad on the backside below the calendar still lists Irvine and Laguna Niguel where prices in the ad are not effective. When they do that, does it mean a store is closing or remodeling?

luckysaver

[Alpha8472]

I wonder why Supervalu didn't try to convert all of the Albertsons to the Lucky Warehouse format. If they had changed the name to Lucky I am sure that business would have increased. The lower prices of the warehouse format would bring in many more customers. They should have at least tried the Lucky format before closing them. They have little to lose.

I think that perhaps the motive for closing the stores is really due to real estate. They can sell the land for lots of money. Some of these locations can be converted to high priced condominiums and we know real estate is where the real money is made. Albertsons, LLC started an entire website selling the land of closed Albertsons stores. It made them lots of money.

http://www.albproperty.com/

[klkla]

I think that perhaps the motive for closing the stores is really due to real estate. They can sell the land for lots of money. Some of these locations can be converted to high priced condominiums and we know real estate is where the real money is made. Albertsons, LLC started an entire website selling the land of closed Albertsons stores. It made them lots of money.

http://www.albproperty.com/

The motive for closing the stores is because they're not making money, plain and simple. They didn't own very many properties in California and likely none of the nine being closed in SoCal are owned. They generally only bought stores in area where real estate was cheap, like Arizona, Florida and Texas. You will also notice on that site that a lot of the listings are actually leased properties and many of the locations are still open and they have not announced any closing dates for those stores. In those cases they are looking for someone to take over the leases so they can close the stores and not have to pay rent on an empty building. Also, some of the sales are for outparcels in shopping centers where they will continue to operate stores.

[Alpha8472]

I see. So in this case Albertsons just did not attract enough customers. I can see why. Albertsons simply refused to lower their prices. They always had such high prices that they drove all their customers away.

If these Albertsons stores had simply lowered their prices, these stores would have probably continued to stay alive. State Brothers has taken over several former Albertsons locations and the State Brothers store are doing fine. Stater Brothers has much lower prices.

Albertsons seems to take a stance of charging high prices. If they can't charge high prices and get away with it, they'd rather close the store down than lower their prices. What an awful business model.

[J-Mac]

So I visited the Temple City store today and found no signs of an impending closure:




Go figure.

[Alpha8472]

Perhaps they want to sell as much stuff as they can at full price to make the most profit.

I wonder why they don't just ship all of the stuff in the store to other Albertsons stores.

[maynesg]

Hi,The reason That Albertsons and most other retailers reduce their inventory in stores that they are going to close is simple. They do not want to screw up the recieving stores inventory up, incuring undue labor costs as product would then have to be worked many times over.
Also, since the store that is about to close due to low volume, dosen!t move product verry fast and dry groceries don!t always get rotated. This could srew up a functioning grocery department. If caught, by the recieving store it gets sent to a reclamation center for only pennies on a dollar, thus creating shrink for
for the recieving store.
It just makes sense to get rid of the stuff before closing.