Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. No non-grocery posts.
kr.abs.swy
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by kr.abs.swy »

All I have is theories about that Meridian Rosauers. We actually shopped there some. It was a good store, the Huckleberry section had some products that were hard to find elsewhere, and produce always looked good.

It was one of the few grocery stores on a really busy highway that saw massive traffic (literally the busiest road in the state). They should have done really well. At rush hour the highway is busy enough that you basically have to force yourself back into traffic and I'm sure that kept plenty of people from going in. And it was all but impossible to get out of that store and go south on Eagle Road.

It was down the street from an Albertsons and just up the street from the Boise Co-Op. If you were on your way home from work and drove by the Rosauers, you were probably also going to drive by the Albertsons and the Co-Op. Rosaeurs prices weren't any better (overall worse) so you probably just went with the default and kept going to the Albertsons. (This is a ~2000 Albertsons that was, I believe, the first one in the chain to have the garden center; it is a modern and established store). And Boise people are very loyal to the Co-Op.

My personal theory is that they identified that, for a time, Albertsons had stopped opening new stores in Boise and some emerging sections of suburbia were under-stored (especially since Fred Meyer seems not to want to open more than about one store per decade in the Boise area). So I think they saw an opportunity to fill in some gaps. Now Albertsons is growing again and Ridley's has also opened some stores.

So as to why it didn't work ... the store was never busy. The Huckleberry section was nice and they were a bit more ambitious in the deli than Albertsons, but it just didn't do all that much that any of the dozens of other Albertsons stores in the Boise area weren't already doing. I'm sure the lease was high, costs to get food down from Spokane was marginally higher, and trying to market 1 Rosauers store against all of the Albertsons locations was an uphill battle. It was a nice store and we liked it, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work. Prices weren't great. Maybe if they had given it more time and let more folks discover them, it would have worked. I don't know. Given car counts and the relative lack of supermarket options on Eagle Road, it should have done well. They must have just decided that their pockets weren't deep enough to wait for the store to become profitable.


retailfanmitchell019 wrote: February 26th, 2021, 9:54 am
Super S wrote: February 26th, 2021, 8:24 am Back to the northwest....I am curious if Rosauer's will open more locations in western Washington. They have a new location in Ridgefield which should do well as it is the only true supermarket in town, and they have seen a HUGE influx of new homes. They did place the store well for growth. I personally would like to see another conventional grocer. Most independents have disappeared except for smaller towns, and the Thriftway name in southwest Washington and Oregon seems to be fading away (a different Thriftway than the Seattle area)
Trader Joe's took over part of the closed Rosauers in Meridian, ID. Why did they fail there?
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: February 26th, 2021, 11:25 am
jamcool wrote: February 26th, 2021, 5:56 am I still don’t know why the Smith’s banner is still in NM, which is isolated from their base UT/NV stores, it should have been combined with King Soopers or Fry’s
Neither the King Soopers or the Fry's brands are know in NM so it wouldn't be beneficial to change them now. Operationally it might make sense to merge them with either division but a banner change isn't needed. At the time they were also expanding in the El Paso area and Arizona so it made sense then.
Back in the mid 00's I really thought Kroger should just dissolve Smiths. Dissolve Las Vegas/NM into Frys, Utah into King Soopers, ID/MT/WY into City Market. Those surrounding divisions seemed to be run a lot better than Smiths at the time. Smiths operations have improved drastically from that time period, they have taken significant share from Albertsons in all of those markets (Albertsons has probably gotten some back in the past couple years), and at this point the division has seriously improved its reputation.

NM is a different market than AZ or NV. Smiths is merchandised a little differently in that market. This is also why you had Albertsons move the stores there to United Division. NM is a bit of an odd market.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by storewanderer »

kr.abs.swy wrote: February 26th, 2021, 12:43 pm All I have is theories about that Meridian Rosauers. We actually shopped there some. It was a good store, the Huckleberry section had some products that were hard to find elsewhere, and produce always looked good.
I think the issue was pricing and logistics. They knew what they were getting into logistically. What I don't understand is why they didn't fix the pricing issue.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by jamcool »

Only the Eastern NM Albertsons stores (Albertsons Market ) are run by United... the rest of the state is part of the division run out of Phoenix (Which includes a handful of Safeways)
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by storewanderer »

jamcool wrote: February 26th, 2021, 5:47 pm Only the Eastern NM Albertsons stores (Albertsons Market ) are run by United... the rest of the state is part of the division run out of Phoenix (Which includes a handful of Safeways)
Since United runs Albuquerque, Taos, that is the majority of the stores that go against Smiths.
Farmington Albertsons (former Grocery Warehouse)/Safeway are in Denver Division. Smiths is in Farmington.
Lots of blurring of divisions in the Intermountain States.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by Brian Lutz »

Doing a little bit of searching, I'm actually a bit surprised to see how few Fred Meyer stores there are east of the Cascades in Washington. As far as I can tell, there are 3 stores in the Spokane metro area (4 if you count the one in Hayden Idaho but that's some distance away from Spokane), 1 store each in the Tri-Cities, Wenatchee, Ellensburg and Yakima, and that's it. At the very least I'd expect places like Moses Lake to have one, and possibly a couple more in the Tri-Cities and Spokane.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by Super S »

Brian Lutz wrote: February 26th, 2021, 9:01 pm Doing a little bit of searching, I'm actually a bit surprised to see how few Fred Meyer stores there are east of the Cascades in Washington. As far as I can tell, there are 3 stores in the Spokane metro area (4 if you count the one in Hayden Idaho but that's some distance away from Spokane), 1 store each in the Tri-Cities, Wenatchee, Ellensburg and Yakima, and that's it. At the very least I'd expect places like Moses Lake to have one, and possibly a couple more in the Tri-Cities and Spokane.
Don't forget places such as Centralia-Chehalis even though Fred Meyer has a distribution center there...

There are even fewer in Oregon. Surprising given Oregon is Fred Meyer's home state. Basically nothing east of the Bend area until you get to Nampa, Idaho. Places such as Pendleton, LaGrande, Ontario all have Walmart and at one time Kmart even had locations in Pendleton and Ontario.

Fred Meyer seemed like a good fit for some of these areas as recently as about 5-10 years ago. Given some of the recent changes at Fred Meyer though, I am not so sure they would be able to compete against already-established Walmart stores in those areas.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: February 26th, 2021, 10:22 pm Don't forget places such as Centralia-Chehalis even though Fred Meyer has a distribution center there...

There are even fewer in Oregon. Surprising given Oregon is Fred Meyer's home state. Basically nothing east of the Bend area until you get to Nampa, Idaho. Places such as Pendleton, LaGrande, Ontario all have Walmart and at one time Kmart even had locations in Pendleton and Ontario.

Fred Meyer seemed like a good fit for some of these areas as recently as about 5-10 years ago. Given some of the recent changes at Fred Meyer though, I am not so sure they would be able to compete against already-established Walmart stores in those areas.
Fred Meyer closed one store in Spokane. I think that is one of what, two Fred Meyer store closures in the past decade? Also there is one Fred Meyer in Spokane that I think was built by Kroger near downtown Spokane.

There is a decent amount of competition there in Spokane with Rosauers, Yoke's, and some other independents as well. WinCo entered Spokane relatively recently. Safeway and Albertsons also both have a relatively heavy representation around Spokane. I think a couple stores got divested to Haggen there and both ended up with URM operators.

I suspect we would have seen Fred Meyer do more expansion into those smaller markets had Kroger not bought them and basically quit building new stores. Even one or two new stores a year would have been a huge help. But it sure did Safeway a favor.
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by pseudo3d »

kr.abs.swy wrote: February 26th, 2021, 12:43 pm All I have is theories about that Meridian Rosauers. We actually shopped there some. It was a good store, the Huckleberry section had some products that were hard to find elsewhere, and produce always looked good.

It was one of the few grocery stores on a really busy highway that saw massive traffic (literally the busiest road in the state). They should have done really well. At rush hour the highway is busy enough that you basically have to force yourself back into traffic and I'm sure that kept plenty of people from going in. And it was all but impossible to get out of that store and go south on Eagle Road.

It was down the street from an Albertsons and just up the street from the Boise Co-Op. If you were on your way home from work and drove by the Rosauers, you were probably also going to drive by the Albertsons and the Co-Op. Rosaeurs prices weren't any better (overall worse) so you probably just went with the default and kept going to the Albertsons. (This is a ~2000 Albertsons that was, I believe, the first one in the chain to have the garden center; it is a modern and established store). And Boise people are very loyal to the Co-Op.

My personal theory is that they identified that, for a time, Albertsons had stopped opening new stores in Boise and some emerging sections of suburbia were under-stored (especially since Fred Meyer seems not to want to open more than about one store per decade in the Boise area). So I think they saw an opportunity to fill in some gaps. Now Albertsons is growing again and Ridley's has also opened some stores.

So as to why it didn't work ... the store was never busy. The Huckleberry section was nice and they were a bit more ambitious in the deli than Albertsons, but it just didn't do all that much that any of the dozens of other Albertsons stores in the Boise area weren't already doing. I'm sure the lease was high, costs to get food down from Spokane was marginally higher, and trying to market 1 Rosauers store against all of the Albertsons locations was an uphill battle. It was a nice store and we liked it, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work. Prices weren't great. Maybe if they had given it more time and let more folks discover them, it would have worked. I don't know. Given car counts and the relative lack of supermarket options on Eagle Road, it should have done well. They must have just decided that their pockets weren't deep enough to wait for the store to become profitable.
Going up against a big hometown grocer is always going to be challenge (it usually ends poorly), and I noticed that when Rosauers closed, it was when Albertsons Market Street's construction was underway (maybe it was still "Market Street Idaho" at the time), which would have not only provided that grocery hole that Rosauers wanted to fill but would've done everything that it did and more. They probably threw in the towel when it came for lease renewals (they had been there a little over five years when it closed).

I don't think that was the first Albertsons location with a garden center, though, stores in the Southern and Southwestern division were opening that same year with them, but it was probably the first and only store in the Intermountain division to get it. I had heard that LLC (which got South and SW) axed it immediately, but when did SuperValu get rid of it? Was it already gone by then?
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Re: Open Discussion: Grocery Formats in Urban WA / OR

Post by kr.abs.swy »

I dug up a few photos of some of the Montana/Wyoming Buttrey and Albertsons stores that Smith's "bought."

The first three pictures are the Cody, Wyoming, IGA/Buttrey/Smith's at 1526 Rumsey. I happened to be in town in 2005 while it was being remodeled and the guy that was doing the work let me wander around. This is Rocky Mountain Discount Sports now.

The next four pictures are the Helena, Montana, Buttrey/Smith's on N Montana Avenue in 2006. This building was heavily remodeled into Capital City Health Club sometime in or between 2008 and 2012.

The next two pictures are from one or both of the Albertsons stores that Smith's took over in Billings, Montana. Quality is very poor but they show that the only remodeling that Smith's did was to put the word "Smith's" where it used to say "Albertsons" on the blue-grey decor. The Heights Albertsons they got was modern (just happened to be down the street from an even better Buttrey) but the downtown store they got was really dated. These photos are from when these were operating as Smith's, probably in 2001.

Enjoy.

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storewanderer wrote: February 26th, 2021, 12:00 am Montana/Wyoming was a bad situation for Smiths. Smiths did not exactly run a high quality operation in the late 90's/early 00's and though they skewed toward discount pricing they were not as discount as Wal Mart who was expanding heavily into their markets. Smiths operationally also seemed to have some problems at that time, wasn't real great on product freshness and store standards were not great. Despite this Smiths own stores did pull pretty high sales volumes in the late 90's/early 00's and in the major markets in Utah, NM, and Las Vegas Smiths did have some well run stores.

So Smiths got what was probably the worst physical store in most cases in MT/WY, stores that were half the size of a typical Smiths, Smiths did not have the best quality, did not have the best prices, and basically had little to offer the customer in those markets. Smiths was in a very bad position to compete in those markets with the stores they bought. The store volumes some of those stores did were so low it is amazing they stayed open as long as they did. Smiths did not do any remodeling, etc. I think it was pretty clear the stores were not a great fit for Smiths. That is an example of Fred Meyer wanting to expand into a certain territory and pushing stores onto Smiths that were lousy stores and also not a good fit for Smiths or its format. Many of those stores were basically destined to fail before Smiths even turned on the lights. This is the type of thing I refer to when I say Fred Meyer and Smiths were not a great match in how they did things or their go to market strategies.

But Smiths is still running a few of those former Buttrey/Albertsons Stores... they didn't all close.. Great Falls even finally got a remodel out of the Buttrey interior a couple years ago. Columbia Falls also finally got a remodel out of the early 90's Fred Meyer interior.

Also the El Paso Smiths went away due to some kind of trade with Fleming where Smiths got some Furrs Stores around Albuquerque. I'm not sure how Smiths was doing in El Paso but the stores did not close due to an outright market exit- there was another piece to that situation. And most of those are still open as Albertsons at this time.

Also when Kroger and Fred Meyer merged the 2 Smiths in Cheyenne were ordered divested to Nash Finch as there was a new King Soopers there in Cheyenne they (wisely) kept.

Generally speaking in the core territories with Smiths own stores that they built and developed (UT, NV, NM) Smiths has a low failure rate. Smiths failures have largely been of stores purchased from other parties or the SoCal thing.
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