Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

[Bagels]

I thought there were four distribution centers, although I'm not certain about one of them.

Irvine (Originally Lucky)
El Monte (Originally Vons)
Santa Fe Springs (Originally Safeway)
La Habra (I'm not 100% sure on that one but the original Albertson's DC)

I was under the impression they kept Irvine and La Habra but I could be wrong.

Close. La Habra was an ex-Lucky DC that was included in the Savon sale to CVS, and operated for some time as a CVS DC. Brea is the original Albertsons DC and, along with Irvine, is one of the two DC serving SoCal. The ex-Vons DC were sold in 2015 and as of March, both have been redeveloped. The Brea and Irvine facilities were both sold last year in a sale-leaseback transaction... presumably the leases are long-term; Irvine now houses the local management & administration, and Brea has plenty of open jobs listed.

And while the combined Albertsons-Vons is down to two DC, it should be noted that the combined company moves less volume annually either Vons or Albertson-Lucky did in 1999. And, of course, the grocery industry is trying to move toward a just in time inventory system as much as possible ... which means the company orders and receives shipments only when necessary (as much as possible), diminishing the need for large warehousing space since product is pushed out as fast as it comes in.

Alas, I don't agree with the other poster. It's common to see Albertsons and Vons trucks parked near the distribution center year-round ... honestly, I don't see much of a difference in the number of trucks parked in that shopping plaza. I do agree staff is likely overworked, but no company could ever prepare for what happened -- basically restocking an entire store on a nearly daily basis for weeks. We'll (hopefully) never see this happen again, either.

As for paper products... NOBODY has paper products in stock. I'm currently in the Midwest, and every store I've been into has everything paper products. That said, I have seen plenty of TP at my local Albertsons... people hoard it, and it's gone within a couple hours of store opening. On Friday morning at the Albertsons Irvine-Quail Hill, a lady filled her basket with a dozen packages and started screaming that the cashier was racist when she was told she could only purchase one (the policy is posted on the entrance and throughout the store).

[klkla]

Brea (the original Albertsons DC), La Harbara (ex-Lucky) and Irvine (ex-Lucky) …. The Brea and Irvine sites were sold last year in a lease-salesback deal. Albertsons is still listing jobs at the Brea site, so presumably both will remain long-term.

Thanks for clearing that up. Brea is what I mean to say instead of La Habra.

[BillyGr]

some communities are considering ordinances that would limit customers to one trip per week or designated shopping days based on the alphabet of your last name.

Somehow that doesn't seem to make much sense. Most people generally do shopping on a particular day normally - if they just continue to do that, things would be much more like normal (rather than forcing some people to go on a day or time they may not be able to do so easily).

Then you get into things like people who help others and take them to shop (particularly now with some not able to or not feeling safe to do so themselves). Likely that those people don't always have the same name.

Overall, this weekend doing regular shopping much of the stores here were better than they had been recently - one of them even had a few types of certain otherwise unseen recently paper items! So, it seems people are mostly cutting down on the overboard shopping that caused many issues and just getting what they'd usually use (and likely at least some stocked up so much that they now need very little).

[storewanderer]

Interesting to think 21 years ago in SoCal there were distros for Albertsons, Lucky, and Vons all separate. Now there is one DC to serve that total store group.

I thought there were four distribution centers, although I'm not certain about one of them.

Irvine (Originally Lucky)
El Monte (Originally Vons)
Santa Fe Springs (Originally Safeway)
La Habra (I'm not 100% sure on that one but the original Albertson's DC)

I was under the impression they kept Irvine and La Habra but I could be wrong.

In 1999 Albertsons/Lucky merged and there were warehouses in Brea, Irvine, La Habra, and Buena Park. Buena Park was closed immediately after that merger.

Quite a contraction of warehouses...

[jamcool]

Was not La Habra originally Alpha Beta’s Distribution Center?

[Bagels]

In 1999 Albertsons/Lucky merged and there were warehouses in Brea, Irvine, La Habra, and Buena Park. Buena Park was closed immediately after that merger.

Quite a contraction of warehouses...

Immediately following the merger, they closed Buena Park and laid off most of the workforce at Brea, claiming that synergies, store divestures and Albertsons' advanced technology (JIT inventory) rendered the facilities redundant. In the mid-2000s, Albertsons proposed closing its then-three Orange County DC and replacing them with a single, consolidated facility in the Inland Empire (where costs were significantly lower). Ralphs and Vons explored a similar strategy, which was one of the many motivations for the massive strike that took place.

Fast forward to 2020, and the combined Albertsons-Vons is pushing out less volume than just Albertsons-Lucky two decades earlier, not even considering Vons' volume. Just to put it into perceptive... there were around 700 Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions in Southern California entering 2000 -- fewer than half those stores remain today, and many of the stores that do remain are producing significantly lower volume than they did 20 years ago.

So while I agree that grocery store employees are currently overworked, I don't agree that Albertsons' decision to divest the two Vons DC is contributing to the woes. Given the number of stores both chains shuttered, it was surprising that they hadn't closed any of their DC by 2015.

Was not La Habra originally Alpha Beta’s Distribution Center?

Yes, it was.

[TW-Upstate NY]

So, it seems people are mostly cutting down on the overboard shopping that caused many issues and just getting what they'd usually use (and likely at least some stocked up so much that they now need very little).

I'm approaching things like that now simply because that's how I was raised. My parents (both now gone unfortunately) while respectably middle-class didn't have all the money in the world so they always looked for bargains. Usually, to get the best price on an item, they bought the larger sizes of pretty much everything especially when it was on sale. As a result, we always had an ample supply of what today now is considered hard to find items. A lot of their shopping habits rubbed off on me so now if I go to the store and can only have 1 or 2 of those kinds of items, I'll say thank you and be on my way and just add it to what I already have at home. And this thing about designating shopping days-I suppose you could work it like they did years ago during gasoline shortages. How many of you remember the odd/even system with license plates? It wasn't perfect but at least you were able to buy some fuel. Maybe that's an option with grocery shopping. There's so many unknowns here.

[storewanderer]

Stores seem to be continuing to recover in my area. Smiths and Raleys are fully stocked except paper products are very empty. You can have a variety of pasta, rice, all meat is available, dairy is looking good. On the drug side, not seeing rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, or much in the way of cleaning spray/wipes. Though, antibacterial hand soap is available, albeit in short supply.

Went into Save Mart and total disaster there. No eggs, no bananas, no flour, little soup, no paper products, no rubbing alcohol, no hand sanitizer. I was in this store last week and many of the same holes from last week were still there. I expected they would have fixed this by now, given what I am seeing at other stores. I suppose they may have restocked and sold out already but this is a pretty slow location so who knows what is going on. Maybe they prioritize getting more inventory to busier stores. But I was thinking about it after and if they have been out of these things now for 1-2 weeks, probably whatever sales lift they got 2 weeks ago, has been washed out by the sales losses from being out of stock for the past 1-2 weeks on so many items.

On the topic of toilet paper, I heard you can pre-order paper products at Wal Mart's website and they will come in late April, ship only ($5 fee?). Pre-order paper products.....???

Oh, I went into WinCo to get a couple things I had planned to get at Save Mart but couldn't since they were out of stock. WinCo now has an employee sitting on a stool between the entry and exit door and all customers have to line up to enter the store. This was at like 7 PM. While I was parking I noticed 4-5 in line waiting to enter. I thought, whatever, at this point, I just need to get the items I couldn't get at Save Mart due to its terrible in-stock situation. So I parked and went up the door and luckily when I got there, nobody else was waiting. The guy at the stool asked how I was doing then said I will be able to enter as soon as another customer leaves. Within 30 seconds, a customer walked out, and he directed me to enter the store. A few people were behind me and he was making small talk with the ones behind me, as I was walking in. I think they are not only controlling how many customers enter but also screening customers for visual signs of sickness before letting them enter the store. The store was not even very busy. Maybe 4 checkouts open, with just steady traffic, and self checkouts same just steady a couple in use at once, no lines there either.

[Alpha8472]

Senior hour or early in the morning is the best time to find toilet paper. Even at Walmart some senior friends said there were huge packs of toilet paper at senior hour.

I was in a Foodmaxx near closing and there were roving packs of juvenile shoplifters. Where are the parents? One security guard is not enough. They need to call the police at closing time, because it is out of control. I felt so unsafe that I had to leave the store without buying anything.

There was very little dairy left and some various other common shortages. Some eggs were available. Brand name bread was available as well as store baked bread. Produce was running low, but still had some of everything.

[pseudo3d]

Did a bit of Google searching for reported cases of grocery store employees getting infected with COVID-19 (this is not a comprehensive list). Wonder why Trader Joe's seemed to get the worst of it...?
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Kroger - 2 in a Nashville Kroger
1 in Colorado Springs King Soopers
1 in Portland Fred Meyer
1 in Skokie Mariano's

Albertsons - 1 in San Jose Safeway
2 in the Boise area Albertsons
1 in Escondido Albertsons
1 in New Providence ACME

Ahold Delhaize - 1 in Columbia Heights Giant-MD

Whole Foods - 1 in San Francisco Whole Foods

Trader Joe's - 2 in Metairie Trader Joe's
1 in Arlington Trader Joe's
1 in Delray Beach Trader Joe's
1 in Clarendon Trader Joe's
4 in NYC area Trader Joe's
1 in Bakersfield Trader Joe's

Publix - 1 in Boca Publix

ShopRite - 4 in NJ area ShopRite stores