storewanderer wrote:The Monopoly game is over. The stores stopped distributing pieces last week. I am not sure why there would still be radio ads for it.
This was a few weeks ago, I know it's late, but I just wanted to mention that. Advertising never seemed to be Safeway's strong suit...I've seen contemporary H-E-B ads (usually pushing the "Texas" angle) and Kroger ads (usually pushing the "good quality, low price" angle) but never contemporary Randalls ads (the old ones used to star Randall Onstead himself).
Safeway has had the produce in barrel fixtures/crate fixtures/wavy bell pepper display since before the Albertsons merger in some locations.
My point was that the newer ACMEs, the reset A&P stores, and the new Safeway stores have modified, streamlined produce displays. Changing that sort of thing isn't a remodel-level task, and I was curious if it was just a "new store only" thing or a "throughout the chain" task.
The buying situation is still a work in progress. Pre-existing contracts for private label in some markets so they can't shift production of some items like milk over to Safeway plants in all markets just yet, closing some Safeway manufacturing plants and shifting to third party vendors (need to sign a contract to cover both Safeway and Albertsons in those instances to get a better deal), scattered/random private label still coming from SuperValu...
But Kroger did go through and lower a large set of center store retails in Harris Teeter and it appears they are not yet on combined buying. If Kroger can do that, why can't Albertsons do it? Albertsons and Safeway have always been very high priced operators and it is no secret. I don't think pricing competitively is in the combined company's DNA. They have their heads in the sand for many years when it comes to pricing and refuse to face the reality that their outrageously high everyday retail pricing needs to be reworked.
It takes many years to do price cuts. You can't just go through and do a 20% across the board cut one day. Kroger has been tinkering with pricing for a decade and they still have some retails that are higher than they should be... but their everyday low price program started out slow, with just a few hundred items scattered around the store, a mix of brand names and private label. Then year after year they added additional groups of items. It takes time. It is called investing in price, and at the same time finding expense cuts in other areas to help pay for those investments in price. Albertsons has also cut a lot of expenses backstage and yet we still are seeing no sign of investing in price. I believe Albertsons has many more expenses they can cut, redundant distribution centers, some redundant stores, redundant marketing programs, etc. where they can continue to find savings but will they put that savings toward investing in price (they haven't yet) or will they just put that savings to the next quarterly profit report and show higher profits that quarter but in no way actually help increase customer satisfaction (seems to be the current strategy).
There's a number of redundancies Albertsons can cut still, but I think it's a little unfair to compare it to Kroger. Kroger is a well-run, well-integrated company and has been continuing more or less on a solid path for a few decades (when was the last time Kroger pulled out of a market?) and doesn't have to pay down a lot of debt from a company (or two) that wasn't performing particularly well (maybe Roundy's being the notable exception, but it's on far less of a scale than Safeway was). I would even go so far to venture that Kroger did price cuts at Harris Teeter because they had the financial resources to, even if they took on a loss.
As for high prices, I know Albertsons always had high prices for years, though it seems that only really happened after American Stores. In the early 1990s it was actually pretty competitive from other accounts I read, and even in Dallas they went in with an EDLP program that claimed to beat Tom Thumb, Kroger, Safeway, and Skaggs Alpha Beta on price (never mind that they bought all of those but one, ultimately). Safeway I'm less sure on since there hasn't been a real Safeway in Texas since before I was born. I do remember reading (in old articles) that one of AppleTree's goals was to have a reputation for lower prices as Safeway had a reputation for higher prices, but that was in the 1980s. But Safeway was also always a reasonably priced supermarket too in the old days. Either you or klkla mentioned great deals they ran on store brand items, and while it wasn't the lowest game in town, it was certainly middle of the road. Also, my observations have seen (and this seems to be backed up by your Florida observations) that Albertsons/Safeway is competitive on things like milk and some other perimeter items, which is at least a start. This certainly wasn't the case with Safeway c. 2005 with WFM-levels of pricing for things like orange juice.
Not sure what the thing on DCs is, as I did read that Albertsons was going to get rid of some of the overlapping centers (mostly Vons) in SoCal by leasing them short-term then divesting them completely, but I also have found that the Safeway drivers for Randalls don't work with driving to Louisiana at all, even though Albertsons-branded trucks have seen going in and out of the center. I'm not sure if it's residual Supervalu or not (I don't think they have LLC drivers).
