Retail Watchers

More signs of trouble at Golub Corp? Keene, NH and West Carthage and Oswego, NY have pulled the plug on pharmacy operations in recent weeks.
http://eprretailnews.com/2017/03/29/pri ... 321456789/
http://www.localsyr.com/news/local-news ... /676530941
http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news ... s-20170322

Somehow it's doubtful. They have other stores that have never had pharmacies, and what they are saying in the articles is that they didn't have enough volume in those stores to make it work (which could happen since there are other stores nearby, based on transferring the prescriptions to other chains).

Also, if any of the stores are on the smaller side, they may be more in need of the space for other stuff in the store itself.

We know that Golub is having some trouble, enough that it leaked they were talking to Albertsons with a relatively low pricetag (which may or may not have included real estate). What this indicates is unknown, but two doesn't seem like cause for alarm (yet)

What you really have to look at is, how are the stores doing where pharmacy is closing? Normally when a pharmacy closes, it is in a store that is doing poorly overall, and the pharmacy is simply the first shoe to drop. Often the rest of the store closes after the pharmacy.

I have seen some exceptions to this. Kroger closed all of the pharmacies within Food 4 Less Stores and the 1-2 FoodsCo Pharmacies, but those stores still remain open and do not appear to be performing poorly. Also Stater has closed pharmacy in some of its stores but those stores also still remain open as well as they are very successful stores.

I am not sure how seriously we can take Albertsons being in negotiations for anything lately. There seem to be a lot of supposed talks and not a lot of actions. The negotiations for Price Chopper seem to have failed. There has been no news on the negotiations for Sprouts. They appear to have lost out on the divested Rite Aid/Walgreens Stores even after adding a new executive to run the pharmacy/drug part of the company in Boise last year and taking some tax incentives from Idaho to form a new pharmacy/drug management group in Boise.

storewanderer wrote: I am not sure how seriously we can take Albertsons being in negotiations for anything lately. There seem to be a lot of supposed talks and not a lot of actions. The negotiations for Price Chopper seem to have failed. There has been no news on the negotiations for Sprouts. They appear to have lost out on the divested Rite Aid/Walgreens Stores even after adding a new executive to run the pharmacy/drug part of the company in Boise last year and taking some tax incentives from Idaho to form a new pharmacy/drug management group in Boise.

Sprouts was the one that they did announce and were in preliminary talks, only making the stock price hop around a little (it may be months before any progress is made, it's not over until it's over). Price Chopper is private and the fact that ABS was even talking to them wasn't supposed to be public, it was leaked and for all we know that may have damaged the deal's progress. And as for Rite Aid/Walgreens were there any credible sources that they were actually interested?

Why they don't just admit Market 32 isn't working out and pull the plug on the whole concept? They need to get back to what they know and do best: running good solid stores that serve their local communities well. It seems that virtually every chain at one time or another feels they have to become a "boutique" grocer and most of them usually fail miserably.

Credible? New York Post... so, perhaps, questionable. https://www.benzinga.com/news/17/01/895 ... e-rite-aid

But actions speak loudly, and timing of it. http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/busi ... 77427.html

storewanderer wrote:Credible? New York Post... so, perhaps, questionable. https://www.benzinga.com/news/17/01/895 ... e-rite-aid

But actions speak loudly, and timing of it. http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/busi ... 77427.html

Independent of that, I think it's more trying to build back up the HBA department since the old comprehensive Sav-on style mix is essentially owned by SuperValu and the Safeway HBA department, is, shall we say lacking. Besides, even with Safeway, the number of markets pre-2006 (certainly pre-2002) have cratered and they haven't even built that back up (let alone add drug stores). It's better for Albertsons that they focus on internal store mechanics (which there are numerous broken aspects) instead of a shallow representation of the past.

I agree with the poster above that Golub should kill Market 32 (and just rebrand the stores as Price Chopper, they are nice stores) while focusing on innovation in its existing stores.

The funny part of it is, if one looks at the newest Price Choppers built/renovated prior to the introduction of Market 32, there is very little difference in the stores, aside from the name.

They had already started using much of the décor and designs after they built the Market Bistro in Latham (as a test store, which has a bunch more things than the other stores, due to it's larger size) in stores being redone/expanded or replaced.

I'm not sure if it's that most people haven't seen those newer stores or just comparing the new locations to the older Price Choppers that makes them not like the new stores...

storewanderer wrote:What you really have to look at is, how are the stores doing where pharmacy is closing? Normally when a pharmacy closes, it is in a store that is doing poorly overall, and the pharmacy is simply the first shoe to drop. Often the rest of the store closes after the pharmacy.

The closing of the pharmacy department is a step toward a store closing. Reduction in the store's hours of operation, closing of other service departments, discontinuation of customer services, and associates transferring to other stores or being laid off are other signs a store's closing is obvious.

Price Chopper has several underachieving stores it is unloading.