Food Source (Raleys) closing Pittsburg, CA

[storewanderer]

Store is slated to close in late September.

I'm surprised it lasted this long. They hardly spent any money on that conversion (kept the old floor, initially even kept the old cashier unload checkstands- though I think they since got customer-bagging checkstands and may have torn up the old floor) initially. Raleys is probably having its hands full right now with the addition of Scolaris Stores up in Nevada which has been generally a failure; even after a year they still haven't gotten things straightened out on these stores other than the one they remodeled in Reno, though even it is not at the level of the typical Raleys location (probably due to lack of volume; every single one of these stores was busier as far as foot traffic goes under Scolaris ownership, and they were not exactly a high volume operator; medium volume at best; Raleys looks to be getting some larger transactions and they increased prices so it is possible they are running more volume on less foot traffic).

Funny how the FoodsCo in Pittsburg has thrived (old Lucky-Price Advantage-Super Saver divested in the 1999 ASC merger) as various other stores nearby closed or converted to other formats (newer Albertsons now Mi Pueblo-Cardenas, Save Mart which was an old unremodeled Frys...).

[Alpha8472]

FoodsCo which is run by Kroger, seems to beat other supermarkets by price overall. The bottom line seems to be price. Raley's does not seem to be as good in price.

Perhaps if Raley's improved prices and presentation, they could have prevented the closure.

[storewanderer]

FoodsCo which is run by Kroger, seems to beat other supermarkets by price overall. The bottom line seems to be price. Raley's does not seem to be as good in price.

Perhaps if Raley's improved prices and presentation, they could have prevented the closure.

Food Source is not very good on pricing and quality/presentation. It does not surprise me they failed to complete with WinCo, Wal Mart, FoodsCo, and a couple hispanic format stores nearby in Pittsburg.

Raleys gets special lower quality meat and produce just for Food Source. Also different bakery/deli items (debatable if quality is worse). I cannot imagine how much it costs to do separate procurement for 8 low volume stores, it would probably make sense to just send them what the normal Raleys locations get even if cost is a little higher, I suspect saving the separate procurement costs may outweigh the higher cost for the product itself. Similar to when they finally started to carry Raleys private label a couple years ago instead of Sunny Select.

Raleys has historically wasted a lot of money trying to hide the fact that they own Food Source. When they started to carry Raleys brand items, that gig was up so at this point they may as well do something about the quality of meat/produce/bakery/deli in those stores and get it up to Raleys level. Supposedly they do not want their pristine image to be somehow messed up by this Food Source operation. Most of these Food Source locations are in neighborhoods that Raleys would never enter with a conventional store at this point in time, but that doesn't mean they need to have poor quality perishables.