Albertsons LLC to Close 13 Florida Stores

[Alpha8472]

http://supermarketnews.com/albertsons-l ... ida-stores

Albertsons, LLC will be closing 13 Florida stores. Four of their healthiest stores in the state will remain open in Altamonte Springs, Clearwater, Largo and Oakland Park. The Key West store will be acquired by Publix.

[storewanderer]

There has got to be some kind of a "deal" for the other 4 stores... how can they support just 4 stores?

[krogerclerk]

ABS LLC continues the remaining 4 stores in Florida. I don't know how its a viable option given advertising costs, and even lost volume from the wholesale side could drive up costs. Delhaize has eliminated the Food Lion banner from Florida in the last round of closings from March of this year, leaving Harvey's in the north and Sweetbay in the Tampa Bay and southwest coast markets. Four is too small a base to be of interest to an outside operator to enter the market, and Publix has saturated Florida, leaving Sedanos, WinnDixie and Walmart Neighborhood Market as the only likely buyer.

[raysboi22]

The 4 store continue to operate under a service agreement with supervalu and get most grocery items from Quincy. The only items the stores were receiving from the closed Plant warehouse was Fresh items and Liquor. These items have moved to DSD. The four stores are pretty much set up as independent grocery stores now, only getting general merchandise items from the Albertsons Ponca warehouse and even those items are crossdocked through quincy and not directly driven to the stores by albertsons truck drivers. As for the feasibility of this, the stores no longer have to support a Florida district office or the plant warehouse, this plus a extremely small increase in prices has allowed for similar grosses even with the higher DSD costs. As for advertising costs, they are low as Albertsons advertising budget solely consists of just the postage cost to mail ads.

[storewanderer]

They have operated those two Super Savers in Salt Lake City quite isolated from the rest of the chain. I guess as long as the stores can stay profitable... they will stay open. The LLC is obviously not trying to be a market leader with high store counts in its markets, just trying to operate profitable stores.

I would be curious to see how this DSD set up has impacted quality and mix. LLC has done a great job improving the meat, deli, and continuing on offering the improved produce and bakery items that the old Albertsons offered prior to the chain splitting. Supervalu of course has allowed quality to slip all around but I am quite impressed with what I see of the LLC Stores that are still open.