pseudo3d wrote: ↑March 20th, 2020, 4:46 pmI'd like to see that document, but Google turns up nothing. I wonder exactly
why the stores are doing so poorly. It's not like Lucky, where the format was changed so dramatically it drove customers away. Is it just higher prices, or were the stores going down the drain anyway?
It was posted a couple years ago or so in a retail employee forum. I haven't been into an ACME that was a former A&P, but from reading Yelp reviews (and they're pretty bad... most stores are one or two stars) people complain most about the conditions of the store, the high prices and the poor quality within the deli and bakery. The early closing times within the meat/deli/bakery also come up fairly often.
Albertsons corporate pricing strategy is interesting... at Jewel stores in Chicagoland, it's pretty aggressive on price, and promotions are solid. Here in Southern California, shelf prices are ridiculously high but promotions are generally really good. I'm not familiar with the NYC-area market, but ACME's prices seem pretty high, and upon quick glance, promotions seem mediocre, especially compared to what I saw competitors offering.
Looking at various Yelp reviews, many of the (ex-A&P family) ACME stores still have some variation of the 1990s A&P interiors I'm familiar with (from growing up in the 80s and 90s and being dragged into A&P and later A&P-owned Farmer Jack on a regular basis). Albertsons remodels appear to be on the cheap -- most appeared to receive new paint/signage, some replacement furniture/fixtures and a full-service meat & seafood counter (which was absent from A&P). The variation in interiors is ridiculous. Heck, even renovated stores have a mixture of Albertsons and A&P furnishings. It seems like Albertsons did the least amount of work they thought was necessary (and I bet the "new" furniture/fixture was from closed stores under its umbrella).
From what I can tell, the deli and bakery offerings appear to be similar to what's sold here in SoCal. No complaints on my end - Albertsons has some of the best deli and bakery offerings of any traditional supermarket, and its pricing in this area beats everybody but Walmart. I don't know what A&P was offering, but I imagine it'd have to be an improvement. In Metro Detroit, most of their deli and bakery items were prepared in store (they built a central kitchen to replace this, but it I don't believe it opened before the chain was liquidated) and "just okay" at best.
The early last call for the meat counter, deli and bakery also exists here in SoCal and may be company wide. I agree this is pretty annoying -- the 7PM-8PM closing times are two to three hours earlier than the competition. I'll never get that.