Raley's announces new Truckee store

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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by rwsandiego »

storewanderer wrote: May 23rd, 2019, 10:50 pm
submariner wrote: May 23rd, 2019, 7:03 pm
ninersdd wrote: May 22nd, 2019, 10:11 pm Looks like the shovels will hit the ground in a couple of weeks

Wow, it only took three years!
More than that. Raley's had been trying to get into Truckee for the past 15 years. At one point they had two stores proposed. Both were well over Truckee's 39,999 square foot retail cap but at that point they somehow thought they were so "wanted" that they could get around it. Well, they didn't get around it.

But now their new stores are so much smaller than before that they fit into Truckee's retail store size cap.
This reminds me of San Francisco's ban on new chain stores. Of course, the only operators who can afford SF rents are chain stores. So now they have food deserts. Nice job.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by lake »

Raleys announced on Instagram today that this store will be a new banner titled “Raleys O-N-E”.
One standing for Organic, Nutrition, and Education.

I’m guessing this will make it similar but much larger than the 5-One-5 store they have in downtown sacramento. Maybe they’ll rebanner that store as well?

Somewhat questionable move to go a more Whole Foods route. I’m sure the store will still do well, but may incline more locals to go to Save Mart / Safeway if it doesn’t carry your average pantry brands.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by storewanderer »

I think the bigger news in that article is they are looking to rebrand all of their stores to this O-N-E format over the next 5-7 years.

Not sure how this will work in rural Nevada... or even certain locations around Sacramento and the central valley for that matter. Might be a good way to revive the Nob Hill stores which seem to be sort of stagnant.

They spent so much money on the Truckee Store, they are going to need to do what they need to do to make it work. Truckee Safeway is a well executed Safeway as far as its fresh items go, it does better than any other Safeway around on having great quality fresh products (since they move so much product through and have limited storage space due to the small store) but front end service can be quite poor due to the store being so overcrowded. So for Raleys to capture business in Truckee, if that means stocking normal pantry brands, even if de-emphasizing such items, I think they will do it. There is definitely business to capture. I think Save Mart has finally built the business level back to where it was when that store was a Lucky; Save Mart is doing better there than Albertsons did, at this point, but we will see what impact Grocery Outlet and Raleys have on them. People I talk to from Truckee go to Save Mart simply because Safeway is too crowded, not because they like Save Mart.

Grocery Outlet going into Truckee and Nugget not going into Truckee (which was probably a smart move for Nugget) may also have been part of this decision.

If Whole Foods goes into Truckee, this may not pan out so well. I am not sure Whole Foods is doing all that well in South Lake Tahoe but that store is pretty pathetic for a Whole Foods; more like a Fresh & Easy with Whole Foods pricing.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by klkla »

Link to a Forbes article about the new format and direction of the company:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillemper ... 912390452c
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by storewanderer »

More on the store here:

www.raleys.com/truckee

https://www.raleys.com/landing/raleys-one-market/

"banned ingredients" - would like to see them take this a step further and ban those ingredients in all of their private label items across the chain. They could supplement their "clean" label with TopCo stuff that has the banned ingredients present in the stores where customers really demand it (Food Club or Value Time).

So for this store: no high fructose corn syrup anywhere in grocery- this is going to take out a ton of the big CPG brand items. Not really sure how that is going to work out with tourists expecting to find Coke. Shopping services in Truckee that take lists from tourists, have Whole Foods "concierge" in Reno fulfull the orders and pick the stuff up from Whole Foods in Reno have steady problems with Whole Foods not selling one or two items on those lists- those people may want the organic grass fed beef and organic milk and organic 95% of their list else then there is coke and oreos down on the list and Whole Foods cannot fulfill those items and it looks like this store won't be able to fulfill those items either.

Also wonder how the drug/HBA category will be. In Truckee with all the skiing in the winter the drug/HBA category is hot and moves a ton of product but what it is moving is the name brand first aid, cold medicines, cough drops, and pain medicines. The shelves in all the stores there literally get wiped out for months... if Raleys does not sell these items in the brands people like like the NyQuill, Sudafed, Advil, etc. they are going to be leaving a ton of sales on the table.

Would help if CVS or someone would open in the shopping center to sell those items and the banned sodas. Would actually be really good if CVS relocated its smelly musty OLD Longs (though they just remodeled it-more like repainted it a 2nd time, it is still smelly musty and OLD) in Truckee, actually. Nothing short of a bulldozer will do for those OLD Longs dumps that have seen no capex other than paint on the walls since the 70's.

Also using Stumptown for coffee bar in this store. Stumptown is/was owned by Peet's (not sure if this has changed since Peet's was sold to that German group who owns Krispy Kreme, Panera, etc. or in light of Peet's upcoming IPO).
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by lake »

Sensing a lot of New Seasons vibes here...
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by storewanderer »

lake wrote: June 20th, 2020, 10:08 pm Sensing a lot of New Seasons vibes here...
New Seasons has no banned ingredients list... they sell Coke and other HFCS-laden CPG foods. Very deemphasized, at full retail, but they are there. At least, in OR. Not sure if they handled CA differently. That is probably what Raleys needs to do with this Truckee location, in order to be successful. Or call it something other than Raleys. But that would be counter productive as the way they are presenting this in 5-7 years all locations will be converted to this format. We will see what happens.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by ninersdd »

storewanderer wrote: June 16th, 2020, 7:16 pm I think the bigger news in that article is they are looking to rebrand all of their stores to this O-N-E format over the next 5-7 years.

Not sure how this will work in rural Nevada... or even certain locations around Sacramento and the central valley for that matter. Might be a good way to revive the Nob Hill stores which seem to be sort of stagnant.

So all of the stores are going to rebrand? The Bel Air down the street from me is right across the street from a Whole Foods and would be sort of redundant.(The Whole Foods was a Lucky/Albertsons 20+ years ago, but Bel Air crushed it head to head, and has coexisted with the Whole Foods since 2003.) Also there is a Raleys about a mile east of the 2 stores.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by storewanderer »

ninersdd wrote: June 21st, 2020, 4:49 pm


So all of the stores are going to rebrand? The Bel Air down the street from me is right across the street from a Whole Foods and would be sort of redundant.(The Whole Foods was a Lucky/Albertsons 20+ years ago, but Bel Air crushed it head to head, and has coexisted with the Whole Foods since 2003.) Also there is a Raleys about a mile east of the 2 stores.
That is what the Forbes article said... Let's see what happens. I don't see this being compatible with all of their locations or the customer expectation when someone makes the choice to go into Raleys, a conventional supermarket that is expected by the customer to offer a full variety of goods including mass CPG items that have high fructose corn syrup.

As much as I like a clean label and the idea of a clean store, I do not think tourists on their way to Lake Tahoe looking for drinks and snacks want to mess around with this sort of clean label surprise where a store is missing mainstream beverages like Coke and mainstream snack foods like Oreos, and no other store alternative within 10-15 minutes, when they enter Raleys, what the customer thinks is a conventional supermarket. At minimum they probably need to rebrand this store "ONE Market by Raleys" with a small Raleys logo (similar to Publix Greenwise) so it is real clear to the customer right from the start this is a different format and expectations are set accordingly. A big green (instead of red) Raleys logo with small ONE below it, does not really establish to the customer this is not a conventional given the big Raleys letters.

But I do think one thing to do immediately for Raleys to get moving toward this format in additional locations and better connect the customer base to associating Raleys with "clean labels" would be to "clean up" their private label 100% and rebrand all private label items to Raleys Purely Made and apply the banned items list on their website that is used in the ONE format, to any product packaging that has Raleys name on it.
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Re: Raley's announces new Truckee store

Post by storewanderer »

Went and took a look at this store. It is certainly different in how it is merchandised but feels like a normal Raleys. Nice second floor bar space. It basically is like a normal Raleys but "missing" various items. It doesn't really have much that a normal Raleys doesn't already have, but there is a whole lot missing.

Not even sure where to start. I will preface to say this is a store I could shop with no problem in 90% of cases for food items; pretty much anything I use, was here. For non food, pet food, pretty much a useless place. 35k square feet and it definitely does not feel any larger (the Truckee Safeway at 39k square feet feels a lot larger, feels like it has way larger produce, meat, bakery, deli, and center store spaces; heck, even the Truckee Save Mart feels like it has larger departments).

We will see how this does. I expect they are going to need to make some changes to be successful here. Or anchor in a CVS or Walgreens or Rite Aid to make this shopping center fully meet the needs of the tourists here.

Pricing: This store is on a higher price scale than any Raleys around for most of center store. This is the scale I see used at Nob Hill Foods and none of the other Reno/Tahoe Stores use this pricing. Not all items follow this pricing but a lot of items do. This price scale for instance charges 5.19 for an item that is 4.99 under the scale used at most Raleys (most in Reno/Tahoe) and 4.79 at the scale used on some of the "lower middle class neighborhood" or otherwise somehow deemed to need lower pricing (one of the Tahoe locations, Carson, 1 Reno location, 1 Sparks location) Raleys. Or 2.15 for an item that is 1.99 on the "most stores" scale and 1.89 on the "lower" scale.

Bakery: first thing I saw walking in on a bakery table was Western Bagel Bagels (same ones sold at 99 Cents Only) and various "thaw and sell" muffins and such. I didn't see any store made bagels, muffins. They did have some store made cookies, breads, rolls (all standard Raleys items) and a lot of store made cakes, tarts, etc. (variety here was more than usual Raleys). Cookies were in a paper container lined with plastic wrap with a clear plastic top sealed by the label, instead of the usual locking plastic container used for cookies in the other locations. The cake squares here were 3.99 compared to the usual 2.99 price so maybe the cake is different (it looked the same). This bakery was a mess compared to the Truckee Safeway bakery; far less variety, fewer product size options, tables and displays spread around too far apart (opposite sides of the entrance- some running into the coffee, some running in the checkout, some running into the deli, some running into produce). Bakery did not stand alone as its own department rather it felt like a few tables thrown in where there was some open space then a service case hidden behind the hot food/salad bar angled toward the back wall that was very easy to miss.

Deli: smaller service case, but still had a good variety. There is a two sided self serve bar for "Organic Salad Bar" and "Hot Foods" and the hot food side was closed/blocked with dry product displays while the salad side was lightly filled with prepacks of pasta salads. Usual Raleys pasta salads- very high quality. A small self serve hot food case had some roast chicken and fried chicken that did not look good at all; no service hot food case. Sandwich bar was present.

Meat: A little different. All of the meat was the "Natural" versions. Pork, ground beef, steak, etc. all are "Natural" versions vs. the standard Raleys Harris Ranch USDA Choice Beef. Other Raleys have this "Natural" meat too but not nearly as much as this store had since it was all they had. All meat was in plastic trays instead of the typical foam trays. Service case is pretty small (Safeway and Save Mart cases are the same size or larger in Truckee).

Produce: Smaller department with smaller displays. Organic items were on the forward/front facing positions. Variety was probably a little less than a normal Raleys due to the limited size of the space. Produce department at Truckee Safeway looks far better than this store- more selection, fresher product, and more attractive full looking displays.

Liquor: Large; takes up about 1/4 of center store. Attempting to be very high end in offerings. Big market beer like Bud, Miller, Coors, etc. is there though; even Pabst.

Non food: They have a full aisle of supplements- this is funny, it looks like the old nutrition aisles Raleys used to have in all of their stores until they started removing them about 10 years ago due to slow sales. Based on the prices they have, the sales will be slow again. Extremely limited on drug items; most standard OTC pain/cough/cold is just not sold here. They had Ricola and a few other natural cough drops, but no Halls. Very few SKUs of first aid items available. Did not see any Tylenol, Ny Quill, Day Quill, etc. Cannot believe this in a store in a ski resort area to not sell these OTC items- the Rite Aid and CVS closer into Truckee are full of out of stocks all winter they are so busy they can't keep the shelves full on OTC cough cold and pain and first aid. This is a major problem and they need to figure out how to address it. Pet area is missing all standard brands (Friskies, Pedigree, etc.). Paper product area is about 1/4 of one side of an aisle and tiny; small area on the bottom shelf for the Bounty, etc. brands and the rest of the shelving is the recycled brands; the wrap/foil/bag category has no standard brands and just the Eco brands, and very few items.

Grocery: This was where it got funny. I have no clue what they are doing here. I mean, I know they have the banned ingredient list. But the merchandising is just weird. I don't see what the focus is. It is a mess. If you are looking for conventional items and not Organic, private label is the only choice in some categories for basic items, in other categories it is missing, etc. A few examples:
--Chip aisle: No Lays, Doritos, Fritos, etc. Kettle was there. Standard Raleys private label chips were there though (Lays knockoff). In a store catering to people skiing and going to beaches, not selling standard branded chips/pretzels is really odd.
--Soda aisle: Soda takes up a very small space with just the cane sugar brands like Hansen's, Zevia, etc. Seltzer space is large, water space is large, as it tea space. Again understand why the HFCS-laden items are not here, but question if this is right for a store catering to beach and ski-going people.
--Cereal aisle: Cherrios were there, as was a private label version. No Rice Krispies, but a private label version was present. Most other name brand sugar cereals were not there. Quaker Oats were there, but no private label oats or oatmeal...
--Yogurt: Had lots of Chobani including the "flips" with candy crunch toppings, but no Yoplait, no Tillamook, etc. Had private label in greek yogurt but not regular yogurt. They had the Tillamook full line in cheese, ice cream, and butter- so not sure why the yogurt wasn't there.
--Canned vegetables: This area looks halfway normal. They have the usual Del Monte and Raleys Canned Vegetables. Tomatos/sauce were in assortment though fewer SKUs than usual, the major brands represented with Hunts, Del Monte, Raleys, etc.
--Cookies/crackers: Forget Oreo, Keebler, Chips Ahoy, Wheat Thins, etc. Annie's is heavily represented; Late July, etc. No Nabisco Premium Saltines but did have two SKUs of the cheap basic conventional Raleys saltines.
--Frozen: Conventional frozen brands like Stouffer, Marie Callendar, etc. are not here. Somehow Michaelangelo's, PF Changs, Bertolli, and a few Healthy Choice items made the cut though. Amy's is most heavily represented for frozen meals.

I'll stop there but it was basically this way on every single category. You had no idea what to expect. Some known conventional brand items were there, some weren't. It basically feels like they took their usual SKUs for a normal Raleys, edited out the items that had stuff from the banned ingredient lists, and went with what was left for this place. I guess that is one way to merchandise a small store... unlike any other I've seen before. This store is active on the Raleys website for eCart orders and anyone who wants to go look at various categories and see what they have- go take a look.

I think Raleys needs to start a "customer item request" program ASAP with this store to get an idea of what customers are looking for here that they cannot find. Given it is a new market with no sales data and a new store format, that could be somewhat useful data. They can look to Holiday in NorCal for the forms and signage on how to do that. Or remember how Albertsons did it 20 years ago.
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