Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

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klkla
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by klkla »

pseudo3d wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 am They recently opened a store in Capitol Hill (Washington DC, not Seattle...) that looks great and has the Albertsons Market Street decor (with many of its style of amenities). Only 60k sq. ft., though, likely due to space concerns. It's up to the new Mid-Atlantic division now to see if it can hold up...

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/inside ... dc/583361/
60,000 sq. ft. is on the upper end of size for a Safeway. This is a replacement store for one that closed two years ago.

It looks like they are using the Kroger playbook for the front end.

"The new store features 12 self-checkout stations arranged around a spacious section at the front end of the store, but only five traditional checkout aisles."

Ralphs has an almost identical layout for the Downtown LA store.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by mjhale »

pseudo3d wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 am They recently opened a store in Capitol Hill (Washington DC, not Seattle...) that looks great and has the Albertsons Market Street decor (with many of its style of amenities). Only 60k sq. ft., though, likely due to space concerns. It's up to the new Mid-Atlantic division now to see if it can hold up...

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/inside ... dc/583361/
Very nice looking store! I'd sure love my local Safeway to be remodeled into this format. I think the key here is whether or not Safeway can keep the store up to these standards even if people do not use all of the new features in the long run. It seems like a lot of stores come in with these grand formats but over time things tend to drop away as people don't take advantage of certain new additions or the store realizes that long term upkeep doesn't equal the sales volume they originally envisioned. The fact remains that in my experience Safeway can be very inconsistent between stores with product selection, product quality and customer service. If Albertsons started to roll through Safeway Mid-Atlantic doing renovations with the format used in the Capital Hill store - even scaled back for smaller stores or modified based on the neighborhood - they could bring Safeway into the 2020s. But leaving the majority of their stores with 15+ year old Lifestyle decor and a few stores with older or odder decor just says we are inconsistent. Say what you will about the homogenization of Giant-MD under Ahold. But you know what you are getting in the vast majority of their stores. Almost all of them in my area have the gray walls with huge letters interior. Even if the store still retains the general layout of the 1980s/1990s Giant-MD stores Ahold has done a good job of keeping them fresh so you feel like you aren't walking into a 1990s red neon Giant-MD sans all the (awesome) neon wall decor.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by pseudo3d »

mjhale wrote: August 18th, 2020, 4:08 pm
pseudo3d wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 am They recently opened a store in Capitol Hill (Washington DC, not Seattle...) that looks great and has the Albertsons Market Street decor (with many of its style of amenities). Only 60k sq. ft., though, likely due to space concerns. It's up to the new Mid-Atlantic division now to see if it can hold up...

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/inside ... dc/583361/
Very nice looking store! I'd sure love my local Safeway to be remodeled into this format. I think the key here is whether or not Safeway can keep the store up to these standards even if people do not use all of the new features in the long run. It seems like a lot of stores come in with these grand formats but over time things tend to drop away as people don't take advantage of certain new additions or the store realizes that long term upkeep doesn't equal the sales volume they originally envisioned. The fact remains that in my experience Safeway can be very inconsistent between stores with product selection, product quality and customer service. If Albertsons started to roll through Safeway Mid-Atlantic doing renovations with the format used in the Capital Hill store - even scaled back for smaller stores or modified based on the neighborhood - they could bring Safeway into the 2020s. But leaving the majority of their stores with 15+ year old Lifestyle decor and a few stores with older or odder decor just says we are inconsistent.
Nothing will undermine a store's reputation faster than a "good" store and a "cheapened" store for the mass market. (The "Fresh Fare" decor of Kroger's, for instance, got run straight into the ground as it went from the nice, remodeled stores to any store up for remodels, with even the giant-walled greenhouse stores getting it) All a store needs chain-wide is the basics (solid perishables and produce—and even older/smaller stores kept moderately clean), and everything will fall into place.

H-E-B is a store that does great at all this, I can walk into any store and still expect to find a similar product mix (particularly their ice cream brand, which they've really pushed with some decent flavors) at a price point similar to the rest, whether it's my local 100,000 square foot supercenter (includes a lot of niceties like a pizza restaurant and a garden center) or a dowdier store a hundred miles away almost half of its size.

Albertsons/Safeway's problem is that they aren't nearly on the levels of H-E-B in terms of consistent execution.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 pm It looks like they are using the Kroger playbook for the front end.

"The new store features 12 self-checkout stations arranged around a spacious section at the front end of the store, but only five traditional checkout aisles."

Ralphs has an almost identical layout for the Downtown LA store.
Albertsons/Safeway runs stores that do low enough volumes and small enough transactions that 5 regular checkouts at the front end is probably sufficient.

Kroger doing 5 regular checkouts and 14 self checkouts in a store that is 70,000 square feet and runs $650k minimum (which had 10 regular checkstands and 8 self checkouts before that "upgrade") a week in volume in sales is horribly insufficient.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by veteran+ »

klkla wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 pm
pseudo3d wrote: August 18th, 2020, 1:45 am They recently opened a store in Capitol Hill (Washington DC, not Seattle...) that looks great and has the Albertsons Market Street decor (with many of its style of amenities). Only 60k sq. ft., though, likely due to space concerns. It's up to the new Mid-Atlantic division now to see if it can hold up...

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/inside ... dc/583361/
60,000 sq. ft. is on the upper end of size for a Safeway. This is a replacement store for one that closed two years ago.

It looks like they are using the Kroger playbook for the front end.

"The new store features 12 self-checkout stations arranged around a spacious section at the front end of the store, but only five traditional checkout aisles."

Ralphs has an almost identical layout for the Downtown LA store.
The Pavilions in West Hollywood has street view front that feels like this store.

But the inside of the West Hollywood store? Nope!

They reportedly spent so much money on this flagship store and I find it a layout mess and a merchandising mess. I am not able to describe the ambience because there is none. And their prices even with their online coupon crap is a joke.

Side note: Rockin Roll Ralphs on Sunset was a nightmare remodel. Ugly store and awful customer service. Merchandising is an obstacle course.

The Ralphs Fresh Fare on Beverly and Doheny should be closed for every reason you can think of.

These are the 3 closest stores to me and I'm not happy!
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by klkla »

veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am

The Pavilions in West Hollywood has street view front that feels like this store.

But the inside of the West Hollywood store? Nope!

They reportedly spent so much money on this flagship store and I find it a layout mess and a merchandising mess. I am not able to describe the ambience because there is none. And their prices even with their online coupon crap is a joke.

Side note: Rockin Roll Ralphs on Sunset was a nightmare remodel. Ugly store and awful customer service. Merchandising is an obstacle course.

The Ralphs Fresh Fare on Beverly and Doheny should be closed for every reason you can think of.

These are the 3 closest stores to me and I'm not happy!
Too bad about West Hollywood. It's a big store in a densely populated area with lots of parking. It should be a proper flagship store.

Rock'n Roll Ralphs has always been an interesting store. The employees there have always been jaded as far back as I can remember. It has to be a tough place to work. Very crowded and chaotic.

The Beverly & Doheny store was a former Hughes. It is very small with a very small parking lot, as well. It's also very crowded and chaotic.

I'm surprised Ralphs hasn't built a larger store with rooftop or underground parking on that lot. It's right on the border of Beverly Hills and Weho with a very wealthy population base.

There is a nice Bristol Farms across the street in the Chasen's Restaurant location.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by rwsandiego »

veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am
The Pavilions in West Hollywood has street view front that feels like this store.

But the inside of the West Hollywood store? Nope!

They reportedly spent so much money on this flagship store and I find it a layout mess and a merchandising mess. I am not able to describe the ambience because there is none. And their prices even with their online coupon crap is a joke....
On my first visit to the current Pavilions I was taken aback by the interior. It looks like a weirdly laid out Vons. In fact, I thought it was a Vons and I mis-read the sign.
veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am Side note: Rockin Roll Ralphs on Sunset was a nightmare remodel. Ugly store and awful customer service. Merchandising is an obstacle course....
That's a pretty old Ralphs, isn't it? In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Jewel-Osco on Broadway and Addison in Lakeview, Chicago. The difference is the Jewel takes up the entire small lot, so there is no place to build, and they recently did a nice remodel. It is still funky thanks to the building being an old taxi garage, but it is nicer than that Ralphs.
veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am The Ralphs Fresh Fare on Beverly and Doheny should be closed for every reason you can think of....
Yet another store where I thought I had mis-read the sign.
veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am These are the 3 closest stores to me and I'm not happy!
I'm very sorry to hear that. Frankly, there aren't very many (if any) nice Ralphs or Vons on the Westside. The Ralphs in Westwood is OK, but still seemed like a gigantic but not upscale store.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by klkla »

rwsandiego wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:24 pm
veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am Side note: Rockin Roll Ralphs on Sunset was a nightmare remodel. Ugly store and awful customer service. Merchandising is an obstacle course....
That's a pretty old Ralphs, isn't it? In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Jewel-Osco on Broadway and Addison in Lakeview, Chicago. The difference is the Jewel takes up the entire small lot, so there is no place to build, and they recently did a nice remodel. It is still funky thanks to the building being an old taxi garage, but it is nicer than that Ralphs.
I have a Ralphs ad from 1940 that was celebrating their 67th anniversary. They had 28 stores at the time. Of those 28 addresses only one is currently a Ralphs and that it the Rock'n Roll Ralphs. There were three different buildings as far as I know.

The photo of the one in the ad is typical of markets in that era without a parking lot.

A store with parking lot was built in the 1960's. I don't know if that was the direct replacement of the one in the ad. In the 1980's they built an underground storage next to the building and then gutted the existing store and increased the selling floor. And then less than 10 years later in the 1990's tore down that store and built the current store which has a smaller parking lot in front of the store but also as roof top parking with an entrance behind the store on Fuller Ave.

Technically you can say that location is the oldest currently operating Ralphs.
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Re: Safeway East Consolidating into Acme

Post by rwsandiego »

klkla wrote: August 20th, 2020, 8:27 pm
rwsandiego wrote: August 19th, 2020, 10:24 pm
veteran+ wrote: August 19th, 2020, 5:30 am Side note: Rockin Roll Ralphs on Sunset was a nightmare remodel. Ugly store and awful customer service. Merchandising is an obstacle course....
That's a pretty old Ralphs, isn't it? In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Jewel-Osco on Broadway and Addison in Lakeview, Chicago. The difference is the Jewel takes up the entire small lot, so there is no place to build, and they recently did a nice remodel. It is still funky thanks to the building being an old taxi garage, but it is nicer than that Ralphs.
I have a Ralphs ad from 1940 that was celebrating their 67th anniversary. They had 28 stores at the time. Of those 28 addresses only one is currently a Ralphs and that it the Rock'n Roll Ralphs. There were three different buildings as far as I know.

The photo of the one in the ad is typical of markets in that era without a parking lot.

A store with parking lot was built in the 1960's. I don't know if that was the direct replacement of the one in the ad. In the 1980's they built an underground storage next to the building and then gutted the existing store and increased the selling floor. And then less than 10 years later in the 1990's tore down that store and built the current store which has a smaller parking lot in front of the store but also as roof top parking with an entrance behind the store on Fuller Ave.

Technically you can say that location is the oldest currently operating Ralphs.
I would never have guessed that building was constructed in the 1990's. 1970's maybe, but not 90's. It isn't as much the building design as it is the store itself. It just feels old.
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