State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

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Bradford011
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by Bradford011 »

BatteryMill wrote: September 9th, 2021, 9:08 am[snip]For a time, prior to Richfood buying them out, the Hafts owned Shoppers whole. I do wonder where the Chantilly Total Beverage was.
Wasn't it the Haft's taking over all of Shopper's that triggered some sort of anti-trust problem which is what forced most of the stores to be sold or closed?

IIRC the Chantilly Total Beverage was in the same shopping center as the Giant, but as I've noticed my memory is just NOT what it used to be...
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by BatteryMill »

Bradford011 wrote: September 9th, 2021, 2:18 pm
BatteryMill wrote: September 9th, 2021, 9:08 am[snip]For a time, prior to Richfood buying them out, the Hafts owned Shoppers whole. I do wonder where the Chantilly Total Beverage was.
Wasn't it the Haft's taking over all of Shopper's that triggered some sort of anti-trust problem which is what forced most of the stores to be sold or closed?

IIRC the Chantilly Total Beverage was in the same shopping center as the Giant, but as I've noticed my memory is just NOT what it used to be...
Not sure what exactly you are speaking of, although the Hafts and the Hermans (the founding family of SFW) had been battling over the Shoppers chain since the 1980s at that time. Shoppers has only closed stores en masse in the past decade, while under SuperValu/UNFI. Safeway is a nearby chain I can think of that struggled with closing stores in order to fend off a Haft takeover however. They also left markets such as Hampton Roads around that time.
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by Bradford011 »

What was I thinking? This is from Wikipedia:

"Dart acquired the remainder of [SFW] in 1997 after exercising a complicated buy-sell agreement with the Herman family. Dart's intention was to force the Herman family into purchasing the shares of the company back after Dart experienced infighting amongst their board members and financial trouble with their retail chains. The final effect was the opposite; Dart was ultimately forced to purchase from the Hermans at an inflated price, starting a severe financial downward spiral and the ultimate sale and breakup of the Dart Corporation."

"In 2018, United Natural Foods acquired SuperValu (including) Shoppers in order to obtain the wholesale operations of the company. They had little inclination to continue to operate the retail business and sold off many of the retail assets. All Shoppers pharmacies closed in 2019, and all stores are expected to be sold by 2022."

That last part seems worrisome...
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by BatteryMill »

Bradford011 wrote: September 10th, 2021, 8:31 am What was I thinking? This is from Wikipedia:

"Dart acquired the remainder of [SFW] in 1997 after exercising a complicated buy-sell agreement with the Herman family. Dart's intention was to force the Herman family into purchasing the shares of the company back after Dart experienced infighting amongst their board members and financial trouble with their retail chains. The final effect was the opposite; Dart was ultimately forced to purchase from the Hermans at an inflated price, starting a severe financial downward spiral and the ultimate sale and breakup of the Dart Corporation."

"In 2018, United Natural Foods acquired SuperValu (including) Shoppers in order to obtain the wholesale operations of the company. They had little inclination to continue to operate the retail business and sold off many of the retail assets. All Shoppers pharmacies closed in 2019, and all stores are expected to be sold by 2022."

That last part seems worrisome...
That edit is slightly outdated as UNFI has changed course, once again, on selling off Shoppers. It and Cub Foods are now expected to remain active indefinitely. https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail- ... ytime-soon
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by Bradford011 »

This is most interesting. I've never heard of Cub but then haven't been to the midwest in decades.

But lets be realistic, if the chains had NOT made money during the pandemic would they still be keeping these stores open?
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by storewanderer »

Bradford011 wrote: September 12th, 2021, 2:03 pm This is most interesting. I've never heard of Cub but then haven't been to the midwest in decades.

But lets be realistic, if the chains had NOT made money during the pandemic would they still be keeping these stores open?
They figured out that they need these stores open, under their ownership, and supplied by their wholesale side, to keep certain pieces of the wholesale business viable. It is more and more difficult to sell stores and attach a wholesale supply agreement to the sale, when more and more of the potential buyers do not want to have that stipulation. Or some who go along with it, figure out how to get out of it as soon as the term is up (like Albertsons), causing pretty significant business losses.

At this point it is down to 71 stores, it feels like too few stores to even matter. The longer they sit on Cub, the more Hy Vee expansion takes place in MSP, the less Cub will be worth. As far as Shoppers goes they were already in the process of closing that thing down and made multiple steps including closing all pharmacies, selling various random stores piecemeal, in at least one case selling a store to someone who keeps calling the store "Shoppers" but then it isn't really a Shoppers when you go inside...
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by mbz321 »

Bradford011 wrote: September 10th, 2021, 8:31 am What was I thinking? This is from Wikipedia:


"In 2018, United Natural Foods acquired SuperValu (including) Shoppers in order to obtain the wholesale operations of the company. They had little inclination to continue to operate the retail business and sold off many of the retail assets. All Shoppers pharmacies closed in 2019, and all stores are expected to be sold by 2022."
And something else silly which I guess is an obvious goof, on the Shoppers' website under 'About Us' it says:

Shoppers, which began in 1949 as Jumbo Food Stores, became part of the United Natural Foods, Inc. family in 1999. :?
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by mjhale »

Bradford011 wrote: September 9th, 2021, 2:18 pm IIRC the Chantilly Total Beverage was in the same shopping center as the Giant, but as I've noticed my memory is just NOT what it used to be...
Total Wine in Chantilly was previously located on the right side of the plaza on the lower level. The store was completely hidden unless you knew where to look. In 2019 (I believe) they moved to the main shopping center level to the old Petco location. The previous location of Total Wine location is being remodeled into a Planet Fitness.

In the Wikipedia article for Total Wine it says they purchased Total Beverage in 1998. Could the previous lower level location of Total Wine been the Total Beverage? The new portion of the shopping center with Giant would have been open in the 1990s when Total Beverage was expanding.
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by mjhale »

mbz321 wrote: September 12th, 2021, 5:42 pm And something else silly which I guess is an obvious goof, on the Shoppers' website under 'About Us' it says:

Shoppers, which began in 1949 as Jumbo Food Stores, became part of the United Natural Foods, Inc. family in 1999. :?
Geez talk about leaving parts out.... After the Haft family meltdown Dart Group purchased Shoppers in full in 1997. They had previously owned a non-majority share. In 1998 Richfood purchased Dart Group with the intent of only keeping Shoppers. In 1999 Supervalu purchased Richfood which gave them Shoppers. In 2018 UNFI purchased Supervalu.

But then again the average person doesn't care about all those details...
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Re: State of Food Lion in the Washington D.C. area

Post by mjhale »

Unfortunately, at least in the DC area, I just don't see Shoppers continuing as an entity after UNFI sells off the remaining stores. Supervalu tried to upscale Shoppers when they should have left it as a discount brand. They tried to compete with Giant and Safeway when long time Washington residents saw Shoppers as the cheap place to go if you can't afford anything else. In the interim the discounters - Aldi, Lidl and Walmart Supercenters - came in and even more mid to upscale competition moved in with Harris Teeter, Wegmans and Whole Foods moving in. Given the strength of Giant and Safeway as well as their recognition as mid-level grocers Shoppers was left with no space of their own. Even now they just don't offer anything I can't get elsewhere. It is sad to say that Shoppers is going to become fodder for other retailers to expand like the recent sale of locations for conversion into Lidl locations.
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