Southern California UFCW Contract Expiring 3/6/22

[CalItalian]

Ralphs is running tv commercials (first seen on Pluto streaming service) touting what they are claiming as their fair offer to their associates. They've also set up their own website www.ralphscba.com

Kroger is really going all out on this.

[HCal]

Don't they have around 240 stores left between Ralphs and F4L (including FoodsCo)? I don't think I am including the Midwest F4L in that count, but maybe?

301 stores in California as of year end 2020. I think there are about 20 Foods Co stores, so that leaves about 280 Ralphs/Food 4 Less, which is actually more than I expected. A few more have closed since then.

[storewanderer]

Don't they have around 240 stores left between Ralphs and F4L (including FoodsCo)? I don't think I am including the Midwest F4L in that count, but maybe?

301 stores in California as of year end 2020. I think there are about 20 Foods Co stores, so that leaves about 280 Ralphs/Food 4 Less, which is actually more than I expected. A few more have closed since then.

I am surprised count is still that high; at this point I wouldn't expect much in the way of closures, have to assume they've gotten rid of the bad stores by this point.

As far as FoodsCo goes- 20 is about right; not sure where we want to draw the line on North/South.
FoodsCo has 4 stores in Sacramento, 2 in San Francisco, let's call it 3 in Oakland area, let's call it 2 in Salinas area, and 3 in Fresno. Everything else they have, I'd say is South.

[CalItalian]

The original title to this story earlier today was "Grocery Workers Move Towards a Strike at Kroger Supermarkets".
They probably should have kept it considering what I'm hearing from my friends that are in top elected management positions in another Los Angeles union.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... fcw-kroger

[CalItalian]

Supermarket Workers Prepare to Strike (video)

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/6 ... to-strike/

[timanny]

I half expect Kroger to sell Ralphs at some point. Nobody's business model gels well with California, but Kroger's doubling down combined with their lack of success outside LA proper makes me believe they aren't willing to try and make it work differently than they do in the areas they dominate like Arizona or Las Vegas. The only glitch is that I don't know of any company that would or could buy the division. Obviously it can't be Albertsons.

[storewanderer]

I half expect Kroger to sell Ralphs at some point. Nobody's business model gels well with California, but Kroger's doubling down combined with their lack of success outside LA proper makes me believe they aren't willing to try and make it work differently than they do in the areas they dominate like Arizona or Las Vegas. The only glitch is that I don't know of any company that would or could buy the division. Obviously it can't be Albertsons.

I actually think Kroger runs Ralphs worse than it runs other surrounding divisions... pricing is radically higher, mix is lower, they do seem to remodel stores pretty often but the execution in Ralphs is not nearly as consistent as it used to be and the attitude in the Ralphs Stores, is not good. You really get the feeling they do not care at Ralphs (it doesn't feel like this at Fred Meyer or Smiths... completely different attitude at those two divisions; much more positive) and it seems to be an ongoing issue with management and its attitude which filters down to the clerks. It is like the response to a bad customer feedback survey- do you go and yell at the deli clerks in front of all of the customers about it and say nothing matters except the customer rating highly satisfied for everything (like I witnessed at the El Segundo Ralphs a number of years ago- I'd give that sloppy dirty store some poor ratings too, especially as I am waiting at the deli for service while the manager was doing this demotivational lecture to the deli employees) or do you calmly read through the survey responses and say well the customer didn't rate highly satisfied but they did write in some negative and positive comments in the comment field, to the clerks, and calmly and in a civil manner engage in a discussion about how to do better next time (as I've witnessed at Smiths)?

I think you could get private equity to buy Ralphs. I think a Ralphs plus Stater combination could be interesting (not sure where Food 4 Less would land, but probably not part of the combination). What is funny is that combination would still be weak in San Diego...

However I do think we have seen that Kroger is planning to build Ocado facilities in CA (maybe I am wrong?) so I would think if that is the case they are committed to the market.

I wonder if Ralphs and Food 4 Less would split. I'm not sure the dairy/bread operations would be viable if the two were split (without getting more third party customers). Do they distribute any of the CA dairy/bread outside CA anymore? I know Smiths in Las Vegas used to get milk from that plant, but has switched to receiving milk from Fry's AZ Dairy quite a while back, and Smiths gets its tiny SKU mix of private label bread DSD from Bimbo. The F4L Stores were fully supplied milk and bread from the CA facilities though but after they closed they shifted to Smiths supply chain.

[CalItalian]

SoCal grocery store workers have overwhelmingly authorized a strike.
https://ufcw770.org/united/

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/ ... _sd_twt_mn

[CalItalian]

Ralphs has issued a statement on the strike authorization
https://www.ralphscba.com/its-business-as-usual/

[Alpha8472]

One question is if these grocery chains pay more to employees, will it really bankrupt the company? Is a 60 cent pay increase necessary to keep prices low?