Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by storewanderer »

They did keep 100+ Market Grille Express units (order at counter format).

I never got to make the observation but always wondered if the full service Market Grille units did a strong breakfast business. But it wouldn't be that hard to serve bacon, eggs, and sausage out of the service deli or one of the other various hot food counters.
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by Bakeragr »

A lot of the Market Grille areas are quite popular for breakfast and there's always a lot of older folks enjoying coffee and visiting there. I know the location at Osage Beach, MO (Lake of the Ozarks) switched to the full-service format and I think it turned off a lot of people. It wasn't as relaxed and didn't allow for people to linger. I think this prompted the retooling.
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by storewanderer »

Bakeragr wrote: February 17th, 2022, 7:53 am A lot of the Market Grille areas are quite popular for breakfast and there's always a lot of older folks enjoying coffee and visiting there. I know the location at Osage Beach, MO (Lake of the Ozarks) switched to the full-service format and I think it turned off a lot of people. It wasn't as relaxed and didn't allow for people to linger. I think this prompted the retooling.
Isn't that funny. You would think customers would prefer (?) a full service format. But instead they preferred an order at counter/fill your own drinks up format where they could sit there for 2 hours with a newspaper or with a friend and not ever hear from a server.

Definitely no reason to keep a labor intensive format (full service) in place when customers don't even care for it...

The jury is out on the Wahlburgers thing; I probably should have tried it when I had the chance in MN, but I didn't. I have bought refrigerated patties from the Wahlburgers brand from Save Mart, not sure if they still have them but they did last year, and they were certainly good.
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by bayford »

Hy-Vee is selling land in the Twin Cities metro they had acquired to build five new stores. They say these sites are now too small to accommodate the size of store they would want to build, but, if you read between the lines, there's an implication that they are giving up on any additional expansion in the Twin Cities.

https://www.kare11.com/article/money/bu ... 9a2b9be900

There's a link in the article to an Axios newsletter showing that Hy-Vee's efforts in the Twin Cities have not been very successful, and presumably not what they had been anticipating by this point. They failed to achieve a market share in the top 8 in 2021, coming in at just under 3% according to the newsletter.

The top grocers in the Twin Cities in 2021 by market share:
Target - 19%
Walmart - 17%
Cub - 15%
Costco - 11%
Lunds & Byerlys - 7%
Sam's Club - 7%
Aldi - 3%
Whole Foods - 3%
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by storewanderer »

bayford wrote: April 20th, 2022, 7:34 pm Hy-Vee is selling land in the Twin Cities metro they had acquired to build five new stores. They say these sites are now too small to accommodate the size of store they would want to build, but, if you read between the lines, there's an implication that they are giving up on any additional expansion in the Twin Cities.

https://www.kare11.com/article/money/bu ... 9a2b9be900

There's a link in the article to an Axios newsletter showing that Hy-Vee's efforts in the Twin Cities have not been very successful, and presumably not what they had been anticipating by this point. They failed to achieve a market share in the top 8 in 2021, coming in at just under 3% according to the newsletter.

The top grocers in the Twin Cities in 2021 by market share:
Target - 19%
Walmart - 17%
Cub - 15%
Costco - 11%
Lunds & Byerlys - 7%
Sam's Club - 7%
Aldi - 3%
Whole Foods - 3%
I can't figure this out. The stores I went into were very busy and had high staffing levels and very aggressive pricing (much more aggressive than Hy Vee's pricing typically is). I wonder if pricing is the issue. But if Hy Vee doesn't like the pricing in MSP I have no clue how they are going to handle the new markets in the South where they will need to price similarly (or even lower). Hometown loyalty seems to be putting Target's grocery share much higher than it usually is.

This is basically a market where you have no conventional format in the top 8. I am not sure I've ever seen that before.

Cub and L&B are semi-conventional formats I guess. But Cub you bag it yourself, and L&B I consider to be more on the gourmet tilt.

Something has really gone the wrong way for Hy Vee in MSP.

Also are they really only building stores at 150k square feet and up now?

Is Meijer considering entering MSP or something? I feel like there is more to this.
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by Romr123 »

Thought that Meijer was next going to enter Pittsburgh...seems they're on the back half of their Cleveland incursion. Don't think St. Louis is in the cards, as their distribution centers are in Chicagoland and north (rather than mid-Illinois). Not sure there's enough in West Virginia to bother with--perhaps Buffalo/Rochester? Twin Cities would be interesting, to be sure, though butting heads with Target with their hometown advantage would be tough. They may want to put in a few Fresh Thymes and do some learning for a year or so (which they've put into St. Louis).
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Re: Hy-Vee: The "Haggen" of the Midwest?

Post by storewanderer »

Romr123 wrote: April 21st, 2022, 4:22 am Thought that Meijer was next going to enter Pittsburgh...seems they're on the back half of their Cleveland incursion. Don't think St. Louis is in the cards, as their distribution centers are in Chicagoland and north (rather than mid-Illinois). Not sure there's enough in West Virginia to bother with--perhaps Buffalo/Rochester? Twin Cities would be interesting, to be sure, though butting heads with Target with their hometown advantage would be tough. They may want to put in a few Fresh Thymes and do some learning for a year or so (which they've put into St. Louis).
Fresh Thyme has a location or two around MSP. I went to one. Seemed fairly busy but small transactions. I like them better than Sprouts but customers seem to shop them in a similar manner (small purchases of perimeter items heavily skewed toward sale items, which Fresh Thyme has some good ones still).
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