Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

Put simply I think Stater Bros. put this store out of business.

I am sure that Stater is much busier than it was as an Albertsons in 1999. Probably does double or triple the business. Ralphs tried to combat them with an expansion and it backfired due to messing the parking lot up so badly.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by veteran+ »

Funny how their "reason" for closing was a lie.

Payroll is such a fun-er reason to give. Those darn employees always costing so much money. Greedy little things!


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: May 22nd, 2022, 10:51 am Funny how their "reason" for closing was a lie.

Payroll is such a fun-er reason to give. Those darn employees always costing so much money. Greedy little things!


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
They made a statement. The Hero Pay remained in place. Multiple other cities passed Hero Pay after. Some other cities where discussions were held considering it, this closing of stores was brought up as a risk and further discussions about Hero Pay was shelved, but I'd be willing to guess those cities would have found some other reason to shelve the Hero Pay anyway.

Getting past all of that, the stores are closed. Some employees probably lost their jobs. The competitors are stronger. It is yet another couple fewer stores in the region for this chain that has closed dozens of stores in the past 20 years.

You know how this industry is so big about watching labor, sales per man hour, etc. They find it the most controllable expense (or the easiest thing to hassle store level about). Typically chains that have goal 1 to drive sales are much more successful than chains that are constantly watching labor and gross profit margins. But even the sales driving focused chains spend a lot of time looking at labor models and how to "optimize" labor.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by veteran+ »

My success was never about payroll though I got "talked to" about it constantly.

My focus was on customer service, employee development, community relations and very high operating standards. All that created a clear pathway for High Profits (most often top 5 in the company).

The E-Suite was frustrated and happy at the same time. Corporate was always visiting to take notes or try to catch something wrong........................lol.

I was a maverick but produced praiseworthy results (with or without Union labor).

Just sayin........................................................payroll is a poor excuse.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: May 22nd, 2022, 1:33 pm My success was never about payroll though I got "talked to" about it constantly.

My focus was on customer service, employee development, community relations and very high operating standards. All that created a clear pathway for High Profits (most often top 5 in the company).

The E-Suite was frustrated and happy at the same time. Corporate was always visiting to take notes or try to catch something wrong........................lol.

I was a maverick but produced praiseworthy results (with or without Union labor).

Just sayin........................................................payroll is a poor excuse.
I agree. Getting down to business and maintaining a department, store, and working with staff is a far more productive activity than the manager sitting in the office listening to a call from regional/district analyzing the store's labor and the labor of every other store in the district while floor employees are all working like crazy wondering where the manager is and why the manager is always in the office (half of the employees probably just think the manager is sitting in the office screwing around not knowing the manager is sitting there receiving the BS and the BS is about to roll downhill after the call). Then after the manager gets off that call they get to go walk the store- to bug each department's department manager about being over on payroll or to let them know about an upcoming payroll cut.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: May 22nd, 2022, 9:21 am Put simply I think Stater Bros. put this store out of business.

I am sure that Stater is much busier than it was as an Albertsons in 1999. Probably does double or triple the business. Ralphs tried to combat them with an expansion and it backfired due to messing the parking lot up so badly.
I think that Ralphs was not anticipating Walmart converting the nearby store into a full supercenter when they invested in the remodel. If they had any idea I think they would have left the store intact and just done a remodel of the existing 12 aisle store without an unnecessary and costly expansion. I was a little puzzled at the time for the decor chosen as well which was a one-off "upscale" version of the white and teal that was already being phased out elsewhere in favor of the rustic decor with giant Ralphs logos in woodgrain with the hunter green script wording. They screwed up the parking and then Walmart became a full service grocer with a bakery, deli, and produce which had not been seen in the area at this scale yet. Also Pavilions nearby was a really antiquated dumpy store that had not been updated since the early 1990s, but they "upgraded" to the standard lifestyle decor in a full top to bottom remodel that turned the aisles "straight" and replaced every fixture from floor to ceiling around the same time.

They got clobbered by Walmart on the North and East, Stater Bros on the South, and the fixed up Pavilions on the West.

And then they made a deal to sell the place to developers, but thought it would be convenient to shut down opposition in the very politically active local community who would rather have the Ralphs versus a high density senior development - and try to make a threatening political statement to local municipalities thinking about enacting so called hero pay. It completely backfired and made them look like a bunch of greedy billionaires who don't care about either their employees or their communities. But what we don't know is how many cities were thinking of drafting similar ordinances and stopped after seeing the headlines about Long Beach losing these two stores - both of which were going to close soon anyway.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 10:22 am

I think that Ralphs was not anticipating Walmart converting the nearby store into a full supercenter when they invested in the remodel. If they had any idea I think they would have left the store intact and just done a remodel of the existing 12 aisle store without an unnecessary and costly expansion. I was a little puzzled at the time for the decor chosen as well which was a one-off "upscale" version of the white and teal that was already being phased out elsewhere in favor of the rustic decor with giant Ralphs logos in woodgrain with the hunter green script wording. They screwed up the parking and then Walmart became a full service grocer with a bakery, deli, and produce which had not been seen in the area at this scale yet. Also Pavilions nearby was a really antiquated dumpy store that had not been updated since the early 1990s, but they "upgraded" to the standard lifestyle decor in a full top to bottom remodel that turned the aisles "straight" and replaced every fixture from floor to ceiling around the same time.

They got clobbered by Walmart on the North and East, Stater Bros on the South, and the fixed up Pavilions on the West.

And then they made a deal to sell the place to developers, but thought it would be convenient to shut down opposition in the very politically active local community who would rather have the Ralphs versus a high density senior development - and try to make a threatening political statement to local municipalities thinking about enacting so called hero pay. It completely backfired and made them look like a bunch of greedy billionaires who don't care about either their employees or their communities. But what we don't know is how many cities were thinking of drafting similar ordinances and stopped after seeing the headlines about Long Beach losing these two stores - both of which were going to close soon anyway.
That Pavilions is an iffy performer but it is a very nice store and they are trying hard with it. It will be interesting to see if it gets the formal/proper remodel, downgraded to a Vons or Albertsons, downsized to have an ecommerce facility in part of the store like they did to the Gardena Albertsons/Sav-On, or what. The perimeter in that store is not doing what it should be doing in traffic and there is no justification for the higher prices it has. The Stater perimeter is packed with dozens of employees and busy counters all over the place, even multiple employees in the cut fruit kiosk.

Stater rules that area as far as the conventionals go. I didn't go to Wal Mart so I am not sure what is going on there.

I expect the Amazon Fresh is one of the better performing Amazon Fresh units. I'd be surprised if it sells $350k a week to customers who walk in and shop, but there is no telling how much in order fulfillment they are doing.

All 3 of the above stores are actually very good stores, well run and stores I'd shop for one reason or another. Pavilions would be my last choice due to the terrible pricing.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 10:30 pm
ClownLoach wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 10:22 am

I think that Ralphs was not anticipating Walmart converting the nearby store into a full supercenter when they invested in the remodel. If they had any idea I think they would have left the store intact and just done a remodel of the existing 12 aisle store without an unnecessary and costly expansion. I was a little puzzled at the time for the decor chosen as well which was a one-off "upscale" version of the white and teal that was already being phased out elsewhere in favor of the rustic decor with giant Ralphs logos in woodgrain with the hunter green script wording. They screwed up the parking and then Walmart became a full service grocer with a bakery, deli, and produce which had not been seen in the area at this scale yet. Also Pavilions nearby was a really antiquated dumpy store that had not been updated since the early 1990s, but they "upgraded" to the standard lifestyle decor in a full top to bottom remodel that turned the aisles "straight" and replaced every fixture from floor to ceiling around the same time.

They got clobbered by Walmart on the North and East, Stater Bros on the South, and the fixed up Pavilions on the West.

And then they made a deal to sell the place to developers, but thought it would be convenient to shut down opposition in the very politically active local community who would rather have the Ralphs versus a high density senior development - and try to make a threatening political statement to local municipalities thinking about enacting so called hero pay. It completely backfired and made them look like a bunch of greedy billionaires who don't care about either their employees or their communities. But what we don't know is how many cities were thinking of drafting similar ordinances and stopped after seeing the headlines about Long Beach losing these two stores - both of which were going to close soon anyway.
That Pavilions is an iffy performer but it is a very nice store and they are trying hard with it. It will be interesting to see if it gets the formal/proper remodel, downgraded to a Vons or Albertsons, downsized to have an ecommerce facility in part of the store like they did to the Gardena Albertsons/Sav-On, or what. The perimeter in that store is not doing what it should be doing in traffic and there is no justification for the higher prices it has. The Stater perimeter is packed with dozens of employees and busy counters all over the place, even multiple employees in the cut fruit kiosk.

Stater rules that area as far as the conventionals go. I didn't go to Wal Mart so I am not sure what is going on there.

I expect the Amazon Fresh is one of the better performing Amazon Fresh units. I'd be surprised if it sells $350k a week to customers who walk in and shop, but there is no telling how much in order fulfillment they are doing.

All 3 of the above stores are actually very good stores, well run and stores I'd shop for one reason or another. Pavilions would be my last choice due to the terrible pricing.
The crazy thing is that Stater never gained a foothold elsewhere in Long Beach. But this might be intentional - they avoided the more borderline areas where they would encounter shrink problems - and stayed away from the Coastal area where they would pay high rent.

The Pavilions does have the delivery hub already and was probably the first to get it. When it was completely remodeled top to bottom about 15 years ago the back wall of the right side of the sales floor was pushed forward. The right set of aisles used to go further back into the corner than the left set and the back wall wasn't "straight" like it is now (I think it still tapers off by the frozen aisles). They always had at least 6 Vons delivery vans parked behind the store on a very wide receiving area pad. There was another Pavilions nearby in Lakewood that resembled the Westminster store with the open warehouse ceiling that was downgraded to Vons. That downgrade happened when Long Beach was fully revamped. Lakewood was a strange store, for some reason or another the overhead ductwork and such was massive and overwhelming in appearance - the store felt claustrophobic in places despite the high open ceiling. I did not see it before it was remodeled from the old purple and red ribbon decor.
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