Interestingly Giant-MD had opened a few new Super Gs in NJ around the time their operations were consolidated with Stop & Shop in 2003-2004. Whether those were residuals from the previous regime that did not properly calculate the trajectory or signs these locations were to turn around, I don't know.mjhale wrote: ↑September 6th, 2022, 3:54 pm Also in Virginia I would have looked more at the Route 29 corridor and perhaps re-entering Richmond. I wonder what would have happened if Giant-MD got the Hannaford stores in Richmond instead of Kroger. Another wildcard in all of this was that Sainsbury (the British grocer) had a significant, but non majority amount of shares in Giant-MD at this time. They were pushing for Giant to "get out of its comfort zone". I always wondered what Giant would have been like if Sainsbury had bought Giant instead of Ahold. Lastly, no one in the Cohen family was interested in running Giant. The principals in the 1224 Corp were all long time employees of Giant who themselves were looking to retire. That left Giant with a void of leadership at the top and ultimately the sale of the company. That sealed the fate of the PA stores and severely hobbled the NJ stores. Yes it was a FTC mandated sale in PA. But realistically those stores could not have survived without an aggressive operator who wasn't bound by corporate norms and performance objectives.
Expanding south in VA might have been a worthy choice with the fall of Safeway and A&P there, as well as the rise of Food Lion at the time. Of course it's a shame the Cohen family did not plan for a Giant after Izzy as well. Things would be a lot different on the grocery scene if they found someone good in charge that was not Ahold, which I see does okay but I have heard lacks a lot of the charm from before.
Also, just as a pro-tip, I wouldn't mind if you would break up your paragraphs with spaces, would be easier to read.
How was the layout at MD awkward? I might have some bias since I am used to it, but I can see so considering the large amount of aisles and service departments mostly stacked along the back.mbz321 wrote: ↑September 6th, 2022, 7:04 pm At least in PA, the former Super G's were acquired by Supervalu-owned Shop 'n Save, who ran them for a very short while before selling them off to other operators. Shop 'n Save did nothing to their stores besides change the outside sign and slap stickers over everything else. Nobody I knew growing up really shopped there. The awkward Giant-MD layout (the Acme in Norristown/Trooper, PA still has it) and I remember hearing complaints about the shopping carts being too small, seemed to keep people away. They must have picked semi-decent locations because only one of the PA locations is no longer used as a grocery store (and likely only because it shared a plaza with a Division I Walmart which has since expanded).
I wonder if the same is true elsewhere.mbz321 wrote: ↑September 6th, 2022, 7:04 pm And going off topic now, but this is why I think Amazon Fresh is going to absolutely fail in this region. Nothing in the store really seems to be local at all. No pork roll (or Taylor Ham!), scrapple, Amoroso's rolls, no call-outs to locally grown produce, and other regional favorites. Even the regular milk seems to come from a dairy in MD. The only 'local' product I've seen being stocked is a few varieties of Tastykake for a super inflated price. and rarely look to be replenished.