Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

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Re: Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

Post by SamSpade »

Hope it's OK to resurrect this older thread...
I was in the Las Vegas valley at the start of the month.

It was interesting, circumstances took me into a VONS and an Albertsons.
VONS was 7405 S Durango Dr, Las Vegas
Albertsons was 11720 W Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, (I thought Summerlin was its own town, guess not)

Vons still had the original lifestyle decor in what seems to be a fairly upscale, healthy neighborhood. I was quite startled. The signs look so faded under the lighting that Albertsons installed after assuming ownership. Also, they have a very small 24/7 sign on the building but then the actual hours are 6 am to 11 pm.

Albertsons was OK. It was what I believe to be "fresh and healthy" v. 3.0 on this forum. The delicatessen sign was already missing a letter (oi) and clearly this store started with the beautiful Jewel decor due to all the departments having a recessed lighting fixture behind the department letters.

These stores do not look like their counterparts where I live. Also, pricing in Las Vegas is high. Average people there must be stretching their budgets as best they can. Groceries and fuel were both higher than here. I also saw a few older stores that clearly serve communities of people but are smaller/older than what middle-upper grocers tend to operate today.

As we drove around the valley, I noticed that Smith's and (especially) Albertsons are almost always across the street from one another. Clearly this is where some divestures will have to occur? Though, Walmart and Sams Club, and smaller players like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joes were all visible along our journeys.
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Re: Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

Post by arizonaguy »

SamSpade wrote: March 9th, 2023, 11:33 am Hope it's OK to resurrect this older thread...
I was in the Las Vegas valley at the start of the month.

It was interesting, circumstances took me into a VONS and an Albertsons.
VONS was 7405 S Durango Dr, Las Vegas
Albertsons was 11720 W Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, (I thought Summerlin was its own town, guess not)

Vons still had the original lifestyle decor in what seems to be a fairly upscale, healthy neighborhood. I was quite startled. The signs look so faded under the lighting that Albertsons installed after assuming ownership. Also, they have a very small 24/7 sign on the building but then the actual hours are 6 am to 11 pm.

Albertsons was OK. It was what I believe to be "fresh and healthy" v. 3.0 on this forum. The delicatessen sign was already missing a letter (oi) and clearly this store started with the beautiful Jewel decor due to all the departments having a recessed lighting fixture behind the department letters.

These stores do not look like their counterparts where I live. Also, pricing in Las Vegas is high. Average people there must be stretching their budgets as best they can. Groceries and fuel were both higher than here. I also saw a few older stores that clearly serve communities of people but are smaller/older than what middle-upper grocers tend to operate today.

As we drove around the valley, I noticed that Smith's and (especially) Albertsons are almost always across the street from one another. Clearly this is where some divestures will have to occur? Though, Walmart and Sams Club, and smaller players like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joes were all visible along our journeys.
I think the entire SW division (Vegas, Arizona, El Paso) will be sold as a unit to someone else. The scenario in Vegas (with a VONS/Albertsons across the street from a Smith's) applies to Phoenix as well.

The only stores that wouldn't be overlapping are a handful of stores in small towns that Kroger has shown zero desire to serve other than the handful of small town Smith's (or former Smith's now Fry's) stores that were built before Kroger bought Smith's.
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Re: Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

Post by storewanderer »

I am not sure if that Albertsons opened with Jewel interior or opened with the Supervalu interior. For some reason, I thought it opened with the Supervalu interior. I walked that store four or five months ago and thought it was a wonderful looking store as I went around the perimeter. Then I got into the aisles. I found the center store grocery aisles to be oddly laid out and they seemed rather narrow. The store was very busy when I was there, close to 5 PM, and the line ups for checkout were obstructing the entire front walkway but lines were only 2 or so customers long.

Prices have skyrocketed on everything in Nevada in the past couple of years. Prices have increased at a much greater rate here than in surrounding states when I travel. No use getting into excuses, it just is what it is.

The Vons is a bit of a case. Tired store with management that is trying, with what it has. Way too spacious and does not feel healthy. So the store across from the Vons was built as the Glazier's Food Marketplace. Glazier was an old Shop Rite operator from PA who moved to Las Vegas to open a store with "everything" from different regions and put out a really fantastic effort with his store. The store eventually sunk, I think Glazier was getting quite a bit older and his son in law was running the store and I'll just stop further comment but it wasn't long after I had a really negative experience there that the store announced closing and selling to Smiths. Despite that Glazier's was a really great store and it is a big loss that it closed.

So that Vons- first it had that Glazier thing across the street. Glazier killed Vons on perimeter and specialty goods, but center store at Glazier was sort of strange (Unified supplied) and not priced too great and toward the ends parts of the perimeter notably meat really started to slip badly. On any given day traffic at Glazier's was easily 3x the traffic of Vons. Then you have Smiths open across from the Vons. Now the opposite thing happens. Suddenly you have Smiths where the strength is on center store, not so much perimeter. The result there is a steady traffic but not busy Vons, with odd sales history over the years.
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Re: Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

Post by SamSpade »

This trip ended up at two Smith's and realized "yes, Smith's just feels like Smith's" no matter where you are. I see why my family misses their location. There are Kroger touches, but it's really an OK overall basic supermarket. It doesn't try to play fancy like QFC. There are only 2 Marketplace stores according to Google Map around LV.

Also ended up in one VONS, and it's already mentioned on this thread, apparently it opened right before "Lifestyle" rolled out but unlike the two Oregon stores that still had that decor and were updated recently, it hasn't seen a spot of cap ex that I could tell. No self checkouts either. Produce smith was working and extremely friendly in a spacious department, though.

edit:
Forgot to add that both had the blue light copy "lot monitors" out and that the 2nd Smith's had the middle-store liquor/vitamin/drug section with a register. We easily removed what we needed and checked out at a regular self-check, but this presented a little hiccup when realizing we'd also intended to use the restrooms, now behind do not enter one-way gates.
Last edited by SamSpade on June 11th, 2023, 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

Post by storewanderer »

SamSpade wrote: June 9th, 2023, 8:35 pm This trip ended up at two Smith's and realized "yes, Smith's just feels like Smith's" no matter where you are. I see why my family misses their location. There are Kroger touches, but it's really an OK overall basic supermarket. It doesn't try to play fancy like QFC. There are only 2 Marketplace stores according to Google Map around LV.

Also ended up in one VONS, and it's already mentioned on this thread, apparently it opened right before "Lifestyle" rolled out but unlike the two Oregon stores that still had that decor and were updated recently, it hasn't seen a spot of cap ex that I could tell. No self checkouts either. Produce smith was working and extremely friendly in a spacious department, though.
Smiths is interesting. I used to consider it highly inferior to other Kroger divisions, about 15 years ago. Compared to other west coast Kroger divisions, the stores looked worse, fresh department quality and mix was just sad and lacking, stores were severely understaffed, the whole thing just felt downscale. Pricing was definitely lower though... Over time Smiths has gotten a lot better at merchandising, operations, and cleanliness. There has been some slipping in recent years at Smiths but they still have their good days. They are still much better than they were 15 years ago. At this point I find Smiths to be better than Ralphs (really sorry to say this) or QFC, still not as good as the average Fred Meyer, and in line with a "good" King Soopers, Frys, Dillons, or Kroger. I can't tell the difference much between a good King Soopers, Frys, Dillons, Kroger, or Smiths Store. There are merchandising differences if you look REALLY closely but they seem to all have the same general theme going: larger stores with a large item mix and moderate pricing; some sloppy operations; some questionable quality perishables; but some days, many days in some areas, you find a location that looks perfect.

Despite Smiths not trying to play fancy it actually has most of the "fancy" items QFC has. They have Boar's Head in deli, they have some USDA Prime Beef in meat (lowest grade they sell now is USDA Choice), they have the Murray's Cheese, etc. I think QFC has a lot more high cost liquor than Smiths; Smiths has always been pretty lost in liquor beyond cheap liquor. I price certain liquor items sometimes and Smiths liquor pricing is always dollars lower than Safeway/Raleys/Save Mart and their quantity discount on wine is at 4 bottles while some others make you buy 6 bottles for said discount.
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