Albertsons & Smith's Las Vegas Observations

[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.

[arizonaguy]

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.

[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.