HCal wrote: ↑March 20th, 2023, 10:28 pm
Rebranding to Save Mart will probably not go well, as the name is mostly unheard of outside the central valley, and sounds like a budget name. To someone who isn't familiar with the company, Food Maxx should be the conventional stores and Save Mart should be the discount stores.
If they need a banner for expansion, I would recommend Lucky, assuming they can get the rights. I don't think Albertsons would object, and Grocery Outlet has abandoned their claims.
But I find all this talk about national expansion of Save Mart to be rather amusing. The FTC learned a lesson from Haggen and isn't going to allow that again.
Haggen tried to go from 20 stores (and declining) to closer to 200 stores almost overnight. They got no distribution centers. No buying. Their distribution and buying operation was very small to begin with and they drew products from multiple wholesalers.
This Save Mart operation does not exactly have a tract record of success but in the past 3-5 years the company has been on an upswing with the remodel program, pricing program, and tightening things up at Food Maxx. The new ownership showed up and has done things I find odd like closing pharmacy but brought in a bunch of very qualified people who collectively have knowledge and experience across various geographies with Albertsons. Note one of the people they brought in is a logistics person. This signals to me they will be handling supplying of stores they buy, not using wholesalers like Haggen did in new territories.
Save Mart has the right to use the Lucky banner forever in its markets. But there is some kind of geography. And who made the agreement with Save Mart in the first place to even get to use the Lucky banner? That was Bob Miller when the LLC he was running sold the NorCal Albertsons division to Save Mart. Supervalu was still running a few Lucky units in SoCal at that time. The Utah rebranding of Super Saver to Lucky did not happen until after Safeway and I am not sure why that rebranding occurred. So at this point California and Nevada are wide open and the Lucky banner could be used with no confusion. I also do not see a path forward for the Utah Lucky Stores- 2 of them can probably stay and be converted to Smiths (Tooele is a former Smiths, easy conversion); 2 either need to be divested or just close.
Really if I were Save Mart I'd convert just about every Save Mart to Lucky. Maybe leave Save Mart in Modesto or Fresno but that would be about it. Despite everything I don't think Save Mart has a strong brand for itself. They are not a "cheap" store either, their name is misleading. Food Maxx runs quite a bit less labor than a F4L (yes it is possible) so it will be interesting to see how that goes.
The biggest thing here is just how many stores end up divested. If it is really only 250-300 stores, I don't know. That will be scattered random stores with various banners/sizes and a purchaser won't be able to make much of a splash buying those. If it ends up at the 650 stores then there are going to be some big things happening like entire divisions changing ownership.
I am seeing a lot of fine tuning at Food Maxx lately. Clearer promotional signage, updates to shelf tags this week, sharper marketing. I am very suspicious all of F4L may go to them. If that were to happen a banner change would not be necessary.