ClownLoach wrote: ↑February 25th, 2024, 12:26 am
Super S wrote: ↑February 24th, 2024, 1:02 pm
Makes you wonder if Albertsons trying to buy Rite Aid is in the works again....
Watch how fast it shows up at Stater Bros.
And I think the very short lived Haggen sold it in SoCal.
I saw room being made for something new last week in the ice cream aisle at Stater.
As was already made clear in the Eater article, Thrifty Ice Cream operates with a high degree of latitude. It's profitable and has tons of room to expand. About the only place they wouldn't sell it would be CVS and Walgreens.
Harsh reality is they'll move a lot more volume through these grocery chains than they move through Rite Aid. Many of Rite Aid's scoop counters probably just need to be closed due to lack of traffic/lack of interest/lack of being consistently open. The capacity from making the scoop jugs can go to making more half gallons for these grocers. Also we don't know how much sales volume the ice cream plant has lost from the Rite Aid closures and the fall off in customer traffic at Rite Aid in general either. Maybe this was just the best way to keep the ice cream business from having a huge drop in volume.
Walgreens used to have a house brand of ice cream in various sizes including funny cube shaped pints (used to get them 2 for $3 in the early 00's), it was my understanding they owned a plant somewhere. This stuff was actually pretty good ice cream. Then they rebranded their ice creams into a premium brand (wasn't Nice, was some brand that came when Nice did but was like a "premium" brand), changed packaging, added fat content, and started charging 3.99 for a pint. Those didn't last long before being discontinued and I'm not sure what happened to their ice cream plant. So I don't see them interested in this.
CVS... no way.
If Albertsons really wanted to make a splash they'd add the scoop counters to their service deli operation.
Rite Aid abandons the ice cream counters in the closed stores...