Retail Watchers

https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/ ... -area.html

Partly under a paywall,but I must note that elk Grove will get a WF in a slightly different location from their still unopened af location according to another bizjournals article.Sunrise Village can easily be repurposed for WF as it's roughly the size of the existing Arden Plaza store.Even h-mart or 99 Ranch would be a better fit than another *yawn* grocery outlet (a downgrade even compared to Smart and Final across the street).

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... w-ceo-says

Halted temporarily, they say.

marketreportblog wrote: ↑February 2nd, 2023, 4:31 pm https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... w-ceo-says

Halted temporarily, they say.

I am sure that there are backroom deals where all offers are being entertained.

This is what I suspected. Amazon had issued guidance expecting a loss for the quarter. Then AWS and advertising revenues performed slightly better pushing the company to a tiny profit of 3 cents a share. If they had chosen to kill the Fresh stores now they would have had to take the hit and file a massive write-down loss which would have shifted earnings negative. But the damage has been done as the HR team and other key leadership areas were laid off. So they play the game of "we're working on it" which really means they're waiting for a better quarter financially to absorb the write-down loss and shut the Fresh stores down permanently.

Now let me give you another head scratcher: as of this afternoon construction has just resumed on the Corona, CA Amazon Fresh. The construction trailers are back and there were workers on the roof working on the refrigeration towers. This new build site had been completely mothballed with all equipment and such removed entirely months ago. Find that interesting considering the statement of stores on hold today. I am pretty sure that they are obligated to get that store open at some point in time or they will be in default of their lease. Usually new store builds have a "drop dead date" by which you must have the doors open to the public. No sign yet other than the green stripes above the entrance. I wonder if this will be pivoted to Whole Foods?

ClownLoach wrote:This is what I suspected. Amazon had issued guidance expecting a loss for the quarter. Then AWS and advertising revenues performed slightly better pushing the company to a tiny profit of 3 cents a share. If they had chosen to kill the Fresh stores now they would have had to take the hit and file a massive write-down loss which would have shifted earnings negative. But the damage has been done as the HR team and other key leadership areas were laid off. So they play the game of "we're working on it" which really means they're waiting for a better quarter financially to absorb the write-down loss and shut the Fresh stores down permanently.

Now let me give you another head scratcher: as of this afternoon construction has just resumed on the Corona, CA Amazon Fresh. The construction trailers are back and there were workers on the roof working on the refrigeration towers. This new build site had been completely mothballed with all equipment and such removed entirely months ago. Find that interesting considering the statement of stores on hold today. I am pretty sure that they are obligated to get that store open at some point in time or they will be in default of their lease. Usually new store builds have a "drop dead date" by which you must have the doors open to the public. No sign yet other than the green stripes above the entrance. I wonder if this will be pivoted to Whole Foods?

It's quite possible that Corona could be reassigned to WF as the nearest ones are in Brea and upland the latter being the first and currently only Inland Empire location.In my neck of the woods among the proposed/mothballed Amazon fresh locations only the Citrus Heights one is remote enough from existing WF locations that it can be repurposed as one.

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Looking at the list of locations--quite a few are in areas where they wouldn't open a WF or even an WF365. The others are a mix of potential WF locations or places that could support a WF but are still unlikely to be WFs---either way too small or, in one case, within sight of a Whole Foods (Wisconsin Ave in Chevy Chase (in a former Giant).

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: ↑February 2nd, 2023, 6:25 pm

ClownLoach wrote:This is what I suspected. Amazon had issued guidance expecting a loss for the quarter. Then AWS and advertising revenues performed slightly better pushing the company to a tiny profit of 3 cents a share. If they had chosen to kill the Fresh stores now they would have had to take the hit and file a massive write-down loss which would have shifted earnings negative. But the damage has been done as the HR team and other key leadership areas were laid off. So they play the game of "we're working on it" which really means they're waiting for a better quarter financially to absorb the write-down loss and shut the Fresh stores down permanently.

Now let me give you another head scratcher: as of this afternoon construction has just resumed on the Corona, CA Amazon Fresh. The construction trailers are back and there were workers on the roof working on the refrigeration towers. This new build site had been completely mothballed with all equipment and such removed entirely months ago. Find that interesting considering the statement of stores on hold today. I am pretty sure that they are obligated to get that store open at some point in time or they will be in default of their lease. Usually new store builds have a "drop dead date" by which you must have the doors open to the public. No sign yet other than the green stripes above the entrance. I wonder if this will be pivoted to Whole Foods?

It's quite possible that Corona could be reassigned to WF as the nearest ones are in Brea and upland the latter being the first and currently only Inland Empire location.In my neck of the woods among the proposed/mothballed Amazon fresh locations only the Citrus Heights one is remote enough from existing WF locations that it can be repurposed as one.

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Bedford Marketplace, the new center, is in the right part of Corona for a Whole Foods, and if Amazon hadn't been trying to launch Fresh I would have expected the developer of that site to be courting WFM as their first choice to anchor it. So maybe it will be the first WFM in Riverside County to open.

The worst kept secret in Murrieta/Winchester area is the 60,000 Sq ft Whole Foods being built at Winchester Rd (Hwy 79) and Clinton Keith Rd once the extension is finished. There is a power center site that has rotated through every big box as a potential tenant including Lowe's, Home Depot, Target, Smart & Final, Costco, and who knows how many others but has never broken ground. It's an extremely busy area where hundreds of new homes go up for sale monthly and many builders still have long waiting lists. Ultimately Lowe's stopped expanding in SoCal, Target must have figured out that the SuperTarget 2 miles west hadn't exactly taken off, Costco built across the freeway from that Super and Home Depot has finally chosen to be next to Super . Now that Clinton Keith Road is finally almost done being extended to Hwy 79 after 15+ years of promises I expect that long proposed shopping center to break ground too. The road needed to get built first or construction access would have made the Hwy 79 traffic even worse than it is today. The plan for that center currently shows a lot of blank buildings but one is labeled as "To Be Announced Leading National Organics and Health Supermarket 60,000 Sq ft Opening 2024". That's obviously Whole Foods.

Across Hwy 79 is that Winchester/Murrieta Rite Aid that took forever to open. That shares a building with a Grocery Outlet and dentists office all brand new with a McDonald's and 7-Eleven gas station opening any day now. Apparently that center as originally going to be an Albertsons with a fuel center. That would have been the 9th Albertsons Cos. store in the Temecula Valley, where there are only 2 Ralphs, a F4L that could close tomorrow and no one would notice, and 4 Stater Bros... And that would be <4 miles north from the intersection where there is a large Vons across the street from a large Albertsons. It's not the correct forum (Groceteria is) but I sure am curious about the history of the Murrieta-Temecula area as I'm told practically everything I see was a Ralphs at some time prior yet the whole area was basically dirt 25 years ago, like Ralphs may have built heavy then reduced from 5+ stores just in Murrieta alone to only one?

2-3 Ralphs I know of closed in Murrieta about 10 years ago:
40545 California Oaks
40473 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
? Alta Murrieta Drive?

These stores ran real low volumes for years before closing. Prices were too high, conditions were poor, perimeters were not maintained to a typical Ralphs standard back then... really they were all bad representations of Ralphs. Of course the newer still open Murrieta Store and the newer Temecula Store were both fine (not convinced volumes were very high at those though either).

I think one of these may have dated back to the 80's though. All of these reminded me of the Menifee Ralphs (another dump) or the now closed Moreno Valley Ralphs.

Like you said the area was mostly dirt 25 years ago. Ralphs showed up quick and built stores that felt like early 90's stores. The area wasn't fully developed yet so perhaps the locations were not selected quite as well as they could have been. Other people showed up in the late 90's/early 00's and built much nicer more modern stores and were able to place those stores better for the local development patterns and Ralphs ended up out of business.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/02/amazon- ... costs.html

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Bedford Marketplace, the new center, is in the right part of Corona for a Whole Foods, and if Amazon hadn't been trying to launch Fresh I would have expected the developer of that site to be courting WFM as their first choice to anchor it. So maybe it will be the first WFM in Riverside County to open.

There's a Whole Foods in Palm Desert.