RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

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retailfanmitchell019
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RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

Up until now on RetailWatchers, no one has mentioned about the obscure Owen's Market banner. This was a banner with three stores in Northeast Indiana, founded in 1938, and acquired by Kroger in 1998.
In August of last year, all three Owen's stores were rebranded as Kroger.
https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/owens-mak ... to-kroger/
The Owen's website now redirects to a message on the Kroger website.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by Bakeragr »

It's interesting how many banners Kroger operates under within the state of Indiana. I'd say eliminating a few of those isn't a bad move. There's still some stores under the Jay-C banner and the Pay Less banner. I believe they opened one of the stores acquired from Marsh under the Pay Less name, which I found surprising.
What's even crazier to me is that there's all of these various stores in Indiana, and then the stores mentioned in the other thread that are closing in Illinois are in the same division, as are a couple of stores by themselves in eastern Missouri. That's a lot of geography for one store division to cover.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by jamcool »

It wouldn’t surprise me if their various store brands out west rebrand to Kroger...with the exception of Fred Meyer, QFC, and maybe Ralphs. The stores are Kroger all but in name, they have Kroger healthcare running the pharmacies, and Kroger Financial Service. Even the new Ocado warehouses are branded Kroger
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

jamcool wrote: April 20th, 2021, 7:52 am It wouldn’t surprise me if their various store brands out west rebrand to Kroger...with the exception of Fred Meyer, QFC, and maybe Ralphs. The stores are Kroger all but in name, they have Kroger healthcare running the pharmacies, and Kroger Financial Service. Even the new Ocado warehouses are branded Kroger
Albertsons has learned their lesson from rebranding Lucky (they were sold), and Kroger has learned from them not to rebrand Smith's, Fry's, King Soopers, etc.
With that said, the other Indiana banners (Jay C, Pay-Less) should rebrand to Kroger.
I also think City Market should rebrand to King Soopers, and Gerbes/Baker's should become Dillons.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by SamSpade »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: April 20th, 2021, 8:10 am With that said, the other Indiana banners (Jay C, Pay-Less) should rebrand to Kroger.
The ad buying also all now comes in as Kroger. Jay C is in Indiana across the border from Louisville (Kentucky), the media market receives dollars from both nameplates. I don't know if the pricing or union agreements differ.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by pseudo3d »

Kroger never changed the Dillon's branding when they merged back in the 1980s, no reason to change them now. Renaming King Soopers to Kroger at this point would come off as being reactionary to that shooting a month ago.

JayC in particular seems different than Kroger in that many of the stores are in more rural areas (and have smaller stores). Besides, both are in different situations, with well-known markets instead of a hanger-on with just three stores.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by arizonaguy »

pseudo3d wrote: April 20th, 2021, 3:55 pm Kroger never changed the Dillon's branding when they merged back in the 1980s, no reason to change them now. Renaming King Soopers to Kroger at this point would come off as being reactionary to that shooting a month ago.

JayC in particular seems different than Kroger in that many of the stores are in more rural areas (and have smaller stores). Besides, both are in different situations, with well-known markets instead of a hanger-on with just three stores.
I think Kroger blew a perfect opportunity in 1999/2000 to rebanner all of its Arizona stores to the Kroger nameplate. Due to the merger of Fry's / Smith's / and Smitty's 1/2 of the store base in 1999/2000 was rebannered anyways (From either Smith's or Smitty's or Fred Meyer Marketplace to Fry's). Due to the number of Midwest / California transplants here in Arizona and the rather transient nature of the state, changing the banner on the stores probably wouldn't affect business at all.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

On the topic of Owen's Market, has anyone on this forum been to one before?
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by storewanderer »

The Albertsons rebrand of Lucky was a little difference since they wanted to change the entire store format when they changed the name but upon initial name change they were in a transition for months and it was a huge mess. Also the Albertsons format was a proven non-starter in California (I won't call it a failure since they did have about 200 stores in the state before the merger but they didn't do very well there). Format changed, pricing changed, merchandising changed, fresh departments changed..

At this point if Kroger were to re-banner these stores basically all that would happen is they would change the sign out front and be done.

I don't think it would be a wise move to re-banner F4L, FoodsCo, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, QFC, Harris Teeter, or Mariano's for a variety of reasons including format, store size, and pricing reasons. If they want to keep the Kroger banner to mean large combination food and drug store that is geared toward a middle class customer, the above divisions are not a fit for conversion.

But the other divisions they could just change the sign to Kroger and nothing else would change inside the store at this point. At Smiths we see hiring posters with photos of employees in blue Kroger aprons that actually say Kroger (a few years ago it would have been a blue apron with the name blocked out) but also have a Smiths logo on the poster itself, promotion signs for things like Boar's Head that say Kroger (but still make reference to "Fresh Value Card," and various other sloppy things like this. At this point it is a sloppy effort at best to even keep the banner on the stores.

Back to this Owen's thing- not real surprised it got rebranded. I would expect more rebrands for the banners with less than 10 stores. Jay C has a history and some customer connection in those markets, but hasn't had many store remodels over the years and is in smaller markets, but has some decent sized stores. Kroger understands those rural midwest type of markets and operates and merchandises the stores in a manner that keeps the customers happy.
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Re: RIP Owen's Market: The Kroger banner never talked about

Post by Romr123 »

I've gassed up a few times at the gas station in front of the JayC in Bedford, IN...pretty indistinguishable from any other kiosk-type Kroger gas station (the clerk's inside the kiosk, the sodas etc are in coolers outside).
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