Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

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timanny
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by timanny »

HCal wrote: December 24th, 2021, 9:13 pm
storewanderer wrote: December 24th, 2021, 2:01 am Should open a group of these up in Northern California. But what banner do you use there?
Cala Foods, of course! :lol: :lol: :lol:

But in all seriousness, it would probably be called Foods Co. Something like that might give Foods Co more legitimacy, because it currently seems to be an afterthought.
This post brought back to mind something I've thought of before. It wouldn't work in this situation we're discussing here because Kroger has no conventional stores in Northern California. But if they ever found the conditions right to expand there, why don't they reintroduce the original brand they had there - Fry's? Fry's has Bay Area origins and was successful there, whereas Ralphs failed twice and has a poor reputation in those parts and Smith's is completely unknown and has never operated there.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by jamcool »

The Fry’s name in the Bay Area was downgraded when it was bought by Save Mart, who finally replaced the brand. You could bring back Market Basket-a Kroger-owned chain in SoCal until the 80s. Or even Alpha Beta-which was sold off during the Albertsons/American Stores merger, and eventually ended up being owned by Ralphs/Yucaipa.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by HCal »

timanny wrote: December 27th, 2021, 10:22 am This post brought back to mind something I've thought of before. It wouldn't work in this situation we're discussing here because Kroger has no conventional stores in Northern California. But if they ever found the conditions right to expand there, why don't they reintroduce the original brand they had there - Fry's? Fry's has Bay Area origins and was successful there, whereas Ralphs failed twice and has a poor reputation in those parts and Smith's is completely unknown and has never operated there.
I feel like the Fry's Electronics fiasco has permanently tarnished the Fry's name, especially in California where they had the most stores. The logos are almost identical and people will mix them up.

If Kroger decided to re-enter Northern California with traditional supermarkets, I think they would most likely be called Ralphs, which already has good name recognition since there are obviously ties between the regions of the state. Ralphs failed in NorCal already (I only remember once, when was the second time?) but it still has brand equity and is more likely to be successful than some name unfamiliar to Californians.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by timanny »

You're probably right about the Fry's name being tarnished. The electronics chain was actually started by the sons of the grocery chain founders, and had a terrible reputation, long before going out of business. Articles have been written about how poor their customer service was and how that was by design. I'm surprised they didn't go out of business years earlier.

The Ralphs failure in NorCal under Kroger ownership was the second time. There was an earlier attempt, under Federated (now Macy's, Inc.) ownership in the 70s and early 80s when Ralphs bought either the Louis or LoRay chains. Lucky got some if not all of those locations; the first standalone Lucky stores with pharmacies (not Gemco locations) were some of these first-generation Bay Area Ralphs. The Pep Boys on East 14th in San Leandro near Bayfair was one of these Ralphs (don't know if that one had a pharmacy or not); the current Bayfair Lucky I believe was Alpha Beta.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by storewanderer »

I don't think Ralphs had a bad reputation in Northern California necessarily. They certainly had too few customers. The stores were run very well. They were held back by having some of the wrong locations, and pricing was way too high. Service, store condition, and quality were excellent.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by HCal »

storewanderer wrote: December 29th, 2021, 7:06 pm I don't think Ralphs had a bad reputation in Northern California necessarily. They certainly had too few customers. The stores were run very well. They were held back by having some of the wrong locations, and pricing was way too high. Service, store condition, and quality were excellent.
How did the pricing compare to Safeway?

Ralphs has historically had lower prices than Vons, so I'm surprised that didn't carry over to NorCal.
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Re: Kroger opening online fulfillment in Oklahoma City

Post by storewanderer »

HCal wrote: December 30th, 2021, 12:18 am
storewanderer wrote: December 29th, 2021, 7:06 pm I don't think Ralphs had a bad reputation in Northern California necessarily. They certainly had too few customers. The stores were run very well. They were held back by having some of the wrong locations, and pricing was way too high. Service, store condition, and quality were excellent.
How did the pricing compare to Safeway?

Ralphs has historically had lower prices than Vons, so I'm surprised that didn't carry over to NorCal.
NorCal Ralphs had some pricing zones.

The stores with the Cala/Bell banner were higher than Safeway on basically everything, both regular and sale prices.

The stores with the Ralphs banner varied a bit and over time, but generally speaking the everyday pricing was in line with Safeway (who at the time got pretty outrageously priced) but their sale pricing across the store was simply not as strong as Safeway. Ralphs always ran a strong front page ad with a strong lead for meat, produce, beer, and soda but center store pricing was just not as strong as it needed to be. I don't think "Double Coupons" which were heavily marketed attracted many customers in NorCal and they'd have been better off scrapping that for some stronger pricing.

They should have seen with the success of FoodsCo that stronger pricing was something that drew in a lot of customers. Granted there are still those two former Ralphs in Sacramento that converted to FoodsCo and are still open so I assume they do pretty well. But there were a few other Ralphs they probably should have converted to FoodsCo, and probably would still be open today under that banner.
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