Stop & Shop closures

[pseudo3d]

Here is something to like about C&S: their taking over and continuing to operate what Fleming was running in California made it so California (also Hawaii, Guam, etc.) at least has two grocery wholesalers operating in the market to provide at least a little competition to independents in the areas. While C&S doesn't supply much in SoCal, they do supply some stores. With as terrible as it is in CA for independent grocers due to outrageous product costs, I have to assume it would be even worse (hard to imagine how that would be possible though) had C&S not kept operating the former Fleming stuff in CA.

What bothers me is C&S needs some kind of loan to buy the divests. If they were doing an all cash buy I may have a different opinion.

Also too many times they seem to act as a "trash can" of sorts to buy a pile of assets then quickly spin them to multiple other parties.

I do not like them operating retail stores.

Stick to wholesale and work harder to improve THAT. Felt the same way about Fleming operating retail...........disaster.

Fleming retail was very terrible and Supervalu Retail was questionable but had some high points before Albertsons and then once they got Albertsons their entire situation turned into total disaster.

Fleming was able to run Baker's for almost a decade before selling it to Kroger...but like C&S, most of their operations that they bought into didn't make it. I guess Rainbow Foods (the original WI/MN one, not the TX division) did make it...but I suspect it was damaged beyond repair when it went into the possession of Roundy's. Didn't save Furr's or ABCO Foods Desert Market. Those got completely dismantled. Arguably, C&S did a better job of handling Grand Union (selling it to Tops) and Bruno's (selling it to a new group that rebranded it as Belle Foods—it wasn't C&S's fault that they went under just over a year later).

SuperValu's possession of Albertsons didn't really work partly because it was never integrated into the other chains. I think Cub Foods and the other SVU brands got some version of Premium Fresh & Healthy (see this article) but never with the Albertsons leaf.

[veteran+]

Let's not forget Fleming's adventures in Florida.....................

Just plain awful.

They were involved in the gloaming days of Pantry Pride and testing Cub Foods type franchises.

[storewanderer]

Let's not forget Fleming's adventures in Florida.....................

Just plain awful.

They were involved in the gloaming days of Pantry Pride and testing Cub Foods type franchises.

Fleming's corporate F4L Stores in CA were okay for quite a while, but then they got some bright idea to shift to a "Fresh 4 Less" format in some stores. The store was still called "Food 4 Less." They redecorated (this was sort of an improvement), lowered some shelves, added more SKUs, tried to upgrade produce/bakery/meat (problem is it was still the same stock Fleming crap just dressed up looking), added self checkout, started accepting credit cards and various other efforts. Prices also went up significantly. That was right before they sold the stores to Save Mart who promptly rebranded to Food Maxx and got them back to the true stripped F4L type format.

[marketreportblog]

Visited another 11 Stop & Shops today -- one in northern NJ and the rest in the Hudson Valley of New York (Orangeburg to Hyde Park). Some updates on what I found. The store conditions vary (both in terms of maintenance and in-stock), but generally stock is thin across the board still. Some of the stores are in really bad shape, but some are really nice.

Here's a link to a folder containing various pictures of out-of-stocks. Obviously, this is still a problem, pretty major in some locations. Some of those empty displays can be chalked up to the changing sale week and different products on sale, but I will say I went to an ACME (sale week starts tomorrow) and everything was fully stocked including all the sale displays.

However, at two or three of the stores I visited, I saw people from SAS Retail Services working. Looks like they have any number of services mostly focused on inventory management, resets, and the like. I couldn't 100% tell what they were doing, but it looked to me like they were just taking inventory (like counting products and using some form of iPad or something?). For anyone more familiar with how these firms work -- I know there are a few of them, I saw a different one working at Kings before and after the ACME takeover -- what are they up to? Is that just plain ol' inventory counting? Or is it something like preparing for a more major reset, like a few in this thread have theorized might be coming?

In other words, since I'm not too familiar with what's going on in that process, is this good news, bad news, or no news at all, to all of you?

Edit to add: a source I know who's a retail store manager said this is probably routine inventory counting, so I guess their job is just to report the empty shelves and not fix them. What do you all think?

[storewanderer]

These photos are troubling. It is well past the first of the month, no holidays, and odd scattered out of stocks. This seems similar to how A&P did things before it closed divisions. Inventory levels got really low, like drugstore style, all over the store. They stopped caring about things like keeping displays full but based on what they have (produce/meat) and how it looks you can tell the stuff there IS recently replenished.

Also feels like a lack of customers and a lack of promotion effort in the stores based on looking around and how it feels. Clearly they are not "going for sales." This is a much different atmosphere than the Giants, so it is funny to see the same products/systems in place in such a sorry store. This is on a level with a bad Save Mart (before the current ownership group took over) or a bad Raleys/Bashas out west. It does kind of remind me of a Food Lion though.

[marketreportblog]

These photos are troubling. It is well past the first of the month, no holidays, and odd scattered out of stocks. This seems similar to how A&P did things before it closed divisions. Inventory levels got really low, like drugstore style, all over the store. They stopped caring about things like keeping displays full but based on what they have (produce/meat) and how it looks you can tell the stuff there IS recently replenished.

Also feels like a lack of customers and a lack of promotion effort in the stores based on looking around and how it feels. Clearly they are not "going for sales." This is a much different atmosphere than the Giants, so it is funny to see the same products/systems in place in such a sorry store. This is on a level with a bad Save Mart (before the current ownership group took over) or a bad Raleys/Bashas out west. It does kind of remind me of a Food Lion though.

You're absolutely right. And yes, the stores were (with a few exceptions) completely dead. I get that Thursday morning/early afternoon isn't exactly a peak shopping time, but you can tell when a store is dead. See Closter, Orangeburg, and Peekskill. Not to mention the stores just feel unprofessional. But it's still inconsistent. Orangeburg is absolutely gorgeous, but was dead and seems to be that way usually. The two newest-renovated stores, Peekskill and Baldwin Place, also had the worst in-stock conditions, which is a bad combination. Meanwhile, the South Road one in Poughkeepsie hasn't been renovated since 2007ish at the newest, but was spotless, fully stocked, and well-staffed. Go figure.

One other worrying trend I saw: in more than a few stores, about 20% or so of the meat was reduced for quick sale. It's easy to catch it because they use a very recognizable orange sticker, see here. Way too much of the meat had a date of today or tomorrow, which is another indication to me that several of these stores do very minimal business.

And yes -- the out-of-stocks seem fairly random, although common ones are produce (apples, berries, citrus, and lettuce), HABA (toothpaste and deodorant), dairy (milk, yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream), nonfoods (paper towels), and grocery (chicken broth and bottled water?!). Today was my first time seeing consistent thin stock in the meat departments, which is of course a bad sign.

The A&P reference is spot on, too. Closter felt freakishly like an A&P because it was, in fact, an A&P which got not much more than a coat of paint when Stop & Shop took it over. But it still looks and feels exactly like an A&P. And maintenance seems just about as good as A&P -- the freezers all sound like a fork in the garbage disposal, and when I flushed the toilet in the men's room, the entire wall shook a little.

Oh, and this is maybe the most bizarre thing. Why do so many of these stores have either no music or imperceptibly quiet music?! You walk into these massive enormous cavernous warehouses with like three people in them and they are SILENT. I mean, SILENT silent in some cases. Why doesn't every store just play the same music at the same level like ACME or any other chain?

[storewanderer]

It looks like a significant amount of the meat is case ready?

The other thing that confuses me about the random nature of the out of stocks is I assume items like drug/non food probably come from a warehouse shared with one of the Giant chains. So if those stores are fully stocking those departments, why aren't these stores?

The lack of music seems to be a management problem at the store level but why is it like that in almost every store? Ads play on that music that the stores get paid money to run so it needs to be turned on. I don't know who the District Manager for these stores is but whoever they are, they really need to get down to basics about how their stores look and make some quick adjustments. These stores don't look like they have any leadership or direction at any level.

Seeing this also makes me seriously pause at the concept of Ahold merging with Albertsons at this point. This is like Supervalu Albertsons at its worst moment, but with less inventory.

[mbz321]

It looks like a significant amount of the meat is case ready?

I'm not sure about Stop & Shop, but Giant PA ditched in-store butchers several years ago...everything except a few items like ground beef are case ready (and Ahold did have their own meat processing/packaging plants but as I think was mentioned above, they recently sold them off to Cargill)

[veteran+]

These photos are troubling. It is well past the first of the month, no holidays, and odd scattered out of stocks. This seems similar to how A&P did things before it closed divisions. Inventory levels got really low, like drugstore style, all over the store. They stopped caring about things like keeping displays full but based on what they have (produce/meat) and how it looks you can tell the stuff there IS recently replenished.

Also feels like a lack of customers and a lack of promotion effort in the stores based on looking around and how it feels. Clearly they are not "going for sales." This is a much different atmosphere than the Giants, so it is funny to see the same products/systems in place in such a sorry store. This is on a level with a bad Save Mart (before the current ownership group took over) or a bad Raleys/Bashas out west. It does kind of remind me of a Food Lion though.

You're absolutely right. And yes, the stores were (with a few exceptions) completely dead. I get that Thursday morning/early afternoon isn't exactly a peak shopping time, but you can tell when a store is dead. See Closter, Orangeburg, and Peekskill. Not to mention the stores just feel unprofessional. But it's still inconsistent. Orangeburg is absolutely gorgeous, but was dead and seems to be that way usually. The two newest-renovated stores, Peekskill and Baldwin Place, also had the worst in-stock conditions, which is a bad combination. Meanwhile, the South Road one in Poughkeepsie hasn't been renovated since 2007ish at the newest, but was spotless, fully stocked, and well-staffed. Go figure.

One other worrying trend I saw: in more than a few stores, about 20% or so of the meat was reduced for quick sale. It's easy to catch it because they use a very recognizable orange sticker, see here. Way too much of the meat had a date of today or tomorrow, which is another indication to me that several of these stores do very minimal business.

And yes -- the out-of-stocks seem fairly random, although common ones are produce (apples, berries, citrus, and lettuce), HABA (toothpaste and deodorant), dairy (milk, yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream), nonfoods (paper towels), and grocery (chicken broth and bottled water?!). Today was my first time seeing consistent thin stock in the meat departments, which is of course a bad sign.

The A&P reference is spot on, too. Closter felt freakishly like an A&P because it was, in fact, an A&P which got not much more than a coat of paint when Stop & Shop took it over. But it still looks and feels exactly like an A&P. And maintenance seems just about as good as A&P -- the freezers all sound like a fork in the garbage disposal, and when I flushed the toilet in the men's room, the entire wall shook a little.

Oh, and this is maybe the most bizarre thing. Why do so many of these stores have either no music or imperceptibly quiet music?! You walk into these massive enormous cavernous warehouses with like three people in them and they are SILENT. I mean, SILENT silent in some cases. Why doesn't every store just play the same music at the same level like ACME or any other chain?

BTW...............................EXCELLENT reporting and observations.

Thank you!

[BillyGr]

Visited another 11 Stop & Shops today -- one in northern NJ and the rest in the Hudson Valley of New York (Orangeburg to Hyde Park). Some updates on what I found. The store conditions vary (both in terms of maintenance and in-stock), but generally stock is thin across the board still. Some of the stores are in really bad shape, but some are really nice.

However, at two or three of the stores I visited, I saw people from SAS Retail Services working. Looks like they have any number of services mostly focused on inventory management, resets, and the like. I couldn't 100% tell what they were doing, but it looked to me like they were just taking inventory (like counting products and using some form of iPad or something?). For anyone more familiar with how these firms work -- I know there are a few of them, I saw a different one working at Kings before and after the ACME takeover -- what are they up to? Is that just plain ol' inventory counting? Or is it something like preparing for a more major reset, like a few in this thread have theorized might be coming?

In other words, since I'm not too familiar with what's going on in that process, is this good news, bad news, or no news at all, to all of you?

Edit to add: a source I know who's a retail store manager said this is probably routine inventory counting, so I guess their job is just to report the empty shelves and not fix them. What do you all think?

I'm pretty sure that same group (SAS) has been the ones in Hannaford stores as well. Both doing inventory at times, but also when they are working to reset a section (you'll often see a particular category with many items marked down, then they come in at some point, remove anything still around and put that in the markdown table and then reset the section with new items that are taking the place of things discontinued).
They just did that in the local Hannaford stores in HABA within the last couple weeks.

Can't say I noticed anything in that Hyde Park store when I was down that way probably 2 months ago, but then again I was paying more attention to things that weren't cold (which seems to be all the stuff you noted there, dairy, frozen and produce), so that may be why.