Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

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Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by storewanderer »

To recap here: current events:

Late April 2022: https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail- ... -positions

I guess this is better than just laying off 500 employees...?

March 2022: This is on top of a similar situation involving about 100 corporate office employees in March 2022:

https://www.kcci.com/article/iowa-hy-ve ... s/39531547#

March 2020: They did some store level restructurings in 2020 right before COVID hit (awful timing for the stores). The stores were by any measure rather top heavy but that was part of what made the stores something better than the competitors, they had more management in more departments and execution was at a much higher level than competitors.
https://www.timesrepublican.com/news/to ... lindsided/

My suspicion is the 2022 moves were planned to happen in 2020 but didn't due to COVID.

Now since then they have cut back on expansion in MSP and announced expansion into various southern states with a store format that sounds quite large and will need to do incredible volume to work out (and I think those southern states have better competition than MSP has).

Interesting times for what is one of the best grocery chains in the US. Hopefully that "is" shouldn't say "was."
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 12:51 am Now since then they have cut back on expansion in MSP and announced expansion into various southern states with a store format that sounds quite large and will need to do incredible volume to work out (and I think those southern states have better competition than MSP has).

Interesting times for what is one of the best grocery chains in the US. Hopefully that "is" shouldn't say "was."
I think in Minneapolis, Cub Foods shaping up caught them off guard. An article from earlier this year indicates that Cub Foods (now rebranded as just "Cub") was being kept by UNFI and taken off the market, whereas just a few years ago UNFI was ready to dump them, even de-valuing them by proposing lease buybacks. I think that there is room for them in southern states, the only thing they have to worry about is Publix and Kroger. Publix's store model relies on smaller stores that don't need to be high-volume winners to stay afloat (and many of Publix's Florida stores I visited were great--not too crowded, pretty terrazzo floors, a far cry from the warehouse madness at H-E-B). Kroger has done well with Marketplace stores in the area, but Kroger hasn't really been at its A-game recently.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 8:11 am

I think in Minneapolis, Cub Foods shaping up caught them off guard. An article from earlier this year indicates that Cub Foods (now rebranded as just "Cub") was being kept by UNFI and taken off the market, whereas just a few years ago UNFI was ready to dump them, even de-valuing them by proposing lease buybacks. I think that there is room for them in southern states, the only thing they have to worry about is Publix and Kroger. Publix's store model relies on smaller stores that don't need to be high-volume winners to stay afloat (and many of Publix's Florida stores I visited were great--not too crowded, pretty terrazzo floors, a far cry from the warehouse madness at H-E-B). Kroger has done well with Marketplace stores in the area, but Kroger hasn't really been at its A-game recently.
Hy Vee has rolled Kroger pretty well but the only division they've really competed against is Dillon division. For some reason Dillon rolls at the sight of competition in many cases. Gerbes is a joke and they ran from Springfield when Hy Vee showed up. Dillon fought back against Hy Vee in Topeka doing a store swap with AWG so Dillon got AWG Stores in Topeka and AWG got Dillon Stores in Kansas City metro (running from Hy Vee again). Then Dillon did major expansions/remodels to their stores in Topeka and it did seem to keep Hy Vee at bay (they still only have one store which is the site of a former Albertsons but new building).

I expect Kroger to put up a stronger fight in the South. I guess my main point is if Hy Vee is being scared by Cub (which I cannot imagine how or why that is happening) in MSP, I have no idea how they are going to do against Kroger in some of Kroger's oldest and best established territories.

I'd like to see Hy Vee go into Denver. Denver desperately needs some better quality operations. You have Safeway units that remind me of 2005 era Albertsons (dead, not real clean, unappealing lightly stocked perimeters, indifferent staff) and then King Soopers which are big and full of items and customers but don't come off as the highest quality operation by any stretch. King Soopers has a serious lock on that market but I think Hy Vee could put up quite a fight. However King Soopers is so well positioned in the market with its locations that I don't think they could ever be overtaken.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 10:10 pm
pseudo3d wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 8:11 am

I think in Minneapolis, Cub Foods shaping up caught them off guard. An article from earlier this year indicates that Cub Foods (now rebranded as just "Cub") was being kept by UNFI and taken off the market, whereas just a few years ago UNFI was ready to dump them, even de-valuing them by proposing lease buybacks. I think that there is room for them in southern states, the only thing they have to worry about is Publix and Kroger. Publix's store model relies on smaller stores that don't need to be high-volume winners to stay afloat (and many of Publix's Florida stores I visited were great--not too crowded, pretty terrazzo floors, a far cry from the warehouse madness at H-E-B). Kroger has done well with Marketplace stores in the area, but Kroger hasn't really been at its A-game recently.
Hy Vee has rolled Kroger pretty well but the only division they've really competed against is Dillon division. For some reason Dillon rolls at the sight of competition in many cases. Gerbes is a joke and they ran from Springfield when Hy Vee showed up. Dillon fought back against Hy Vee in Topeka doing a store swap with AWG so Dillon got AWG Stores in Topeka and AWG got Dillon Stores in Kansas City metro (running from Hy Vee again). Then Dillon did major expansions/remodels to their stores in Topeka and it did seem to keep Hy Vee at bay (they still only have one store which is the site of a former Albertsons but new building).

I expect Kroger to put up a stronger fight in the South. I guess my main point is if Hy Vee is being scared by Cub (which I cannot imagine how or why that is happening) in MSP, I have no idea how they are going to do against Kroger in some of Kroger's oldest and best established territories.

I'd like to see Hy Vee go into Denver. Denver desperately needs some better quality operations. You have Safeway units that remind me of 2005 era Albertsons (dead, not real clean, unappealing lightly stocked perimeters, indifferent staff) and then King Soopers which are big and full of items and customers but don't come off as the highest quality operation by any stretch. King Soopers has a serious lock on that market but I think Hy Vee could put up quite a fight. However King Soopers is so well positioned in the market with its locations that I don't think they could ever be overtaken.
Well, I think in the case of MSP, Cub always had #1 market share and they were not able to dislodge that despite large and expensive stores. But you're right, if Hy-Vee is playing for keeps, then moving into Kroger and Publix territory isn't going to do much better.

And if they're trying to cover the fact that the MSP is full of money-losing stores, then doubling down on new markets with large stores is a really bad idea.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

storewanderer wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 10:10 pm
Hy Vee has rolled Kroger pretty well but the only division they've really competed against is Dillon division. For some reason Dillon rolls at the sight of competition in many cases. Gerbes is a joke and they ran from Springfield when Hy Vee showed up. Dillon fought back against Hy Vee in Topeka doing a store swap with AWG so Dillon got AWG Stores in Topeka and AWG got Dillon Stores in Kansas City metro (running from Hy Vee again). Then Dillon did major expansions/remodels to their stores in Topeka and it did seem to keep Hy Vee at bay (they still only have one store which is the site of a former Albertsons but new building).

I'd like to see Hy Vee go into Denver. Denver desperately needs some better quality operations. You have Safeway units that remind me of 2005 era Albertsons (dead, not real clean, unappealing lightly stocked perimeters, indifferent staff) and then King Soopers which are big and full of items and customers but don't come off as the highest quality operation by any stretch. King Soopers has a serious lock on that market but I think Hy Vee could put up quite a fight. However King Soopers is so well positioned in the market with its locations that I don't think they could ever be overtaken.
There is a former Albertsons in Topeka that is now some sort of government building. It is located a mile east of the Hy-Vee. I'm not sure if Albertsons had a store where the Hy-Vee now is.

Fargo/Moorhead would also be a good market for Hy-Vee. The traditional competition up there is Hornbacher's/Cash Wise (Coborn's) and Family Fare (owned by Nash Finch).
Albertsons had stores in Sioux Falls, SD; Grand Forks, ND; and Minot, ND in the 1980's. I'm not sure when those stores closed, but they closed due to isolation from the rest of the chain.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by pseudo3d »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: May 3rd, 2022, 7:00 pm
storewanderer wrote: May 2nd, 2022, 10:10 pm
Hy Vee has rolled Kroger pretty well but the only division they've really competed against is Dillon division. For some reason Dillon rolls at the sight of competition in many cases. Gerbes is a joke and they ran from Springfield when Hy Vee showed up. Dillon fought back against Hy Vee in Topeka doing a store swap with AWG so Dillon got AWG Stores in Topeka and AWG got Dillon Stores in Kansas City metro (running from Hy Vee again). Then Dillon did major expansions/remodels to their stores in Topeka and it did seem to keep Hy Vee at bay (they still only have one store which is the site of a former Albertsons but new building).

I'd like to see Hy Vee go into Denver. Denver desperately needs some better quality operations. You have Safeway units that remind me of 2005 era Albertsons (dead, not real clean, unappealing lightly stocked perimeters, indifferent staff) and then King Soopers which are big and full of items and customers but don't come off as the highest quality operation by any stretch. King Soopers has a serious lock on that market but I think Hy Vee could put up quite a fight. However King Soopers is so well positioned in the market with its locations that I don't think they could ever be overtaken.
There is a former Albertsons in Topeka that is now some sort of government building. It is located a mile east of the Hy-Vee. I'm not sure if Albertsons had a store where the Hy-Vee now is.

Fargo/Moorhead would also be a good market for Hy-Vee. The traditional competition up there is Hornbacher's/Cash Wise (Coborn's) and Family Fare (owned by Nash Finch).
Albertsons had stores in Sioux Falls, SD; Grand Forks, ND; and Minot, ND in the 1980's. I'm not sure when those stores closed, but they closed due to isolation from the rest of the chain.
I'd guess that they vanished in the early 2000s purges. Omaha was dumped in 2004 and Rapid City, SD's store was sold to Nash Finch in 2008.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

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Management change coming at Hy Vee.
https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail- ... aron-wiese

I'd really like to see Hy Vee go into Colorado. I'm just not sure how great of locations they could get. I feel like King Soopers has a real lock on the good locations around Denver. Kroger is clearly not as strong as it once was (up until about five years ago...) defending itself against better run and/or better priced competitors.
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by Bakeragr »

I'm a little baffled by Hy-Vee's expansion plans to the Mid-South (KY & TN). It really doesn't make much sense to me to enter a crowded (but growing) market that has little overlap with their current footprint. Additionally, I doubt there's a whole lot of name recognition. I think Publix, Kroger and Meijer aren't going to be as easy to dominate as Hy-Vee thinks.
Colorado to me would make more sense and would likely have a lot of overlap and name recognition. I think they would do really well in the areas to the north of Denver to Cheyenne and also in Colorado Springs. Hy-Vee would also work very well in Oklahoma, where the biggest chain competition is just Wal-Mart. Additionally, CO and OK could probably use more of their current distribution systems. But what do I know?
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

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Bakeragr wrote: August 1st, 2022, 8:53 am I'm a little baffled by Hy-Vee's expansion plans to the Mid-South (KY & TN). It really doesn't make much sense to me to enter a crowded (but growing) market that has little overlap with their current footprint. Additionally, I doubt there's a whole lot of name recognition. I think Publix, Kroger and Meijer aren't going to be as easy to dominate as Hy-Vee thinks.
Colorado to me would make more sense and would likely have a lot of overlap and name recognition. I think they would do really well in the areas to the north of Denver to Cheyenne and also in Colorado Springs. Hy-Vee would also work very well in Oklahoma, where the biggest chain competition is just Wal-Mart. Additionally, CO and OK could probably use more of their current distribution systems. But what do I know?
The part of expanding to KY/TN that confuses me is that they are proposing even larger stores in those markets, than they typically already have. Also those are less dense sort of areas, I don't know how they will ever get the sales per square foot they are used to, in those stores. Also their pricing isn't the best, and there are other operators in those markets with stronger pricing (not just Wal Mart...), and I am curious after the recent employee situations they have had, how well they will do finding well experienced people to go run these new markets for them. They had not yet laid off a bunch of long term employees or done buyouts or whatever they did before COVID, when they expanded into Minneapolis. They had their A+ team to draft and send to go and open up the market (and from what I observed, they did an excellent job), but evidently the financial results aren't so great in Minneapolis since they seem to be not going forward with much more expansion there. And I guess if Minneapolis has trouble, with what I consider to be marginal competition at best (and not much of it), how in the heck will they succeed in KY/TN with more, stronger competition, and not having as large of an A+ team to draft into the new market to open it up?
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Re: Hy-Vee- shift 500 corporate employees back to retail stores

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

storewanderer wrote: August 1st, 2022, 10:52 pm They had not yet laid off a bunch of long term employees or done buyouts or whatever they did before COVID, when they expanded into Minneapolis. They had their A+ team to draft and send to go and open up the market (and from what I observed, they did an excellent job), but evidently the financial results aren't so great in Minneapolis since they seem to be not going forward with much more expansion there.
The truth is, the upper Midwest has been a tough place for large grocery chains. Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the largest metro areas without a Kroger or Albertsons presence.
People in Minneapolis/St. Paul tend to prefer locally-owned places for groceries, whether it be Cub, Target, L&B, or the random independents scattered throughout the metro (like Jerry's Foods or Kowalski's), most of which are upscale, beautiful places to shop.
Albertsons and Safeway were both bidding for now-defunct Rainbow Foods in 2000, with Albertsons rumored to be closing in on Rainbow when Fleming put the chain on the sale block. Albertsons had looked at entering Minneapolis/St. Paul a year or two earlier (after entering Des Moines, IA), either through organic expansion or buying Rainbow.
Fleming put Rainbow on the sale block in 2003, with Albertsons again rumored to be buying Rainbow. Roundy's bought Rainbow, as they made a higher bid than Albertsons. Albertsons and Safeway must've been smart, as they probably knew that Minneapolis/St. Paul is a very unique grocery market. Big chains like Kroger, A&P, and later Rainbow in the Roundy's era with their formulas did not succeed in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
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