Smiths has been doing the case lot sales since Smiths was an independent chain and they've never stopped. It has come and gone from other Kroger divisions too. At Smiths at one point they didn't run one for about 9 months and people started asking when there was going to be another one. So Smiths still gets to do its case sales.Bagels wrote: ↑October 24th, 2022, 8:46 pm
Kroger did the case sale with Ralphs in the 2000s, but IIRC, you had the buy the case to get the savings. For canned veggies, it was limited to corn, peas and green beans. The sale was enormously popularly, and they brought in Kroger branded products to satisfy demand, in an era when it was otherwise absent from Ralphs. The price was super cheap - like a dime a can or something like that. I’m surprised there was a run at 59c - roughly the same price as Walmart everyday. Albertsons sold them for 25c each during the spring, and there wasn’t much interest. We canned regularly but I guess everyone else has moved on to frozen.
Ralphs also use to regularly run a beef roast deal, where if you bought the roast you’d get a two liter soda (Pepsi or private label brand, depending on the era), bagged salad, small Ralphs salad dressing, bag of potatoes, carrots, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. Those days are gone…
Sometime in the past 5 years they changed the rule that required a full case sale to get the case prices. It was something to do with Kroger's ordering system. Previously during the case sale Smiths would have a list of "CASE PLUs" to use so if someone showed up with a case, they entered the PLU for whatever case was, nothing was scanned. Somehow the cases sold were reconciled to the shipping records on the back end but it seems they decided it wasn't worth it anymore and to just scan every unit being sold and make the case price the same as the single unit price times units in case.
At the Associated Utah Independents who also do case sales (most do) a couple times a year typically March and September, it is done a bit differently. They still have a case price, then typically the single unit price is ~.10 per unit above whatever the case price is. Their point of sale system does quantity based pricing so if they have the 24 count case at $6 or .59 each, after they input a 24 quantity, the price changes. The smaller Associated Independents will not do a formal case sale per se with items on the sales floor (we are taking 10k square foot stores), but will advertise a "case sale" allowing customers to order goods by the full case from a list of the items under the promotion then advise the customers to come pick the items up whenever they arrive.