Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by Bakeragr »

I think they could expand into St. Louis with this format and do quite well. St. Louis is dominated by Schnucks and Dierbergs and Wal-Mart has never really figured out the market well. Shop 'N Save left and was largely absorbed by Schnucks, but SNS was a completely different format. No matter how hard Schnucks tries, they're more upscale and less competitively priced than many STL customers would like. I don't think the SNS customer was the Schnucks and definitely not the Dierbergs customer. Schnucks seems to want to have every SKU, flavor option and brand of everything on the shelf. Shop 'N Save was a big purchaser of large pallets of things on special and they'd just put the whole pallet on the floor.

I will admit though, I think that many of the former Shop N' Save customers have likely migrated to Aldi or Ruler Foods (Kroger) but Kroger has not opened any new Rulers in several years. Not sure what is going on there. Aldi has really saturated the St. Louis Metro, and their stores keep getting nicer.

I can see Meijer coming in, opening a few of those and doing well, and then sticking in a few traditional Meijers around the periphery, say out in O'Fallon, Wentzville, Chesterfield Valley, etc. I've not found any new details on that property they purchased in Edwardsville, on the IL side of the city.
I think they will find that St. Louis is very similar to their Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland customer base.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by arizonaguy »

From the looks of it Meijer (like Publix, Hy Vee and HEB) seems to sense some weakness with Kroger.

Both of these stores are within 1-2 miles of a Kroger store (the Macomb Township store is about halfway between 2 Kroger stores).

These stores seem to be similar to what Walmart planned with its Neighborhood Markets in that Meijer is trying to go after the traditional grocery (in this case Kroger) customer that wants a smaller, more convenient store.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by Romr123 »

I'd argue that a 80-90 sqft store is obout double a WM Neighborhood Market. This is absolutely a "Kroger weakness" play. They also could go into the far east side (the Grosse Pointes/SCS) with one of these as Kroger dominates over there.

With the demise of SNS, St. Louis is entirely dominated by Schnucks/Dierbergs at the high end and Aldi at the low end. WM was quite late moving into St. Louis (though Supercenter 1 was only about 40 miles outside in Washington, MO) even though Aldi was in the market as early as 1978. Schnucks has had some experience with lower-end concepts (they had several Rock Bottom warehouse supermarkets, generally riding out leases in between traditional Schnucks stores) but those fell away in the 90s.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by storewanderer »

arizonaguy wrote: September 2nd, 2022, 4:54 pm From the looks of it Meijer (like Publix, Hy Vee and HEB) seems to sense some weakness with Kroger.

These stores seem to be similar to what Walmart planned with its Neighborhood Markets in that Meijer is trying to go after the traditional grocery (in this case Kroger) customer that wants a smaller, more convenient store.
The difference is these are large enough to still be a complete store. The Wal Mart Neighborhood Markets are kind of lacking. If they're a little larger they're a lot better but the standard 45k square foot model is lacking.

Kroger has a lot of weaknesses in its quality, service, and overall operation and like Wal Mart no longer seems to care much about competition and assumes they are so big the customers will keep coming to them no matter what. The weapon Kroger still has above the rest is its private label program and that is a very incredible weapon that they have continued to do a great job with as the rest of their programs and services decline.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by Mgomrjsurf »

Warrenton,Sikeston, Cape J.,Washington,Colum.bia and so on before Rolla,Jefferson City and so on.

Gerbes would do good in St. Louis. Kroger In other parts of MO on 44. Ramey Price Cutter in other parts of MO.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by BatteryMill »

Mgomrjsurf wrote: September 4th, 2022, 9:25 am Warrenton,Sikeston, Cape J.,Washington,Colum.bia and so on before Rolla,Jefferson City and so on.

Gerbes would do good in St. Louis. Kroger In other parts of MO on 44. Ramey Price Cutter in other parts of MO.
I honestly think Kroger would be the better brand choice in STL. Brand familiarity from their previous history there, plus they still have stores on the fringes of the area (Troy, Rolla and Louisiana, Hannibal, Warrenton until recently).
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by Bagels »

Useless trivia: the Lake Orion Meijer replaces a now-demolished K-Mart, which yielded the first paycheck I ever earned.

On one hand, I’m not surprised: the Lake Orion and nearby Oakland and Orion Township Krogers are among the highest grossing Krogers in the county, and the Auburn Hills (Great Lakes Crossing) Meijer is/was its highest grossing location for many years. On the other hand, there’s an Meijer in Oxford literally 10 minutes up the same road, and that store has long been said to be underperforming. Obviously Orion/Oakland continues to grow, and one has to drive by the LO Kroger to get to the Oxford Meijer, so Meijer may be assuming many of its potential consumers won’t make the drive.

I wish I would’ve been able to return to the area before the K-Mart closed / was torn down, but I guess it’s better to ring in the new than dwell on the old. All of these stores opened in the early 2000s, after I had graduated HS and moved out-of-state, so my memories will always be of a super busy K-Mart they endlessly played ‘Closing Time,’ and the adjacent ghetto Farmer Jack endlessly playing ‘it’s savings time’ theme.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by storewanderer »

I don't expect Kroger to enter St. Louis. They have a couple stores at far edges (Rolla and some other...), closed one real old store not too long ago too. I don't think that Kroger Division that would encompass St. Louis has opened any new stores in quite some time, but they have closed a number of stores.

At least they opened a number of Ruler Foods around St. Louis.

Once Meijer gets going in St. Louis there will not be room for Kroger, unless they enter by way of buying Schnucks, which could work. Kroger would pretty badly deteriorate the quality of Schnucks fresh departments though.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by Romr123 »

yeah, Kroger wasn't mourned particularly when they left in the 80s. Schnucks' superior perimeter departments and exhaustive center-store selection have sustained them for a long time--they're everywhere in the metro and have lots of stores. They've had a few stumbles (a cybersecurity problem 4-5 years ago) but still are entirely King Kong.
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Re: Meijer mid-size concept coming to suburban Detroit

Post by BatteryMill »

storewanderer wrote: September 5th, 2022, 1:16 am I don't expect Kroger to enter St. Louis. They have a couple stores at far edges (Rolla and some other...), closed one real old store not too long ago too. I don't think that Kroger Division that would encompass St. Louis has opened any new stores in quite some time, but they have closed a number of stores.

At least they opened a number of Ruler Foods around St. Louis.

Once Meijer gets going in St. Louis there will not be room for Kroger, unless they enter by way of buying Schnucks, which could work. Kroger would pretty badly deteriorate the quality of Schnucks fresh departments though.
Growth in physical stores is stagnant at Kroger in general but the Central Division, based out of Indianapolis and covering Troy and Rolla have opened some in the past 5-10 years, mostly close to Indy.
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