As you know, Harris Teeter was a small but fast growing chain. Kroger acquired the chain after a bidding war and put the brakes on its rapid growth... because outside of its core markets, it wasn't profitable.storewanderer wrote: ↑March 19th, 2023, 1:17 pmWell, the customers did have choices... the choices mostly went out of business as Publix outperformed them in Florida.veteran+ wrote: ↑March 19th, 2023, 8:00 am Yep, you are both spot on about Publix.
Their ideology and hubris will never allow them to get involved in a Union environment or be bought out. The DNA of this company is JENKINS (related or not) and it will remain so.
They are not innovators, plus it is the Publix way or get lost.
IMO, their cult like success is about historical "luck" and a PR and Ad campaign that has hypnotized their customers (whom do not have significant choices) and "the industry" that they are the utopia of supermarkets.
What I find more interesting about Publix is their organic expansion outside Florida. In the modern times the only other chain that has had such a successful long running organic expansion program covering so many states/territories in the grocery business is Wal Mart. Wherever Publix expands, customers seem to view them as the "superior" option. Look at Atlanta as a good example. People saw Kroger as some kind of a low end operator and people there seem to just love Publix. In Nashville my observation was Publix wasn't doing great (Kroger always busier if nearby) but anyone you ask about Publix has a positive opinion of them.
Where I think Publix excels is in basics of Grocery 101. The stores are generally clean, orderly, well stocked, and well staffed. The stores do not feel run down. Perimeters are staffed/open when the store is open (which isn't very late). Publix strikes me as quite dependable. Service is interesting- great outside FL, awful in Miami (seems to be a Miami thing), and varying from marginal to okay in other parts of FL. My other observation is Publix allocates proper staffing dollars to its stores to have adequate staffing levels for the volume they do. They also seem to have a very tight grip on shrink (part of why I think their meat and produce areas are not good- they hardly put any product out in so many of their stores and pricing is high).
Yes, collectively Publix stores are the nicest of any significant (large) chain. Yes, Publix has the best deli and bakery (of any large chain). Yes, its produce, meat/ seafood is among the best. Yes, nearly everybody who's been in Publix is "wow'd" by it. Yes, Publix won the Florida grocery stores wars, with numerous large operators attempting to build out specific regions in the 1990s but all dropping out. Two big reasons for this -- the biggest being that they looked for the highest volume stores in a given area by a competitor and built a new, better store nearby. The other is demographics -- in the 90s and into the 00s, much of Florida was largely poor/lower middle class OR upper middle class/rich... it was among Walmart's first buildouts and they captured the first group, whereas the second wanted something better.
In Atlanta, Publix overtook Kroger in market share in 2010, but Kroger came out on top just a year or two later and hasn't looked back since. Despite Atlanta ranking in the top 5 in high paying jobs added over the past decade. Nashville's also in that top 5, and Publix hasn't made much inroads there basically since it entered the market 20 years ago. People love Publix, but most think it's too expensive to shop there.