Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by storewanderer »

Winn Dixie has been a screwed up mess for a long time. I think Lone Star has actually kept the chain going much longer than it would have kept going on its own, or publicly traded. The merger with Bi Lo doesn't appear to have been a success by any stretch, and I sometimes wonder if Winn Dixie could have done better alone. It appears some of the other acquisitions like select Sweetbay units were a successful move however.

I think Winn Dixie is much better now than it was 10-15 years ago, but it doesn't stick with anything long enough to solidify the case to the customer that they really want to get better and stay better. They keep trying different ways to get better and never stick with them.

I didn't think Winn Dixie's customer service around Miami was any worse than Publix...
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by jipper »

I think Winn Dixie is much better now than it was 10-15 years ago, but it doesn't stick with anything long enough to solidify the case to the customer that they really want to get better and stay better. They keep trying different ways to get better and never stick with them.
Agree completely on all points. I grew up near New York City and A&P did the same type of stuff - different concepts, tag lines and all that, but nothing seemed to catch on. Anyone in the area at the time will remember the WEO campaign (Where economy originates) and PLUS (Priced low, u save). Meanwhile their stores, as mentioned earlier, were dark, small and falling apart. They kept trying, or seeming to try, to no avail.

Winn Dixie does this kind of stuff too. I keep hearing about stores being refreshed, but so no evidence, at least in my area.

And, finally, their commercials are pretty bizarre - they look like something some kids would come up with. "It's a win - winn". Really?

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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by storewanderer »

jipper wrote: November 22nd, 2022, 5:10 am
I think Winn Dixie is much better now than it was 10-15 years ago, but it doesn't stick with anything long enough to solidify the case to the customer that they really want to get better and stay better. They keep trying different ways to get better and never stick with them.
Agree completely on all points. I grew up near New York City and A&P did the same type of stuff - different concepts, tag lines and all that, but nothing seemed to catch on. Anyone in the area at the time will remember the WEO campaign (Where economy originates) and PLUS (Priced low, u save). Meanwhile their stores, as mentioned earlier, were dark, small and falling apart. They kept trying, or seeming to try, to no avail.

Winn Dixie does this kind of stuff too. I keep hearing about stores being refreshed, but so no evidence, at least in my area.

And, finally, their commercials are pretty bizarre - they look like something some kids would come up with. "It's a win - winn". Really?

I guess at least they have commercials. I remember their mid 90's commercials which played on national TV, with their song they played that they "had a way" or something. It doesn't seem like they've progressed much. Same old thing. Smiling employees in a store. New commercial is a bit more active. The "win winn" thing with the employees throwing fruit around appears as if they are trying to appeal to people watching sports or something. This ad doesn't make me think groceries.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by pseudo3d »

jipper wrote: November 22nd, 2022, 5:10 am
I think Winn Dixie is much better now than it was 10-15 years ago, but it doesn't stick with anything long enough to solidify the case to the customer that they really want to get better and stay better. They keep trying different ways to get better and never stick with them.
Agree completely on all points. I grew up near New York City and A&P did the same type of stuff - different concepts, tag lines and all that, but nothing seemed to catch on. Anyone in the area at the time will remember the WEO campaign (Where economy originates) and PLUS (Priced low, u save). Meanwhile their stores, as mentioned earlier, were dark, small and falling apart. They kept trying, or seeming to try, to no avail.

Winn Dixie does this kind of stuff too. I keep hearing about stores being refreshed, but so no evidence, at least in my area.

And, finally, their commercials are pretty bizarre - they look like something some kids would come up with. "It's a win - winn". Really?

Plus was an imported concept out of Germany (I believe A&P had German owners for a while), similar to Aldi. Aldi's introduction in the U.S. was rocky as well (first one built out of an existing grocery store) but ultimately grew into a successful, modern operation that was able to carve out a niche and snipe market share from Walmart and traditional grocers. Better executed, A&P could've been able to transition its smaller stores into Plus successfully while expanding the chain with new-build stores but it was not to be.

In addition to having the "huge fleet of outdated stores", the stores that were larger and modern were treated almost as experiment and not something that they wanted to push the direction of the company in. Thus, the Winn-Dixie Marketplace stores were actually branded as "Winn-Dixie Marketplace" and not having the "Marketplace" dropped over time as the stores grew into it. In comparison, while Kroger internally had the "Superstore" model, they weren't actually branded as Kroger Superstore, they were just Kroger, and the chain was able to successfully upgrade the fleet, and in the lean times (late 1980s, when the company was fighting off acquisition attempts) they were able to hold onto market share. Ultimately, this tactic was able to pay off handsomely.

But by the time Winn-Dixie declared bankruptcy in 2005 all those problems had bubbled to the surface. Publix was the indisputable leader in Florida and the de facto Florida grocer (and had expanded to four additional states, all in Winn-Dixie's market area or recently former market area), Albertsons, while struggling in Florida, had taken a huge chunk out of Winn-Dixie's market share (and had far larger and more modern stores), and despite having cut losses in a number of their furthest markets, was still pushing around a lot of older stores. By 2005, most of those "modern" Marketplace were dated and certainly not up to snuff that the competition had.

Post-bankruptcy Winn-Dixie did premier a number of modern stores and every once in a while the company creates a modern, attractive prototype, but most of these are short-lived. The red-and-white decor in the prototype store (giant decor on a high-roofed store) was horribly cheapened when actually rolled out to stores (especially during the Down Down campaign). Seeing as how SEG wasn't really going to go places, Lone Star Funds should've tried to make Winn-Dixie more attractive for sale (which hasn't gone far enough)...and that might've worked but letting loose they want to sell AFTER the Kroger-Albertsons merger was announced is really late if they wanted to catch the eye of either company.

Even if the merger doesn't go through, their prospects are grim as far as selling goes. They need to go all in and buy Cerberus' share of Albertsons or cut their losses and offer themselves up to Kroger for a discount.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by storewanderer »

It is tough for me to see Winn Dixie as a functional part of Kroger. The stores seem too small, not located correctly, and a tarnished brand.

My guess is in the back of their mind Lone Star was really hoping to sell this chain to Albertsons or Kroger. Now that this Albertsons/Kroger merger is happening they are thinking that ship has now sailed and they are at the point of no return. I am not sure if that is actually the right assessment but I do think it is true that Albertsons and Kroger have zero interest in Winn Dixie. Frankly, Kroger would be better off building 20-30 new Marketplace Stores in Florida over a 5 year period than taking over Winn Dixie for the purpose of entering Florida. If Kroger could get those 20-30 Marketplace Stores up to the $1 million a week volume level so many of their Marketplace Stores do, that would be an excellent foundation to build further upon.

What will be interesting to see is if Publix decides to go ahead and buy Winn Dixie (obviously not as an operating chain). Given lack of potential buyers it kind of seems like they could just name their terms. Publix will get whatever it wants in Florida without any anti-trust friction, and there are more potential suitors for store divests in other states if anyone in those states cares (which I doubt anyone will care).

It is unfortunate Winn Dixie was not in a financial condition to take over any stores as Albertsons was exiting FL. Publix got what it wanted and Publix will ALWAYS get what they want in Florida. That would have really elevated the quality of Winn Dixie's Store base and I think they could have done an okay job with those stores which were far better than a Winn Dixie typical store (sort of like Homeland in OK- they do great with former Albertsons and run them surprisingly well considering how their original stores the former Safeways are- dire).

Ahold could probably use Winn Dixie and run it like Food Lion. That may actually be productive. But given Ahold unloaded Bi-Lo, do they really want those regions? I know they got back in with Food Lion, but I am not convinced Food Lion is going to remain part of Ahold long term.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: November 26th, 2022, 1:13 am It is tough for me to see Winn Dixie as a functional part of Kroger. The stores seem too small, not located correctly, and a tarnished brand.

My guess is in the back of their mind Lone Star was really hoping to sell this chain to Albertsons or Kroger. Now that this Albertsons/Kroger merger is happening they are thinking that ship has now sailed and they are at the point of no return. I am not sure if that is actually the right assessment but I do think it is true that Albertsons and Kroger have zero interest in Winn Dixie. Frankly, Kroger would be better off building 20-30 new Marketplace Stores in Florida over a 5 year period than taking over Winn Dixie for the purpose of entering Florida. If Kroger could get those 20-30 Marketplace Stores up to the $1 million a week volume level so many of their Marketplace Stores do, that would be an excellent foundation to build further upon.

What will be interesting to see is if Publix decides to go ahead and buy Winn Dixie (obviously not as an operating chain). Given lack of potential buyers it kind of seems like they could just name their terms. Publix will get whatever it wants in Florida without any anti-trust friction, and there are more potential suitors for store divests in other states if anyone in those states cares (which I doubt anyone will care).

It is unfortunate Winn Dixie was not in a financial condition to take over any stores as Albertsons was exiting FL. Publix got what it wanted and Publix will ALWAYS get what they want in Florida. That would have really elevated the quality of Winn Dixie's Store base and I think they could have done an okay job with those stores which were far better than a Winn Dixie typical store (sort of like Homeland in OK- they do great with former Albertsons and run them surprisingly well considering how their original stores the former Safeways are- dire).

Ahold could probably use Winn Dixie and run it like Food Lion. That may actually be productive. But given Ahold unloaded Bi-Lo, do they really want those regions? I know they got back in with Food Lion, but I am not convinced Food Lion is going to remain part of Ahold long term.
I find Ahold Delhaize buying a number of Winn-Dixie stores within the realm of possibility, given their interest in Albertsons and those 80 or so BI-LO stores they bought and reopened as Food Lion. Publix I'm not sure on, as their Albertsons purchase didn't result in tons of dead stores; they reopened almost all of them. A few have been demolished and rebuilt as smaller stores closer to Publix's prototypes, but most of them still operate as Publix stores. Would Publix keep Winn-Dixie store sites operating as Publix stores? There's probably a handful of desirable locations in Florida but probably not much, and it's unrealistic to think Publix will use a W-D purchase as their vehicle to enter MS and LA.

I don't see Publix purchasing any Winn-Dixie stores unless Lone Star Funds decides to completely liquidate the company without finding a single buyer, and even if Publix did purchase some stores, they won't be at the premium Publix paid (coming out to approximately $10 million a store, and did not include any food plants, distribution, etc.). For comparison, when BI-LO purchased Winn-Dixie in 2011, the end result was closer to around $1.1 million a store and was the whole company.

The modern SEG-run Winn-Dixie doesn't have much more stores than Winn-Dixie did in 2011, and despite improving a number of them, Lone Star Funds can't expect Publix (or anyone else--Kroger, Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize) to fork over anywhere close to $10M a store as they did when they knocked out a good portion of the Albertsons Florida division.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by Knight »

storewanderer wrote: November 26th, 2022, 1:13 am It is tough for me to see Winn Dixie as a functional part of Kroger. The stores seem too small, not located correctly, and a tarnished brand.

My guess is in the back of their mind Lone Star was really hoping to sell this chain to Albertsons or Kroger. Now that this Albertsons/Kroger merger is happening they are thinking that ship has now sailed and they are at the point of no return. I am not sure if that is actually the right assessment but I do think it is true that Albertsons and Kroger have zero interest in Winn Dixie. Frankly, Kroger would be better off building 20-30 new Marketplace Stores in Florida over a 5 year period than taking over Winn Dixie for the purpose of entering Florida. If Kroger could get those 20-30 Marketplace Stores up to the $1 million a week volume level so many of their Marketplace Stores do, that would be an excellent foundation to build further upon.

What will be interesting to see is if Publix decides to go ahead and buy Winn Dixie (obviously not as an operating chain). Given lack of potential buyers it kind of seems like they could just name their terms. Publix will get whatever it wants in Florida without any anti-trust friction, and there are more potential suitors for store divests in other states if anyone in those states cares (which I doubt anyone will care).

It is unfortunate Winn Dixie was not in a financial condition to take over any stores as Albertsons was exiting FL. Publix got what it wanted and Publix will ALWAYS get what they want in Florida. That would have really elevated the quality of Winn Dixie's Store base and I think they could have done an okay job with those stores which were far better than a Winn Dixie typical store (sort of like Homeland in OK- they do great with former Albertsons and run them surprisingly well considering how their original stores the former Safeways are- dire).

Ahold could probably use Winn Dixie and run it like Food Lion. That may actually be productive. But given Ahold unloaded Bi-Lo, do they really want those regions? I know they got back in with Food Lion, but I am not convinced Food Lion is going to remain part of Ahold long term.
I do not know if Ahold Delhaize would like to take on additional Southeastern Grocers stores. A quantity of BI-LO and Harvey's stores in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina now operating as Food Lion are underperforming.

It has been a practice for Southeastern Grocers to divest a quantity of stores in specific markets to an existing or expanding competitor.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by cjd »

storewanderer wrote: November 20th, 2022, 12:44 am My guess is Publix will be the buyer in the event of Southwest Grocers being sold.

Given all the competition, Wal Mart, etc., I am sure Publix can easily address any competition concerns that are brought up.

I don’t see any point in Publix buying SE Grocers.

Publix has been expanding quite a bit in recent years to where there aren’t many towns where Winn Dixie exists but Publix doesn’t. And most of them are too small to support two stores.

Winn Dixie itself even had the problem when they bought Sweetbay that the town was too small for two WD stores. In some towns the stores were right across the intersection and did operate for awhile until the SEC ruled.

They were able to get by in my town because the town is so spread out, has much more competition, and already had two Publix stores and at one point in the past had two Winn Dixie stores before.

Many times Winn Dixie would just close their existing store because the Sweetbay it now has was up to date (somewhat) and WD was still running Marketplace era stores from the 90s that had never been remodeled, or even pre Marketplace 80s stores.

Winn Dixie simply doesn’t have that many stores that Publix would be interested in owning. It would be like the Food Lion stores that Publix acquired, they would just have to replace them.

They have been updating stores but many of them are still small, and again not in towns that Publix needs another store in.
Last edited by cjd on December 25th, 2022, 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by cjd »

Winn Dixie has been impressive lately and you can tell they are really trying. The stores look clean and the fresh departments I find pretty good. They still can’t compete with Publix on quality or volume though I don’t think.

It also ever since the (first) bankruptcy seems Winn Dixie tries all sorts of new things that never stay. It started with “Getting Better All the Time”, decent remodels that evolved into them trying to go “Transformational” that actually rivaled Publix in size and appearance, but we’re obviously too expensive to make anywhere close to every store.

Then that stopped when Winn Dixie bought Sweetbay and now had all sorts of different layouts and Decors under its umbrella, and ultimately selling to SEG.

They have been on a momentum ever since Down Down came out which is impressive. At least their stores will all have relatively the same decor. Can they do it again in 10 years though?

I always get my hopes up and think I’ll have a great experience and won’t feel like I’m at the old Winn Dixie.

But I went to my former Sweetbay Winn Dixie this week and while I usually don’t shop at Winn Dixie, I’m always left with that Winn Dixie feeling and it’s sure not the one I get at Publix.

This store had the “red remodel” about 4 years ago. It looks alright, but it doesn’t take long to tell how cheap it looks.

Practically all they did was paint the walls ave put up new signage, and gray trim kits over the refrigeration.

As I walked in produce looked great but it was kinda downhill from there. I smelled something burning as I went through the deli/bakery.

As I walked past the center part of the store I saw the floor tiles that were installed by Kash N Karry circa 2000/01. They’re cracking throughout the store, and showing their age, and they don’t match well with the new red and gray decor.

I was looking for ice cream, I went through the freezer aisle which was my last department to pass through.

The freezers which were also probably from 2000 and had gray trim kits over them, looked sweaty on the glass doors, and there was ice built up in the top corners.

The floor tiles along the front of the cases were also rough feeling and dirty looking. You could tell they’d been wet a lot which was causing them to come loose.

This is the kind of crap I see in Winn Dixie stores all the time. They half butt everything, they clearly saw these floors were looking sub par during their remodel but did nothing about it other than try to give a good cleaning and polish.

The ice cream was the same price as Publix but who was I to know it hadn’t thawed out. Yeah 20 year old cases is still better than 30 year old ones WD used to have in their old stores but still.

Those floors looked and felt like crap. The average shopper may not notice or care but it shows the kind of stores Winn Dixie is still running, stores that they boast about all having remodeled by 2024.

A great ambition, and I admit this store was an early remodel, they have been putting in new floors and refrigeration in their more recent redos, so they’re improving.

But it didn’t happen here, and I don’t see them doing it.

As I walked past the customer service desk on the way out, the lights weren’t even turned on yet it was open.

There’s ALWAYS something or multiple things amiss I find when I go to Winn Dixie.

Maybe I’m too Eagle eyed, maybe I pay too much attention to details, but I don’t see this kind of stuff when I go to either Publix here or even Aldi.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by cjd »

storewanderer wrote: November 21st, 2022, 11:18 pm Winn Dixie has been a screwed up mess for a long time. I think Lone Star has actually kept the chain going much longer than it would have kept going on its own, or publicly traded. The merger with Bi Lo doesn't appear to have been a success by any stretch, and I sometimes wonder if Winn Dixie could have done better alone. It appears some of the other acquisitions like select Sweetbay units were a successful move however.

I think Winn Dixie is much better now than it was 10-15 years ago, but it doesn't stick with anything long enough to solidify the case to the customer that they really want to get better and stay better. They keep trying different ways to get better and never stick with them.

I didn't think Winn Dixie's customer service around Miami was any worse than Publix...
Haha my thoughts entirely.

Also while probably most all of the Sweetbay stores were on a better level than Winn Dixie’s worst ones, they somewhat vary. WD got some nice nearly brand new ones when they acquired that chain, but some of them are pretty mediocre ones that started out as Kash N Karry in the 80s or even Food Lion in the early 90s. The average older ones got remodeled by Kash N Karry around 2000 with a minor update to Sweetbay 2004-06.
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