Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by jipper »

With the condition of the store fleet as well as many Winn Dixie stores located just about across the street from Publix, I seriously doubt that they will buy W/D. Perhaps a few stores here and there, but the whole chain; highly doubtful.

Albertsons? They pretty much left Florida a while back and doubt that they would come back for more.

Food Line also abandoned ship in Central FL a while back.

Every now and then the rumor mill will fire up with stories about Safeway buying a chain, but, so far, nothing real.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by pseudo3d »

One of the things about Publix and Albertsons is that most of the stores were built within the previous 15 years and were large, modern stores. They were willing to pay at a premium at something Cerberus couldn't resist.

Winn-Dixie not so much.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by rwsandiego »

pseudo3d wrote: November 20th, 2022, 9:06 am One of the things about Publix and Albertsons is that most of the stores were built within the previous 15 years and were large, modern stores. They were willing to pay at a premium at something Cerberus couldn't resist.

Winn-Dixie not so much.
Surprisingly, some of the Florida Albertsons were originally Jewel-Oscos from the 1980s/90s. However, Albertsons maintained its stores, so you would never know.

One of my closest friends moved to Florida a few years ago and always talks about shopping at Publix and never at Winn-Dixie. On one of my visits, I asked her why. She told me she would show me. So, we went to the Winn-Dixie across from the Publix in Dunedin. While it wasn't quite "godawful," it was pretty bad. She told me it is one of their nicer stores.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by storewanderer »

rwsandiego wrote: November 20th, 2022, 7:06 pm
pseudo3d wrote: November 20th, 2022, 9:06 am One of the things about Publix and Albertsons is that most of the stores were built within the previous 15 years and were large, modern stores. They were willing to pay at a premium at something Cerberus couldn't resist.

Winn-Dixie not so much.
Surprisingly, some of the Florida Albertsons were originally Jewel-Oscos from the 1980s/90s. However, Albertsons maintained its stores, so you would never know.

One of my closest friends moved to Florida a few years ago and always talks about shopping at Publix and never at Winn-Dixie. On one of my visits, I asked her why. She told me she would show me. So, we went to the Winn-Dixie across from the Publix in Dunedin. While it wasn't quite "godawful," it was pretty bad. She told me it is one of their nicer stores.
Winn Dixie has significant baggage and deserves the reputation it has for lousy stores.

But they do have some nicer stores that do higher volumes and have acceptable perimeters. But "higher volume" for Winn Dixie would qualify a store for closure under Kroger or Albertsons. They don't have the wow factor of Publix. It is unfortunate they outlasted Albertsons (or the misguided Safeway) format in the state of FL.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by veteran+ »

storewanderer wrote: November 20th, 2022, 7:57 pm
rwsandiego wrote: November 20th, 2022, 7:06 pm
pseudo3d wrote: November 20th, 2022, 9:06 am One of the things about Publix and Albertsons is that most of the stores were built within the previous 15 years and were large, modern stores. They were willing to pay at a premium at something Cerberus couldn't resist.

Winn-Dixie not so much.
Surprisingly, some of the Florida Albertsons were originally Jewel-Oscos from the 1980s/90s. However, Albertsons maintained its stores, so you would never know.

One of my closest friends moved to Florida a few years ago and always talks about shopping at Publix and never at Winn-Dixie. On one of my visits, I asked her why. She told me she would show me. So, we went to the Winn-Dixie across from the Publix in Dunedin. While it wasn't quite "godawful," it was pretty bad. She told me it is one of their nicer stores.
Winn Dixie has significant baggage and deserves the reputation it has for lousy stores.

But they do have some nicer stores that do higher volumes and have acceptable perimeters. But "higher volume" for Winn Dixie would qualify a store for closure under Kroger or Albertsons. They don't have the wow factor of Publix. It is unfortunate they outlasted Albertsons (or the misguided Safeway) format in the state of FL.
Yep, I agree. They deserve that reputation.

W/D has NO excuse (in any of their incarnations). They had an extraordinary opportunity to prevail and compete with Publix when Pantry Pride was disappeared and before Walmart got its massive foothold. They could have been the Stater Bros. of Florida.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by rwsandiego »

It seems like Winn-Dixie operated similarly to A&P and enriched the founding family instead of investing in the business.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by pseudo3d »

rwsandiego wrote: November 21st, 2022, 6:10 pm It seems like Winn-Dixie operated similarly to A&P and enriched the founding family instead of investing in the business.
A&P was up against a huge problem in the 1970s when they had a massive fleet of dated stores and a backlog of retirees but no real resources to be able to be competitive in their markets. Granted, they made many errors on the road to bankruptcy. Transitioning the Detroit A&P stores to Farmer Jack would've been fine and good if they had left Borman's management in charge and not had bad policies that drove off shoppers...using the savings from the sale of A&P New Orleans to invest in Pathmark was not good either.

The main similarity between A&P and Winn-Dixie is that they both had a large geographic area but their stores were small and outdated.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by rwsandiego »

pseudo3d wrote: November 21st, 2022, 6:44 pm
rwsandiego wrote: November 21st, 2022, 6:10 pm It seems like Winn-Dixie operated similarly to A&P and enriched the founding family instead of investing in the business.
A&P was up against a huge problem in the 1970s when they had a massive fleet of dated stores and a backlog of retirees but no real resources to be able to be competitive in their markets...
Right. One of the main reasons for the lack of investment in up-to-date stores and the lack of resources to cover pension obligations was the payment of dividends. The John A. Hartford Foundation, established by the founders of A&P, as well as the Hartford family reaped huge dividends. Those dividends could and should have been used to boost the company's finances, not those of the foundation/family.

The Davis family controlled Winn-Dixie until it filed for bankruptcy in 2005. A 1999 Florida Trend article noted that the company still paid a monthly dividend to shareholders. Who was the largest shareholder? Like A&P's Hartford family/John A. Hartford Foundation, Winn-Dixie's majority shareholder was the Davis family. Who led the firm? The son of one of the founding brothers. (The CEO of the Hartford foundation was also CEO of A&P)

Both A&P and Winn-Dixie failed to invest in the company over the decades and instead paid dividends to their owners. Doing so bit both companies in the as, er, asparagus. :)
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by pseudo3d »

I still think if Lone Star Funds was losing interest in SEG they missed the boat by just a few months and could've got Kroger on board. But I guess that's too late now! Their best shot I think is once the Kroger/Albertsons courtship breaks up (I still think that unless major sacrifices are made to SpinCo, it will probably go nowhere), they buy the controlling interest of Albertsons from Cerberus and merges the two companies under new leadership. Cerberus gets some payment from LSF and LSF gets some real stores to play with.
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Re: Southeast Grocers Exploring Sale

Post by jamcool »

Hard to believe, but at one time W/D had stores as far west as New Mexico-the Foodway chain, which was sold to Smith’s in the 70s due to labor/union problems.
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