Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by veteran+ »

Sorry, but I have no confidence in any of these entities to "do the right thing" for the consumer or the employee.

The FTC, the Law, Wall Street, the Companies, et al.

Whatever the outcome, the consumer and the employee will LOSE, no matter the promises or "projections".

History is the proof!
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by ClownLoach »

BillyGr wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 4:50 pm
Bagels wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 12:01 pm You're reading too much into this. Until the merger is approved, it's business as usual. It wouldn't be lawful for the operations side to coordinate with the merger folks, hence why Albertsons is proceeding with numerous remodels / etc. that Kroger would probably elaborate on.
Would they really NEED to do anything unlawful?

After all, if a group of people (such as those here on this forum) can figure out what stores are likely to be kept and what ones will likely need to be gotten rid of, it doesn't seem that it would be hard for those actually working for the company in the operations section to come to the same conclusions without talking to anyone who actually knows what is being planned.

If they figure it out on their own, nothing would stop them from acting on those thoughts, since they aren't actually getting any "inside" information to do so.
Exactly. Traffic data and even sales data on competitors is bought and sold. Companies like ShopperTrak and survey vendors like SMG and Medallia sell this stuff. CheckPoint, the dumb beeping security gate company, also sells the traffic data including close rate on stores that use their system and somehow everyone must be okay with it as I don't see Target or others ripping the gates out. Trust me, there is a whole world that happens in the corporate headquarters of these companies that would utterly shock the average person. I have personally been confronted with a report on a market I supervised (where I had a new competitor that dropped into a much better location than my two stores) and they literally had my market and store comps compared to neighboring Walmart, Target, a few supermarket chains, CVS, Ross, and some others who participated. All they had to do was pay for the report, and everyone else who used the same companies could do the same thing. There may be no true sending a plane of execs from Ohio to Idaho to hash out a meeting. All they need to do is have one side figure out what needs to go, then "help" the other side come to the "same conclusion" so they can be ready. I'm sure more changes are happening behind the scenes that we don't see. If the "top gun" management team is running that Vons on the opposite corner from a Ralphs but the next Vons across town is in the clear merger wise then they're probably going to make personnel changes. Don't believe for one second that they are going to operate without addressing the elephant in the room. If they did they would set themselves up for disaster.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by ClownLoach »

ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 10:26 am
BillyGr wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 4:50 pm
Bagels wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 12:01 pm You're reading too much into this. Until the merger is approved, it's business as usual. It wouldn't be lawful for the operations side to coordinate with the merger folks, hence why Albertsons is proceeding with numerous remodels / etc. that Kroger would probably elaborate on.
Would they really NEED to do anything unlawful?

After all, if a group of people (such as those here on this forum) can figure out what stores are likely to be kept and what ones will likely need to be gotten rid of, it doesn't seem that it would be hard for those actually working for the company in the operations section to come to the same conclusions without talking to anyone who actually knows what is being planned.

If they figure it out on their own, nothing would stop them from acting on those thoughts, since they aren't actually getting any "inside" information to do so.
Exactly. Traffic data and even sales data on competitors is bought and sold. Companies like ShopperTrak and survey vendors like SMG and Medallia sell this stuff. CheckPoint, the dumb beeping security gate company, also sells the traffic data including close rate on stores that use their system and somehow everyone must be okay with it as I don't see Target or others ripping the gates out. Trust me, there is a whole world that happens in the corporate headquarters of these companies that would utterly shock the average person. I have personally been confronted with a report on a market I supervised (where I had a new competitor that dropped into a much better location than my two stores) and they literally had my market and store comps compared to neighboring Walmart, Target, a few supermarket chains, CVS, Ross, and some others who participated. All they had to do was pay for the report, and everyone else who used the same companies could do the same thing. There may be no true sending a plane of execs from Ohio to Idaho to hash out a meeting. All they need to do is have one side figure out what needs to go, then "help" the other side come to the "same conclusion" so they can be ready. I'm sure more changes are happening behind the scenes that we don't see. If the "top gun" management team is running that Vons on the opposite corner from a Ralphs but the next Vons across town is in the clear merger wise then they're probably going to make personnel changes. Don't believe for one second that they are going to operate without addressing the elephant in the room. If they did they would set themselves up for disaster.
I'll take it a step further: there are probably a ton of folks in the Safeway and Albertsons offices who know they can catapult their career by engineering a way to make this merger go through AND be successful (the AND is important here). Guarantee that there are teams focused on this integration and divest strategy because they know that if they can make this work then they'll still have a job in the new Kroger organization. The people in those offices who make themselves into heroes will be the ones kept. Everyone else is likely to be sent packing as the integration goes on and their jobs are determined to be redundant. They know that they are up against someone on the other side who already gets a Kroger paycheck and has a leg up on them. This is standard operating procedure for mergers in all industries.

Again to pretend that both companies are acting like its truly business as usual is a complete farce. The only business as usual is the work that MUST be done to ensure that the Albertsons side is NOT set back if the deal is squashed (like contracts and IT as discussed) PLUS they have to have another team working on "Plan B" which is how the hell do they survive if the merger gets fully blocked now that they gave away the $4B dividend leaving themselves short on cash and further in debt. The corporate graveyards are lined with headstones of companies that did not handle all aspects of proposed merger situations well and when things didn't go according to plan everything went straight to hell.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by Bagels »

I know it sounds good, but reality is that there’s only a thin chance the operations side of Albertsons and Kroger are working together at any level. The legal ramifications are just too daunting – lawsuits from various states, customers, shareholders, vendors, etc. Not to mention that accusations of collusion may torpedo the merger and at best would drag approval for years. All this to get a leg up on planning the merged store footprint?
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by veteran+ »

ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 11:32 am
ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 10:26 am
BillyGr wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 4:50 pm

Would they really NEED to do anything unlawful?

After all, if a group of people (such as those here on this forum) can figure out what stores are likely to be kept and what ones will likely need to be gotten rid of, it doesn't seem that it would be hard for those actually working for the company in the operations section to come to the same conclusions without talking to anyone who actually knows what is being planned.

If they figure it out on their own, nothing would stop them from acting on those thoughts, since they aren't actually getting any "inside" information to do so.
Exactly. Traffic data and even sales data on competitors is bought and sold. Companies like ShopperTrak and survey vendors like SMG and Medallia sell this stuff. CheckPoint, the dumb beeping security gate company, also sells the traffic data including close rate on stores that use their system and somehow everyone must be okay with it as I don't see Target or others ripping the gates out. Trust me, there is a whole world that happens in the corporate headquarters of these companies that would utterly shock the average person. I have personally been confronted with a report on a market I supervised (where I had a new competitor that dropped into a much better location than my two stores) and they literally had my market and store comps compared to neighboring Walmart, Target, a few supermarket chains, CVS, Ross, and some others who participated. All they had to do was pay for the report, and everyone else who used the same companies could do the same thing. There may be no true sending a plane of execs from Ohio to Idaho to hash out a meeting. All they need to do is have one side figure out what needs to go, then "help" the other side come to the "same conclusion" so they can be ready. I'm sure more changes are happening behind the scenes that we don't see. If the "top gun" management team is running that Vons on the opposite corner from a Ralphs but the next Vons across town is in the clear merger wise then they're probably going to make personnel changes. Don't believe for one second that they are going to operate without addressing the elephant in the room. If they did they would set themselves up for disaster.
I'll take it a step further: there are probably a ton of folks in the Safeway and Albertsons offices who know they can catapult their career by engineering a way to make this merger go through AND be successful (the AND is important here). Guarantee that there are teams focused on this integration and divest strategy because they know that if they can make this work then they'll still have a job in the new Kroger organization. The people in those offices who make themselves into heroes will be the ones kept. Everyone else is likely to be sent packing as the integration goes on and their jobs are determined to be redundant. They know that they are up against someone on the other side who already gets a Kroger paycheck and has a leg up on them. This is standard operating procedure for mergers in all industries.

Again to pretend that both companies are acting like its truly business as usual is a complete farce. The only business as usual is the work that MUST be done to ensure that the Albertsons side is NOT set back if the deal is squashed (like contracts and IT as discussed) PLUS they have to have another team working on "Plan B" which is how the hell do they survive if the merger gets fully blocked now that they gave away the $4B dividend leaving themselves short on cash and further in debt. The corporate graveyards are lined with headstones of companies that did not handle all aspects of proposed merger situations well and when things didn't go according to plan everything went straight to hell.
Your uber experience from the inside is much valued!

It is the real world perspective of what really goes on sans the theories, speculations, fantasies and "say this and do that" that so many actually believe. Also the belief that if something is illegal, "they could never do that"........nonsense.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 9:54 am Doesn't solve the problem of Riverside County. Ralphs and Vons hardly exist. Ralphs is a distant 4th in the Temecula valley and Albertsons banner stores outnumber combined Ralphs and Vons 2 to 1. The two Vons locations are the worst supermarkets in the valley and obviously are divest fodder. Albertsons is the #1 market leader and its the fastest growing area of SoCal. So the "everything Albertsons branded goes" doesn't work unless they want Save Mart or whoever else to own the area. The only two Ralphs are on extreme fringes of town backing up against hills and mountains so automatically only a 180° customer radius. And I've already brought up North San Diego where again Albertsons does very well and has the most stores. Entire fast growing areas would be abandoned with this strategy.
I doubt Albertsons is #1 in the IE, it is definitely Stater Bros. country. In the Temecula Valley, yes, but the rest of the IE, no.
In North San Diego, Albertsons banner has no presence along the coast south of O'side (Carlsbad/Encinitas/Solana Beach/Del Mar) due to Haggen divests.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by pseudo3d »

ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 11:32 am
ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 10:26 am
BillyGr wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 4:50 pm

Would they really NEED to do anything unlawful?

After all, if a group of people (such as those here on this forum) can figure out what stores are likely to be kept and what ones will likely need to be gotten rid of, it doesn't seem that it would be hard for those actually working for the company in the operations section to come to the same conclusions without talking to anyone who actually knows what is being planned.

If they figure it out on their own, nothing would stop them from acting on those thoughts, since they aren't actually getting any "inside" information to do so.
Exactly. Traffic data and even sales data on competitors is bought and sold. Companies like ShopperTrak and survey vendors like SMG and Medallia sell this stuff. CheckPoint, the dumb beeping security gate company, also sells the traffic data including close rate on stores that use their system and somehow everyone must be okay with it as I don't see Target or others ripping the gates out. Trust me, there is a whole world that happens in the corporate headquarters of these companies that would utterly shock the average person. I have personally been confronted with a report on a market I supervised (where I had a new competitor that dropped into a much better location than my two stores) and they literally had my market and store comps compared to neighboring Walmart, Target, a few supermarket chains, CVS, Ross, and some others who participated. All they had to do was pay for the report, and everyone else who used the same companies could do the same thing. There may be no true sending a plane of execs from Ohio to Idaho to hash out a meeting. All they need to do is have one side figure out what needs to go, then "help" the other side come to the "same conclusion" so they can be ready. I'm sure more changes are happening behind the scenes that we don't see. If the "top gun" management team is running that Vons on the opposite corner from a Ralphs but the next Vons across town is in the clear merger wise then they're probably going to make personnel changes. Don't believe for one second that they are going to operate without addressing the elephant in the room. If they did they would set themselves up for disaster.
I'll take it a step further: there are probably a ton of folks in the Safeway and Albertsons offices who know they can catapult their career by engineering a way to make this merger go through AND be successful (the AND is important here). Guarantee that there are teams focused on this integration and divest strategy because they know that if they can make this work then they'll still have a job in the new Kroger organization. The people in those offices who make themselves into heroes will be the ones kept. Everyone else is likely to be sent packing as the integration goes on and their jobs are determined to be redundant. They know that they are up against someone on the other side who already gets a Kroger paycheck and has a leg up on them. This is standard operating procedure for mergers in all industries.

Again to pretend that both companies are acting like its truly business as usual is a complete farce. The only business as usual is the work that MUST be done to ensure that the Albertsons side is NOT set back if the deal is squashed (like contracts and IT as discussed) PLUS they have to have another team working on "Plan B" which is how the hell do they survive if the merger gets fully blocked now that they gave away the $4B dividend leaving themselves short on cash and further in debt. The corporate graveyards are lined with headstones of companies that did not handle all aspects of proposed merger situations well and when things didn't go according to plan everything went straight to hell.
Alternatively, this may be "a cigar is just a cigar" moments. Every store opening or closure in the Albertsons corporate structure is now viewed as some sort of merger play--did they close this because of the merger, are they renovating this store to divest that store, et cetera. I'm sure there's a lot of misery in the middle ranks, and probably a few ambitious middle managers who would be happy to throw the company under the bus to ensure good graces with Kroger...but, what, move to Cincinnati?

I'll throw you an alternate theory--the lines between Pavilions and Vons have been blurring for years to the point where there's not a lot of difference between Pavilions and the nicer Vons in the chain. By eliminating Pavilions as a chain, Albertsons can save money on branding, uniforms, and other features. Plus, the Long Beach Pavilions converting to Vons is antithetical to the merger--if the merger was for sure a done deal (for a moment let's just magically assume everything was located correctly so it could be greenlit immediately), why waste time and money if it's just going to be converted to Ralphs or Kroger in a few years anyway?
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by ClownLoach »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 4:16 pm
ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 9:54 am Doesn't solve the problem of Riverside County. Ralphs and Vons hardly exist. Ralphs is a distant 4th in the Temecula valley and Albertsons banner stores outnumber combined Ralphs and Vons 2 to 1. The two Vons locations are the worst supermarkets in the valley and obviously are divest fodder. Albertsons is the #1 market leader and its the fastest growing area of SoCal. So the "everything Albertsons branded goes" doesn't work unless they want Save Mart or whoever else to own the area. The only two Ralphs are on extreme fringes of town backing up against hills and mountains so automatically only a 180° customer radius. And I've already brought up North San Diego where again Albertsons does very well and has the most stores. Entire fast growing areas would be abandoned with this strategy.
I doubt Albertsons is #1 in the IE, it is definitely Stater Bros. country. In the Temecula Valley, yes, but the rest of the IE, no.
In North San Diego, Albertsons banner has no presence along the coast south of O'side (Carlsbad/Encinitas/Solana Beach/Del Mar) due to Haggen divests.
I only meant store count in the Temecula Valley, which is the only part of the IE that is really competitive and growing in Riverside county. There are at least 8 Albertsons, 2 Vons, 2 Ralphs, 4 Stater.

North SD I am talking about the 76 & 78 corridor areas, which is a pretty big area that Ralphs is surprisingly light on coverage in and Albertsons is top store count.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by ClownLoach »

pseudo3d wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 6:26 pm
ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 11:32 am
ClownLoach wrote: February 23rd, 2023, 10:26 am
Exactly. Traffic data and even sales data on competitors is bought and sold. Companies like ShopperTrak and survey vendors like SMG and Medallia sell this stuff. CheckPoint, the dumb beeping security gate company, also sells the traffic data including close rate on stores that use their system and somehow everyone must be okay with it as I don't see Target or others ripping the gates out. Trust me, there is a whole world that happens in the corporate headquarters of these companies that would utterly shock the average person. I have personally been confronted with a report on a market I supervised (where I had a new competitor that dropped into a much better location than my two stores) and they literally had my market and store comps compared to neighboring Walmart, Target, a few supermarket chains, CVS, Ross, and some others who participated. All they had to do was pay for the report, and everyone else who used the same companies could do the same thing. There may be no true sending a plane of execs from Ohio to Idaho to hash out a meeting. All they need to do is have one side figure out what needs to go, then "help" the other side come to the "same conclusion" so they can be ready. I'm sure more changes are happening behind the scenes that we don't see. If the "top gun" management team is running that Vons on the opposite corner from a Ralphs but the next Vons across town is in the clear merger wise then they're probably going to make personnel changes. Don't believe for one second that they are going to operate without addressing the elephant in the room. If they did they would set themselves up for disaster.
I'll take it a step further: there are probably a ton of folks in the Safeway and Albertsons offices who know they can catapult their career by engineering a way to make this merger go through AND be successful (the AND is important here). Guarantee that there are teams focused on this integration and divest strategy because they know that if they can make this work then they'll still have a job in the new Kroger organization. The people in those offices who make themselves into heroes will be the ones kept. Everyone else is likely to be sent packing as the integration goes on and their jobs are determined to be redundant. They know that they are up against someone on the other side who already gets a Kroger paycheck and has a leg up on them. This is standard operating procedure for mergers in all industries.

Again to pretend that both companies are acting like its truly business as usual is a complete farce. The only business as usual is the work that MUST be done to ensure that the Albertsons side is NOT set back if the deal is squashed (like contracts and IT as discussed) PLUS they have to have another team working on "Plan B" which is how the hell do they survive if the merger gets fully blocked now that they gave away the $4B dividend leaving themselves short on cash and further in debt. The corporate graveyards are lined with headstones of companies that did not handle all aspects of proposed merger situations well and when things didn't go according to plan everything went straight to hell.
Alternatively, this may be "a cigar is just a cigar" moments. Every store opening or closure in the Albertsons corporate structure is now viewed as some sort of merger play--did they close this because of the merger, are they renovating this store to divest that store, et cetera. I'm sure there's a lot of misery in the middle ranks, and probably a few ambitious middle managers who would be happy to throw the company under the bus to ensure good graces with Kroger...but, what, move to Cincinnati?

I'll throw you an alternate theory--the lines between Pavilions and Vons have been blurring for years to the point where there's not a lot of difference between Pavilions and the nicer Vons in the chain. By eliminating Pavilions as a chain, Albertsons can save money on branding, uniforms, and other features. Plus, the Long Beach Pavilions converting to Vons is antithetical to the merger--if the merger was for sure a done deal (for a moment let's just magically assume everything was located correctly so it could be greenlit immediately), why waste time and money if it's just going to be converted to Ralphs or Kroger in a few years anyway?
I'm going there tomorrow as I have a appointment nearby. My guess on the Long Beach one is that it's a real estate issue and it's being downsized for rental space. The clearing out all the stores to the right of the entrance before we heard about this was really a dead giveaway. Pavilions is still being rolled out to Vons formats and La Costa should be next.
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Re: Pavilions Long Beach converting to Vons

Post by ClownLoach »

Well the answer is not much going on there. No construction vehicles or containers. Appears to be a paint only remodel, similar to the other Vons refreshes where they did paint similar to colorful lifestyle without replacing the graphics/signs. Probably no permit needed either.
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