Retail Watchers

This is a disappointing development. The new build 2018 Lucky in Dublin is closing.

I am not very surprised as this store had very little business and probably should have never been opened in the first place. However this is a very unfortunate development given it was one of the nicest stores in Save Mart's network and one of their few "new" stores.

I cannot imagine their lease only lasted 5 years so I assume something else is going to be taking the space/lease over.

I wonder if we will ever see a new from the ground up Lucky again. I don't count that thing in Bayview in San Francisco that moved into a closed Walgreens (which is also doing almost no sales volume).

Save Mart really needs to straighten out its operation. They need to get serious about price. I think their prices have become higher than Raleys and Safeway during 2023, though Safeway is working hard to keep the massive price increases coming. This is unacceptable. They need to discontinue the Sunny Select private label and replace it with Food Club (larger mix, lower cost due to large scale of that brand). They need to better promote many of their perimeter offers as they have various bakery/deli offerings that are better than anything Safeway and Raleys have.

So what happened to those purported veteran geniuses running the company?

veteran+ wrote: ↑October 13th, 2023, 7:10 am So what happened to those purported veteran geniuses running the company?

Clearly what they were brought in to handle doesn't look like it will materialize.

We will see what happens next.

We need this chain to be a viable competitor in its markets.

That new shopping center already has a large new looking Target store.

The problem with this new Lucky store was that it was really inconvenient for parking. If you go to Target the Lucky is too far to walk. You have to move your car to go to Lucky.

The parking lot has an awful design. It is confusing and it feels like you can get into a car accident just trying to back out of your parking space. The sight lines are so bad. The parking spaces are so narrow.

Walking to the store from your car is very uncomfortable as you have to cross a busy street with crazy drivers. Trees and obstacles block your view.

The Safeway and Walmart have easy parking.

The shopping center is really on the edge of the city with large areas of empty grasslands. The Safeway is surrounded by houses and condos. That location is well established and has restaurants to support itself.

The Lucky has nothing good around it. There are restaurants way on the other side of the shopping center, but it is too far to attract business to Lucky.

The area to the east is barren land with no houses for miles. I never travel that far east. The shopping center is way too distant. Years ago Dublin was building houses like crazy, but in the past decade they seemed to switch to condos. Now those ugly tiny condos sit empty because people want big houses with large yards.

The huge subdivisions of houses near Lucky were never built because the pandemic hit in 2020. This area around Lucky is desolate.

Sounds like a real estate mistake by the previous ownership of Save Mart.

Pretty big mistake when it is the only new build Lucky Store you ever build. I always was suspicious this store wouldn't make it, but it was such a nice store, and executed very well, that I thought it may have a fighting chance. This was one of the things back in 2018 that made me pause on my previous very negative attitude toward Save Mart and recognize they could still actually put out a good store and good products, along with a couple Save Mart major remodels where I had similar positive observations closer to Modesto.

I guess I didn't notice the parking lot issues due to lack of traffic...

How does the Target do?

i'm wondering if the people running save mart starts to consider getting on the phone with kroger to sell the chain to them with the albertsons kroger merger falling apart. foodsco can easily be rebranded to foodmaxx and the nevada save marts can be rebranded to smith's. maybe rebannering the central valley stores to lucky under kroger ownership wouldn't be a bad idea.

The Target does decent business. That is only because there aren't that many Target stores in the area. People travel far and wide to go to Target. This Target seems really distant. There is another Target in Dublin near the downtown which is a much more central location that I go to.