Thrifty Ice Cream now at Vons/Albertsons

[ClownLoach]

Makes you wonder if Albertsons trying to buy Rite Aid is in the works again....

Watch how fast it shows up at Stater Bros.

And I think the very short lived Haggen sold it in SoCal.

I saw room being made for something new last week in the ice cream aisle at Stater.

As was already made clear in the Eater article, Thrifty Ice Cream operates with a high degree of latitude. It's profitable and has tons of room to expand. About the only place they wouldn't sell it would be CVS and Walgreens.

[storewanderer]

Makes you wonder if Albertsons trying to buy Rite Aid is in the works again....

Watch how fast it shows up at Stater Bros.

And I think the very short lived Haggen sold it in SoCal.

I saw room being made for something new last week in the ice cream aisle at Stater.

As was already made clear in the Eater article, Thrifty Ice Cream operates with a high degree of latitude. It's profitable and has tons of room to expand. About the only place they wouldn't sell it would be CVS and Walgreens.

Harsh reality is they'll move a lot more volume through these grocery chains than they move through Rite Aid. Many of Rite Aid's scoop counters probably just need to be closed due to lack of traffic/lack of interest/lack of being consistently open. The capacity from making the scoop jugs can go to making more half gallons for these grocers. Also we don't know how much sales volume the ice cream plant has lost from the Rite Aid closures and the fall off in customer traffic at Rite Aid in general either. Maybe this was just the best way to keep the ice cream business from having a huge drop in volume.

Walgreens used to have a house brand of ice cream in various sizes including funny cube shaped pints (used to get them 2 for $3 in the early 00's), it was my understanding they owned a plant somewhere. This stuff was actually pretty good ice cream. Then they rebranded their ice creams into a premium brand (wasn't Nice, was some brand that came when Nice did but was like a "premium" brand), changed packaging, added fat content, and started charging 3.99 for a pint. Those didn't last long before being discontinued and I'm not sure what happened to their ice cream plant. So I don't see them interested in this.

CVS... no way.

If Albertsons really wanted to make a splash they'd add the scoop counters to their service deli operation.

Rite Aid abandons the ice cream counters in the closed stores...

[mbz321]

Hope they don't get control of this product and reformulate it like their Lucerne and Signature Ice Creams, both are terrible quality ice cream. Similar to their terrible quality store brand breads.

I'm on the other Coast, but I've never found an issue with Signature Ice Cream (I pick it up once in a while at Acme if they send me a good coupon). They have such a large selection of flavors for a private label, and I'm definitely a fan of the Peach Cobbler flavor. I'm not sure where or who produces the ice cream for the East Coast though. There is a Lucerne branded dairy plant here in Southeastern PA, but not sure if they do ice cream.

[pseudo3d]

If Albertsons really wanted to make a splash they'd add the scoop counters to their service deli operation.

Back in the 1990s when Albertsons ran its own in-store coffeeshops (before outsourcing them all to Starbucks) they had ice cream in a few stores.

[storewanderer]

Hope they don't get control of this product and reformulate it like their Lucerne and Signature Ice Creams, both are terrible quality ice cream. Similar to their terrible quality store brand breads.

I'm on the other Coast, but I've never found an issue with Signature Ice Cream (I pick it up once in a while at Acme if they send me a good coupon). They have such a large selection of flavors for a private label, and I'm definitely a fan of the Peach Cobbler flavor. I'm not sure where or who produces the ice cream for the East Coast though. There is a Lucerne branded dairy plant here in Southeastern PA, but not sure if they do ice cream.

I've bought 5-6 containers of Signature Ice Cream and after 1-2 servings just threw it away. Various flavors. They should be good, but they just aren't worth going back for. The ingredients lists look pretty good so I'm not sure what the issue with the stuff is.

They did get 5-6 purchases out of me due to the good sounding flavors...

The Great Value Ice Cream got one purchase out of me with similar results to Signature. Some producer with a 49/Utah plant code, not sure who it is. Same plant code on WinCo and Best Yet ice cream so I never bought either of those.

[Alpha8472]

Albertsons around 2000 in the San Francisco Bay Area had Starbucks kiosks at their newly built stores. These Starbucks cafes served ice cream and this continued until Save Mart bought those stores and converted them to Lucky. The cafes sold ice cream until the Starbucks cafes were closed and replaced by Pacific Coast Cafes.

[storewanderer]

Albertsons actually had an ice cream plant in Boise or somewhere around there, which was sold right before the ASC merger. It was their only food manufacturing plant. I didn't think their ice cream was very good, actually kind of reminded me of the current Signature Ice Cream now that I think about it. They sold it in half gallon cubes and there was a sheet of plastic wrap over it after you opened it to help seal it so it didn't dry out. Only brand I saw do that.

[reymann]

i'm not crazy about most store brand ice creams. sunnyside farms ice cream is also very blah.

[storewanderer]

i'm not crazy about most store brand ice creams. sunnyside farms ice cream is also very blah.

I've bought a few Sunnysides over the years, I finished a couple seasonal flavors but don't remember what they were. I recall throwing part of at least one container away due to getting tired of it.

Never throw away any Umpqua, Tillamook, Thrifty, Kroger, Dryers...

[reymann]

Albertsons actually had an ice cream plant in Boise or somewhere around there, which was sold right before the ASC merger. It was their only food manufacturing plant. I didn't think their ice cream was very good, actually kind of reminded me of the current Signature Ice Cream now that I think about it. They sold it in half gallon cubes and there was a sheet of plastic wrap over it after you opened it to help seal it so it didn't dry out. Only brand I saw do that.

as a youngster i remember how awful the good day ice cream was when albertsons was in norcal. even worse than the albertsons brand.