White Center Albertsons sold to Saars!??

[storewanderer]

http://www.westseattleherald.com/2012/0 ... d-saars-ma

Wow... I'm speechless. I've been to a couple of Saars. Speechless.

[marshd1000]

I live near White Center! I am truly sad for this community. Saars stores are ugly and not at all attractive. Now White Center will not have a true full service supermarket. The WC Albertsons was actually store 100. I wish that they had torn it down and rebuilt!

[marshd1000]

I can't believe that the White Center Albertsons wasn't profitable. My thought is that Supervalu is not building any new stores and that they did not want to make the investment. To me that is a sign that Supervalu is struggling. Too bad for White Center. I think Saars is a bad operator as I said earlier. Too bad there is not enough vacant land in White Center as I think that it would be a great place for a Winco!

[Super S]

While I have never been inside this particular store, it looks like it had a blue-gray interior and is a possible Albertsons Marina store, judging by the opening date in that article and the picture.

I have never been inside a Saars store, however, Supervalu has really been slacking on maintaining some of their older stores in the Portland area. I wouldn't be surprised if Supervalu let this one go downhill enough that business fell off and they could not justify investing in a poorly performing store.

[marshd1000]

It was a Albertsons Marina store. The Marina look was hidden in a remodel that took place about 1977. It was also the one of the last stores to feature the "western" lettering that Albertsons had used just before the current logo. But upon remodeling the store to the current grey and blue decor package, it finally received a sign with the current logo. About a year after the remodel, in the 1990's, they acquired the adjacent Van de Vord Pharmacy and expanded into that space and opened a pharmacy. Thinking back at this store, during it's life, it received 4 remodels. The first was about 1977 as I had said, then a few years later, they did a minor expansion but kept the same 1970's decor. Then came the current decor package. That was in the 1990's. But they did not receive a deli. That was not until they also got a pharmacy. But even before Supervalu took over this store, Albertson missed out on truly making this location a "superstore". Yes, it was a combo food and drug, but it was the smallest I had seen. But there was a vacant lot adjacent to this store where they could have almost doubled the size! But instead a auto paint shop was built! What a lot opportunity!

[marshd1000]

Here is something interesting about the upcoming sale of this store to Saars. It is NOT going to be called Saars. It is going to be called Super Saver Foods. But it will be operated by Saars. Super Saver was a discount division of Albertsons that catered to the Hispanic Community. So maybe Saars is operating this store with a license from Albertsons to use that name? Here is the article from the "White Center Now" blog:

http://whitecenternow.com/2012/02/22/wh ... -tomorrow/

I hope this store will be better than a regular Saars!

[storewanderer]

I went into this store tonight. I wasn't too impressed with the condition. The floor looks to be from the late 80's at best. The entire place seemed run down, dirty, and suffering from long term neglect. The parking lot wasn't lit very well and I left with the impression SuperValu is better off selling this store, and Safeway or Kroger would have probably closed a store like this one some time ago. Maybe part of the problem with this store is the lack of investment in the store is turning off most customers. But the store was actually pretty busy when I was there. It appeared to be a decent volume place for its size. I suspect there were issues with theft and probably a sales mix that shifted toward lower margin products.

I sure enjoyed seeing the old safe up front with the adjacant manager podium sandwiched against the front wall. This store brought back a lot of memories to the Albertsons I grew up near that was demolished for a larger store in 1995.

It looks like it will make a good Saars, actually. Operating stores like this one was not doing anything good for Albertsons image.

[marshd1000]

Well, the change of the White Center Albertsons to Saars ownership happened yesterday, March 22nd. Saars ended up not closing the store until the remodel was done. They ended up opening it up right away and will be open through the remodel. But this store is called "Super Saver Foods" but it is owned by Saars but operated separately from their other stores. The reason this store is not using the Saars banner is because of the stipulations of the sale. One thing is that Sarrs normally gets its products from Unified Grocers, which supplies Western Family and other products. But for Saars to purchase this store, Supervalu said that Saars had to buy from Supervalu. So there are the Supervalu brands like Flavorite in this store, instead of Western Family and SureFine. I also suspect that Saars is probably operating this store as a Super Saver as a franchisee or licensee of the name. I know that the pre-Supervalu Albertsons had operated some Super Saver stores. In Wikipedia, it says that Albertsons LLC now owns the name. But I suspect that both Supervalu and Albertsons LLC (aka Cerberus Capital Management) have the rights to that name. So I am thinking that the reasons Saars is operating the White Center store under the Super Saver name was probably influence by Supervalu. To me that makes sense. Also Super Saver was targeted toward Hispanic communities. While White Center does not have a predominately Hispanic populace, it does have a lot of them and other ethnic groups. So that might be their demographic. Anyway, here is the Wikipedia article on Super Saver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Saver_Foods

Here is the news story from the White Center Now website: http://whitecenternow.com/2012/03/23/wh ... ver-foods/

[storewanderer]

The supply agreement thing is interesting. Perhaps this is an event that we will see cause Saars to either use SVU for additional stores, or Saars purchase more SVU Stores and use them as a supplier for those. What was interesting when I went to some Saars Stores was it appeared to me they were using various sources outside of Unified for things, notably perimeter departments. I wonder if that will continue in this new store, of if they are stuck buying everything from SVU.

Use of the Super Saver name here is the most interesting piece of this whole thing. It may just be a coincidence...