Haggen begins conversion of former Safeway/Albertsons stores

[storewanderer]

This makes perfect sense about the way Unified works. This is opposite how, for instance, Associated Salt Lake works where the Associated corporate office works on getting allowances for the independents, does their ads, etc. They have the same co-op structure as Unified where profits are distributed to the members (or losses are paid by the members, one year after Associated bought those Salt Lake Albertsons)... The one shortcoming with this is in Salt Lake City suburbs you have Ream's, Dick's, Fresh Market, and Harmons all have the same center store items on sale on the same week, maybe just at slightly different prices.

Will Unified negotiate promotional allowances for members for a fee though? How well can a single store independent go negotiate promotional allowances with the large CPGs like Molendaz, Proctor and Gamble, etc.? I know the single store independents can do some negotiating with some of the DSD vendors, but I'm not so sure about the larger companies.

In any case I agree that Haggen with 140+ stores should be negotiating its own allowances... but if they couldn't, maybe Unified could. Something would be better than nothing. I would think.

[klkla]

Will Unified negotiate promotional allowances for members for a fee though?

They do negotiate promotional allowances and discounts for all members (and they offer special deals on their private label items) but they can't guarantee shelf placement like the retailers so they're generally not as big a discount. I would assume the low number of relatively small discounts Haggen is currently offering are a result of that but I'm not 100% sure.

[storewanderer]

This represents another issue for Haggen. Given that Unified does get some good deals on private label (which I have seen a bit of in SoCal, but you don't see any of that in NorCal other than a few Special Value items), and Haggen is randomly insisting on using its own brand, I wonder if they would have lower costs just using the Springfield brand. Having some items in Springfield and some in Haggen brand is confusing for the customer too. I noticed when I was walking stores some canned goods SKUs had the same item in both Springfield brand and Haggen brand and the Springfield brand version was always priced lower. Based on the package coding I think we were taking same cans with different labels.

Then again up in WA in recent years, Haggen was offering an odd mix of their own brand, Food Club (from their distribution center), and Western Family (from Unified).

Haggen probably should have taken the money spent on remodels and invested it in price, which I said all along. Many customers still say the stores look the same as before too so those remodels did not have much of a "wow" factor... probably no ROI on those at all.

Here in Reno we have a Marketon Store (was King Ranch). Its primary supplier is Associated Salt Lake, but they pull in a handfull of Unified private label items usually in full pallets from the Marketon warehouse in SoCal (produce and a lot of the ethnic foods also come from that warehouse; dairy, meat, and most center store comes from Associated) and these are well priced, most are Special Value brand but a few are Springfield. The Marketon is a 20k square foot store from the 50's (was a Raleys until 1992, then an IGA until maybe 2006) and does excellent volume.

[klkla]

Bleach
The cheapest 128 ounce bleach at Ralphs was $3.19 - The cheapest at Haggen was $1.89
64 ounce store brand bleach was $1.99 at Ralphs - Haggen was $2.19
Clorox 1.7 quart was $2.69 at Ralphs - Haggen was $2.79
Ralphs didn't carry any environmentally friendly bleach so couldn't compare prices on that.

(I also went into the Ralphs Rancho Cucamonga store yesterday and they carry BOTH the 60 oz. Kroger bleach and Seventh Generation Bleach...HOW COULD YOU MISS THEM?). And NO, your posting of prices were not 100% correct. Far from.

If you are going to do a price survey and make your claims, while dismissing mine, do them correctly.

I want to respect the owner of this site's wishes so I am not going to make this personal. The claims I made were correct and here's a photo of the full bleach set at Ralphs. Not all stores carry the same items even within the same company. Note the cheapest 128 ounce bleach is still $3.19, they still don't carry Seventh Generation at this store, Clorox 1.7 quart has been reduced to $2.49 since last time I went and store brand 64 ounce is still 1.99.

RalphsBleachSet by klklaco, on Flickr