And on a different topic, I think some of you would find the data in this Seattle Times article interesting (scroll down to the second bar chart). The way the statistics are presented is a bit strange and makes comparisons between the different stores a little difficult, but it's still interesting. I suspect the data here is quite a bit different from most of the country, with Safeway dominant (though if you add QFC and Fred Meyer together -- which you can't quite do reliably with the way this data is presented -- Kroger is probably in first) and Walmart a minor player (even behind Target, which is way less focused on groceries than Walmart is). The spending data is also very interesting to see, with Safeway way at the bottom for median weekly spending, but Albertsons (which has the same sales, selection, and pricing as Safeway -- really, at this point, the only difference is the sign on the front of the store) all the way at the top, almost the same as Whole Foods of all places! There are certainly some big caveats with this data, but I still find it fascinating, and it should help to illustrate the differences between the grocery market up here and what it's like in many other parts of the country.
Well, that is quite different than Houston for sure. Safeway/Randall's is most certainly not no. 1 in Houston, that's for sure, lol. From the last numbers I saw, which were in 2019, HEB, Walmart, and Kroger were all just about equal with about 25% of the market apiece. I think HEB was atop of the last list I saw, but it might have been Walmart as well since I've seen them atop in recent times as well. HEB seems to be the most active in building new locations so I'd expect their slice of the pie to grow, but Walmart has been opening new Neighborhood Markets as well. Kroger has the most stores already, but as you can see, their stores are not as productive as some of their competitors.
ReplyDeleteWhen you look at the remaining 25% of the market here in Houston, the big difference between here in Seattle is that Hispanic-oriented supermarkets are going to have a pretty decent chunk of what's left. Although Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and so forth are here, they aren't exactly popular around here. Aldi is around and so is Food Town and a few independents. I don't know what Target's share of the grocery market is here, but I assume it to be terrible especially since they've been converting Super Targets into regular Targets.
The Dallas Metroplex has a pretty similar mix of grocers as Houston does, but the biggest difference is that HEB only has a small (but growing) presence there. The biggest loser since HEB has started to grow in Dallas is clearly Tom Thumb and Albertsons. Kroger and Walmart are holding steady, but the Albertsons brands are the biggest losers. That pretty much mirrored what happened when HEB started their expansion in Houston many years ago.
As for spending at Safeway being low in Seattle even though their marketshare is high, I can only assume that Safeway has a lot more urban stores where shoppers can only buy so much at a time since they may not have cars. I don't know, maybe not.
In Dallas, Albertsons and Tom Thumb still seem to be quite separate operations with different weekly ads and so forth. Even though Tom Thumb is the more upscale of the two brands, it seems to be that Tom Thumb has better weekly specials. Given that, it seems to me that maybe Albertsons would phase out their name and refocus on Tom Thumb, but Albertsons has renovated many/most of their Dallas stores in recent years to the Legacy decor or some other relatively recent decor packages that I don't recognize. Things can change quickly in the world of Albertsons so maybe that's no sure sign of stability.
Consider this as being Part II of the above post.
DeleteI don't know how interested you would be in these videos, but I'll post them here in case you're interested or if you know someone who might be interested in these. It seems Abilene Christian University in Texas had some sort of TV channel and for one of their shows, they interviewed the head of Randall's in 1985 and the head of Tom Thumb's parent company, Cullum, in 1986. This was a few years before Randall's bought out Tom Thumb and quite a few years before Safeway bought out both of them. In both videos, the host asks the heads about the history of their grocery companies, the changes in the industry as they were happening in the 1980s, and future trends were discussed.
At the time these videos were made, Randall's was the giant slayer in Houston as they were no. 1 (or at least a close no. 2 to Kroger) in marketshare with much smaller operations than Kroger and Safeway. Tom Thumb was likewise a giant slayer in being able to keep Kroger and especially Safeway behind them. So, yeah, these were very successful grocery executives. Although Randall's and Tom Thumb were not the cheapest stores, they did very well in the 1980s when the Texas economy was actually quite poor due to low oil prices.
It's interesting to hear how focused Randall's was on store cleanliness (they did have very clean, grand-looking, futuristic stores in the 1980s) and it's also interesting to hear that they sourced their beef from Iowa and not Texas as you might expect. In modern times, HEB spends almost every second of their marketing talking about how Texan they are, and Randall's was most certainly Texan, but I suppose Randall's figured their customers preferred higher quality meat from outside the state than lower quality meat from inside it.
Each interview is about 30 minutes long.
Interview of Bob Onstead (Randall's): https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/on_campus/391/
Interview with Charles Cullum (Tom Thumb): https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/on_campus/393/
Oh, here is one more video, but this is a short one. It's a video from the Texas History database about talking cash registers at Safeway! This was pretty cutting edge stuff in 1982 when this video was filmed, lol. Anyway, you can see some Safeway decor in the video. This must have been a fairly new store at the time. It kind of reminds me of some Safeways we had around here, but I don't remember the talking cash registers.
Deletehttps://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1247568/m1/
Yeah, it really is different from most other areas! I know Walmart is a big deal in most of the country, but around here they never seem to have been well received by locals, so they don't have a lot of stores and the ones they do have tend to not be very busy. Target was certainly a big surprise for me since they don't even have Super Targets around here, just PFresh stores and small-format Targets, neither of which focus on groceries.
DeleteAnother big difference is that out of the stores listed in that article, Target is the only one who's opened a significant number of stores in recent years. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are also expanding, but very slowly, and the others on the list are either staying about even or closing stores (Albertsons, Safeway, and QFC have all closed quite a few stores in recent years). Really, there's no growth going on at all in the retail world out here, even as the population keeps growing faster than most of the country, which is a bit disappointing for someone like me.
It's interesting to hear that the different Albertsons brands in your area still have completely separate operations. Here, they were combined pretty much as soon as the merger was finalized (though I'll note that Albertsons and Safeway were already pretty similar stores -- QFC and Fred Meyer might be a better comparison, and they're still completely separate in terms of pricing, sales, and general operations 23 years after their merger). It's really hard to say what Albertsons is planning for all of their different banners -- around here, they converted some stores to Safeway right away after the merger, but at the same time, they remodeled others under the Albertsons brand, but it seems like at this point they're slowly working to eliminate the Albertsons brand. It will be interesting to see what they decide to do with the ones that got recent Albertsons remodels, but for now it seems like they're fine with keeping an ever-shrinking number of stores under the Albertsons brand.
That last video is pretty cool -- the 80s decor is probably the one I've seen the least of. Those talking checkouts remind me of modern-day self checkouts -- I've never seen talking regular registers, but the idea is still around in some form!
I think the Dallas Albertsons and Tom Thumbs are operationally run by the same people, but they are operated as somewhat different grocers in terms of sales, prices, and so forth. There are some marketing similarities though. Both Albertsons and Tom Thumb are big sponsors of the Dallas Cowboys and both have Dallas Cowboys team stores in their stores.
DeleteWhen analyzing weekly ads between the two brands recently in the Dallas area, I found that the Tom Thumb ads are bigger and have some sale products advertised for less than what's in the Albertsons' ads. It's hard for me to make sense of that since Tom Thumb is the higher-end store. I can only guess that maybe Tom Thumbs are located in wealthier, more competitive areas than Dallas-area Albertsons stores which might exist in areas with limited competition. That's just a wild guess though.
Some Albertsons stores in the Dallas area are quite old and were quite rough looking before recent facade and interior renovations. I'll put a link to one that very much had a Skaggs-Albertsons exterior and a worn out Blue & Grey Market interior until renovations in 2020 or so: https://goo.gl/maps/4myFhrgeVcHXaB7L8
I posted this video on Retail Retell's blog in the Kroger Bauhaus guide, but it's so bizarre that I think you'd like to see it here. It's a video from the 1980s of a Dallas-area Kroger holding a singles night where single people could find dates. I don't know about QFC and Fred Meyer, but this seems quite out of character for a modern Kroger! There are also some great images of Kroger Bauhaus decor here: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1584819/m1/
Huh, that is interesting! Looking at QFC and Fred Meyer, it's more clear cut -- QFC has higher prices, and has much fewer sales (their ads tend to be just a couple half-size pages, while Fred Meyer ones are thick books of 10-20 full-size pages). Some of that's to be expected since Fred Meyer stores are much larger, of course, but the food section in their ads is still larger than the full QFC ad. It's a little strange that they still have different prices, though, since the selection is pretty much the same these days between Fred Meyer's food section and QFC.
DeleteThat old Blue & Grey/Grocery Palace mix-up is certainly interesting, but it's no surprise that they would want to remodel it -- Blue & Grey Market was already looking a bit outdated in the late 2000s when the Port Angeles store got remodeled!
Ha, that is quite weird! It seems like there were a lot of promotions back then that wouldn't happen these days, from these videos you're finding...