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Is Randall's Grocery Stores Going To Go Away?


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Chron.com has posted more pictures of Boris Yeltsin visiting Randalls #30.

It has been said that Yeltsin "was so overwhelmed by the variety of food that his faith in Communism was shattered."

It wasn't even a Flagship Randall's. Now it's a Food Town.

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • The title was changed to Is Randall's Going To Go Away?
  • 2 months later...

So here's a letter I wrote to Randalls the other day. I submitted using their app, which has always gotten a response for other issues I have complained about using said app.

In summary: Randalls, please grow some balls and actually f*cking compete in this market!

Edit: The below mentioned Westheimer store was historically a 24 hour store long ago. Randalls' operation of 24 hour stores is mentioned in this Houston Press article: https://www.houstonpress.com/news/where-are-they-when-you-need-them-6573131 and I also have an old picture of the Westheimer store (9660 Pre Rebuild) with 24 hour signage somewhere.

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Dear Randalls Food Markets,

Probably your #2 or #3 customer here. Don't ask me why. Even I don't know why these days.

You were there for us, right after Harvey. Why you chose to abandon your Woodlands' stores last year, I'll never comprehend in 1000 years. But I'm still here, and I have 2 suggestions for you.

 

I have one small request, and one possibly big opportunity for you. Please consider both.

#1 small request: DON'T DIE. STOP TRYING TO DIE! This goes for both Houston and Austin. You have good sales sometimes. Your regular prices are in line with Kroger and other national competitors. You have a place in both markets. STOP TRYING TO DIE! Maybe even consider opening a brand new store in the next few years. The mere action of doing that would certainly get you stories on the local news!

#2 big opportunity: Consider a 24 hour store! Kroger has given up on all of their 24 hour stores since the pandemic. Walmart too! CVS and Walgreens' 24 hour stores both number in the extremely low single digits! Randalls has an opportunity here to bring back 24 hour shopping to the City of Houston. For the cost of a security guard and an attendant for self checkout, Randalls could basically dominate 11 PM - 6 AM in Houston.  The Westheimer store (the only one of those left :( ) seems best suited to make 24 hours due to its central location. Unless you are going to shut that store down too :(

#3 bonus suggestion: it looks like the card is no longer required to get deals! Great! NOW TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT!!!!!!

In summary: STOP TRYING TO DIE, and, TAKE ADVANAGE OF OBVIOIUS MARKET OPPORTUNITIES! These are so obvious, and I didn't even go to business school...

Lifelong customer,

Michael Richardson

Edited by MikeRichardson
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It's good that you took the time to express your feelings that way.  Hopefully your message didn't just go to the corporate marketing department in Boise where it was roundfiled.

The Midtown Randall's isn't what it should be.  I've shopped there since the day it opened.  And I guarantee that nobody has power washed that basement parking area since the day it opened.

It seems to be trying to do too much for too many people, and manages to underserve everyone.  If it could just be good at the basics, that would be enough.  I don't know if it's a reaction to the Whole Foods opening, but it really should ditch the grab-n-go and hot bar and similar things and refocus on the fundamentals.  You can't get everything at Whole Foods.  Randall's should carry the rest.  But then again, hot bar and grab-n-go are the few items with big profit margins for supermarkets these days.  I'm not sure what the solution is.

Right now, my primary grocery source is HEB delivery.  Then for fresh things, Central Market and Phoenicia.  Only when I can't get something from those three places, I head down to Randall's.  But so far, that's only been twice in four months.

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I just moved to Fort Worth, specifically the southwest side, and here Tom Thumb and Albertsons are really the only choice. There are a few nasty looking small Kroger stores that are not convenient to get to, and then Walmart Neighborhood Markets which are basically acceptable and have acceptable but not great prices and like no selection.

Like 45 minutes in the car from where I live, in Mansfield and Burleson there is a Kroger Marketplace and the only H-E-B in north texas, respectively, but my groceries would melt. Grocery shopping here is kind of stuck in the 1990s. All the stores are small and have poor selection unless you go to Central Market or Whole Paycheck.

Tom Thumb at it's absolute best, meaning the fairly modern store for the bougie people who live in that area off Hulen or the one on Camp Bowie near the Ridgelea theater, is like a lower-tier non-signature-store neighborhood Kroger in Houston. Like the smaller of the two stores in Kingwood, or the little hidden-away one in Spring off Treaschwig. Still small, only limited produce, no international section, not a lot of non-grocery items, etc.

Albertsons is a standby, they are basically like Tom Thumb but smaller. The stores are okay but just old. I have been going to the one on I-30 and its sort of a time machine. Which is kind of cool actually. Movies and Netflix series set in the 1980s are so trendy right now, they should advertise as a filming location. It looks just like the old Randalls we shopped at when I was a kid growing up, it even has the wood panel walls around the back, the spinning carosel table where the cashier sets your bags, etc.

The worst part is that everything is like 10% more expensive. A name brand frozen pizza at a Kroger Marketplace or an H-E-B in greater Houston would be 5.99, and at Albertsons or Tom Thumb or Walmart in Dallas it is 6.99. It doesn't sound like a big deal but then I noticed I spent a good amount more on the final receipt.

I guess the nice thing I'll say is that least Albertsons and Tom Thumb tend to keep old neighborhood local stores open that in Houston would have been shut down or turned into a self-storage megachurch charter school. So they are convenient.

Also I noticed that unlike in Houston where the full size Super Walmarts are sort of less common and always mediocre, the full sized Super Walmarts in the DFW area seem much larger and must have been remodeled recently. The one in Benbrook for example seems to have an acceptably large grocery area. I learned from someone that the first ever super walmart in the US was called a Walmart Hypermarket and is in South Arlington, and still open.

Targets seem moderately more common up here too. In Houston a lot of the eastern half or north side doesn't have a Target, but in Fort Worth even more blue collar parts of the city have a Target.

I swear H-E-B is going to totally pwn this place when they arrive. They are going to sweep in and totally dominate the competition because there basically is none when it comes to big supersized grocery stores like Houston and Austin have.

If Tom Thumb (Albertsons Safeway Corp) wants to compete or survive in this market they need to start building the kind of stores that I've seen out west in El Paso and Albuquerque. Albertsons has a store format which looks like a Kroger Marketplace.

Edited by zaphod
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10 hours ago, zaphod said:

The worst part is that everything is like 10% more expensive.

So, I don't want to suggest this as a general policy. But I was basically ~ok~ with that during the worst of the pandemic you know?  I still had drive to my mom's place weekly, you know? Her car is fu**ed up. I'd bring her groceries and stuff. And who was right there on my way? Memorial Dr. Randalls. Awesome store there.

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On 11/18/2021 at 3:08 PM, editor said:

It seems to be trying to do too much for too many people, and manages to underserve everyone.  If it could just be good at the basics, that would be enough.  I don't know if it's a reaction to the Whole Foods opening, but it really should ditch the grab-n-go and hot bar and similar things and refocus on the fundamentals.

The fried chicken is pretty good, with a sale every Monday. I do see a lot of people carrying that out (from the 2 stores I frequent - haven't been to Midtown in a few years and only a few times since it opened).

If they'd just advertise the "no card needed now" angle they'd surely regain a not insignificant number of customers who are turned off by the card. You can attribute this to Albertson's being the apparently successor company out of the Safeway/Albertson's merger.

(Besides, who needs those cards to track people anymore? You can just track them using their Debit or Credit Card #, or maybe Bluetooth/WiFi pings off their phone.)

Maybe put the Boar's Head back, I honestly could give a crap, but I've seen a lot of people grousing about that.

There are still some benefits to the card, you still get the gas points and also a free item every month. The points are redeemable at either Shell or Chevron, I forget which one it is now (as well as the Randalls gas stations all 5 or whatever of them).

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  • 4 months later...
On 4/17/2022 at 10:22 PM, MikeRichardson said:

It seems like store traffic is up from my informal observations. Noticing a lot of people in the self checkouts not bothering with a card anymore.

I don't go very often, but I agree — foot traffic seems to be up.  I don't know if Randall's is doing something right, or Kroger is doing something wrong, but there does seem to be a shift.

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  • 1 month later...

Here's a weird screen I got logging into Randalls.com

image.png.854e41c682ab134bbc5eb1a9fb1ce9b7.png

It's probably just a stupid error, but it could also be an intentional leak that they plan to rebrand Randalls as Safeway. Which would be just about the dumbest thing they could do in my opinion.

If they were going to rebrand the stores for some reason, I'd go with Tom Thumb, which at least has a presence in Texas. People in Houston would have no opinion of Tom Thumb, where they might have a significant opinion of Safeway or even Albertsons. 

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Could be an error.  Or maybe foreshadowing a change in Randall's delivery service. 

Some retail chains separate their delivery operations from their main operations.  This could be an artifact of that.

Expect more weirdness to come.  I read in the newspaper that one of the big supermarket chains (Kroger?) is going into Dallas in a big way, but without any physical stores.  It will be all delivery and pick-up centers.

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7 minutes ago, editor said:

Could be an error.  Or maybe foreshadowing a change in Randall's delivery service. 

Some retail chains separate their delivery operations from their main operations.  This could be an artifact of that.

Expect more weirdness to come.  I read in the newspaper that one of the big supermarket chains (Kroger?) is going into Dallas in a big way, but without any physical stores.  It will be all delivery and pick-up centers.

Kroger has stores in Dallas. What they are doing is expanding in to Oklahoma City with delivery-only.  They  built a warehouse/fulfillment center in OKC.  No stores.

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  • 1 month later...

Well I totally missed this one.

https://communityimpact.com/houston/sugar-land-missouri-city/impacts/2022/06/28/following-randalls-closure-anchor-position-at-sugar-lands-williams-trace-plaza-now-available/

God damnit.

Just, stupid. Except for the fact that I think these stores are all closing when they're 25 or 30 years old which also seems to be the standard term lease.

I actually found an entire Randalls lease contract online once. I think I saved it somewhere. I do remember it was for 25 years, but it also had built in yearly rent raises. So I don't think that the rent should significantly increase after the term is up, but everything is pretty screwed up these days, so who knows.

9660 Westheimer got completely rebuilt, so we know they're capable of negotiating this type of thing.

I'd like to see some magazine do a long form post-mortem when they're finally done squandering Randalls. Maybe Texas Monthly or something like that. Start at the beginning, with the history but at least half of should dissect how Safeway and then Albertsons completely just wasted it away.

There's a neat old picture of one of the original Randalls stores, at the FM 1960 store in one of the vestibules. (The other vestibule has an old Albertsons picture). I'll dig through my phone for it.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2022/01/13/partners-capital-buys-clear-lake-retail-center.html

"The former Randalls has been sitting empty for about two years... Randalls’ lease on the building doesn’t expire until March 2024"

If rent is $10,000 a month, then it costs you $10,000 a month to have an empty store.

It only makes sense to have an empty store if you were somehow losing more than $10,000 a month. Why would you then not try something else like laying off a few people? Sure that's not ideal, but I mean, they always say something like "The employees were offered positions at other stores" but you know they didn't all get positions. So either way it would happen.

(Stuff like write-offs might affect those numbers to some degree.)

It also stands to reason that if you have fewer stores, you have less purchasing power. Which would just seem to screw the remaining stores further.

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  • 1 month later...

Store 1012 - 5210 FM 1960 W

https://images1.loopnet.com/d2/8uif0s06laDTGy17Hpa3iTJOgPAeCkX_Rm75RSBT_kI/Champions VillageFlyer.pdf (also attached to the post)

Quote

THE OPPORTUNITY

Upcoming Randalls Expiration:

  • Randalls, which has been in the center since it’s development in 1974, comes up for renewal with no remaining options for the first time in 50 years.

  • The tenant is currently paying well below-market rents

Quote

Anchored by Randalls through April 2024, Champions Village Shopping Center provides essential grocery shopping in a dense residential area. With Randalls upcoming expiration with no remaining options there is real potential to mark rents to market with Randalls or another competing brand.

I predict that this store will close in 2024 😕

Another grocery store will probably lease the space quickly, though. (This is exactly what happened at 9503 Jones Rd).

The store opened as a "Handy Andy" in 1974 (not a Randalls). I forget when Randalls bought Handy Andy.

878856414_Champions20VillageFlyer.pdf

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  • The title was changed to Is Randall's Grocery Stores Going To Go Away?
On 6/13/2022 at 11:13 AM, Houston19514 said:

Kroger has stores in Dallas. What they are doing is expanding in to Oklahoma City with delivery-only.  They  built a warehouse/fulfillment center in OKC.  No stores.

Not to veer too off topic about Randall's but It actually has been interesting to watch Kroger enter the market in the past few months when I've visited OKC. They have a fairly small distribution center on the northeast side of town along I-35, but they advertise pretty heavily - probably online more than television or radio from what I can recall. Lots of billboards around the metro as well.

I'm wondering if they will get a return on that investment. 

Ironically, one of the stores now under the Kroger umbrella used to have a presence in the area there - Baker's. It was fairly reminiscent of the Safeway approach as I don't think many (or any) were built from the ground up, but were conversions of other grocers. I also don't even think they were in town for 5 years around the end of the 90s before those locations were sold off to local operators. Baker's was itself bought by Kroger not too long after they left the area. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/14/2022 at 2:54 PM, tormina said:

Randall's parents Albertsons is merging with Kroger. This is, sadly, likely the end of Randall's:

 

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/mega-merger-talks-turn-spotlight-kroger-albertsons-2022-10-13/

This needs to be opposed full stop. This is a horrible idea, your grocery prices absolutely will go up even more if this horrible deal is approved.

Write whoever, senator, congressman, maybe just start rioting or something, there is no way in hell this should be allowed.

And not just cause I don't want to see Randalls die it's just a total shitshow for this to even have been proposed.

---------------

Saw this ad today, I usually manipulate the page to skip the ad but I noticed it was for O Organics and wanted to check the banner. So it's probably just got Houston in the general geo-targeting with an "Insert Randalls.png" logo or some such towards the end.

image.png.1e16b7bd052ef3314866f7f61978870b.png

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  • 5 months later...
  • 5 months later...

Various merger news. This merger should not be allowed, in my opinion.

https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-financial/former-ftc-policy-director-kroger-albertsons-merger-facing-hurricane-storm

Quote

“I think it’s highly unlikely the FTC would accept this divestiture, and I think that means that they’ll go to court and litigate,” Balto said.

 

https://apnews.com/article/kroger-albertsons-merger-cs-wholesale-grocer-401520f2a25ea2ae5fd06be4973b7c48

Quote

Kroger and Albertsons will sell more than 400 stores and other assets for about $1.9 billion, seeking to clear a path for a merger with antitrust regulators reviewing a deal that would unify two of the nation’s largest grocery chains.

 

https://www.krogeralbertsons.com/comprehensive-divestiture-plan

Quote

Extending Well-Capitalized Competitor into New Geographies

... 26 Albertsons' Co. Stores to be spun off in Texas

Exactly which 26 Texas stores is completely undefined.

They have a lot more market share in the Dallas area. There's 65 Dallas-area Tom Thumb stores (wow, that seems like a lot, did they convert some Albertson's or something?). Some number of Albertson's. 9 "Dallas" Kroger stores, dunno if that includes suburbs or not, I'm thinking not.

So the logical theory is that it's going to be some Tom Thumb stores they divest, so that the market share in that area doesn't get too high and piss off the FTC. If the merger goes through, some more, but not all of the Randalls die. Maybe a Kroger dies. Maybe they just rebrand them all to Kroger. Regardless, some people are getting fired.

Here's my theory: Randalls has 28 stores in Texas. They're about to close 2 of them, you know, because they're just really good at closing down Randalls stores. Then they just ditch the whole Austin and Houston markets and walk away. At least C&S has distribution in Houston, they can truck this to Austin. They also promise not to fire anyone.

Split theory: Houston and some of Dallas goes to C&S. Austin goes to Kroger, they convert them to Kroger's and they opens a few new stores and distribution there to compete. C&S has no distribution in Austin.

It's been my experience that the larger and larger a company gets, the worse and worse it gets for it's employees and customers, for a variety of reasons. 

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