Central Florida's last Albertsons makes stand in Altamonte Springs

Wed, July 4, 07:07pm

Written By: Orlando Sentinel

Published By: ORLANDO-SENTINEL

Six of the seven remaining Orlando-area Albertsons shut down last month. But the company decided that the 38-year-old store across from Altamonte Mall had enough of a following to justify keeping it open. It's one of only four left in Florida.

The Altamonte supermarket has "just been a very good store for us," said Mike Withers, Albertsons LLC's vice president of marketing and merchandising. Withers would not give details about sales performance, but he said, "We feel this store can prosper."

"It makes no sense to have one store in a marketplace," said Britt Beemer, Orlando-based chairman of the retail-polling company America's Research Group. "If you're going to have one store, it's probably temporary."

It's not unheard of, though. Gooding's, an upscale Orlando chain that once had 18 supermarkets in the region, has operated just one in Central Florida for the past four years, a market near Walt Disney World that caters mostly to tourists.

At its peak, Albertsons operated 25 supermarkets in the Orlando area.

In 2008, Lakeland-based Publix Super Markets - Florida's dominant grocer - bought 49 Albertsons throughout the state, including seven in Central Florida. Others closed in ensuing years, and in June, Albertsons shuttered 13 stores statewide, including the six in Central Florida.

The last Albertsons in Central Florida does have some things going for it, Orlando-based real-estate consultant David Marks said. Because it opened so long ago, it likely doesn't pay much in rent.

Though some of Albertsons' regular prices are about the same as or even more than Publix's, its shelves are filled with yellow "great deal" sales. It also has buy-one-get-two-free deals on some meats.

Even so, in a marketplace dominated by Publix, Albertsons had trouble finding a niche.

"They were lost in this sort of middle ground," said Eli Portnoy, a Miami-based branding consultant. "They weren't upscale. They weren't totally downscale, but they really weren't great."

The interior, not remodeled since 1999, includes a peach-and-turquoise color scheme long out of style. The layout looks a bit cluttered, partly because of promotional fliers pinned at the ends of aisles and streamers extending up toward the ceiling.

"Everything about it screams, 'We're a notch below where Publix is,' " said Steve Kirn, executive director of the University of Florida's David F. Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research.

Albertsons has closed a Polk County distribution center and now has a contract with Supervalu to put food on the shelves. Minnesota-based Supervalu owns Save-A-Lot, which operates in Central Florida and runs Albertsons stores in other parts of the country.

Idaho-based Albertsons LLC now operates 192 stores nationwide, which it has recently started calling "Albertsons Markets" to distinguish them from the Supervalu locations.

Having a small presence in a region has some advantages, Withers said.

"We can be more nimble," he said. "We can react quicker to market conditions."

Stores can offer niche items that might not be available in the bulk numbers that a larger chain would require, he said. And if Albertsons doesn't have something customers want, it encourages them to request special orders.

Dolores Rogers, who discovered Albertsons after moving to Maitland from Texas six months ago, said touches such as that have sold her. She said Albertsons offers good deals on high-quality cuts of meat, and employees go out of their way to help customers.

"I just hope they never go away," she said.

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/orlandosentinel/business/~3/7KDLQEvD1LE/story01.htm