One of the most popular threads here at Back Talk concerns grocery stores: Which ones are around, which ones will stay around and which ones will come into the neighborhood. So I asked a friend of mine, who does this sort of analysis for a living, what he thought of our current situation — the difficulty Albertson’s is having in Dallas-Fort Worth, Minyard’s all but gone, Safeway trying to resurrect Tom Thumb, chains that have failed like Winn-Dixie and Food Lion, and Wal-Mart increasing its presence almost daily.
He has to remain anonymous, since he gets paid by clients to make these forecasts and I don’t want him to get in any trouble. But what he says is very revealing.
"It looks like this is a scenario that could play out in a lot of markets with a new Big 2 — Wal-Mart and Kroger or Safeway and/or a strong regional player like HEB/Central Market, a strong club format — COSTCO or Sam’s — and specialty formats like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods showing strong growth. A wild card is how well Target is able to grow its Supercenter format. I think it will be difficult for multiple traditional grocery retailers to prosper in the same market in the future. Long term, there probably won’t be more than two with significant share per market."
None of which is good news for Alberton’s.
