Fort Lauderdale News du lieu suivant : Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 49

Weekly Business, February 1984 Sun Supermarket vs. Pantry Pride Prices for a typical market basket Item Sun Pantry Pride MILK, gal 11.23 $1.26 EGGS, 1 doz, extra large, Orade A 139 1.43 CHEESE, 10 oz, mild Cheddar 233 29 MARGARINE, 1 lb, 4 alka 44'A 57 BREAD, white, enriched, 20 oz 48t 59tte FLOUR, lb, bleached all-purpoae 89 Me SPECIAL cereal. 7 OZ $1.07 $1.07 SUGAR, 5 lb, white, granulated 99 $1.65 INSTANT COFFEE, 10 oz Jar 13.89 $3.27 GREAT NORTHERN BEANS, 15 ez 33 40t RICE, converted. 3 Ibe 12.19 12.75 MAYONNAISE, 1 qt 99 $1.35 PEANUT BUTTER. 13 ez tor, aroooth 11.40 $1.69 TUNA, 6A oz can, light fancy, chunk 59 79 EVAPORATED MILK, 13 fluid oz can 46V.

42 CLING PEACH HALVES, 20 oz can 9e 99t PINEAPPLE, 20 oz can, alteed 83 B7 ICE CREAM, Vt gal $139 11.49 FROZEN OJ CONCENTRATE, 6 oz can 41V 55c BROCCOLI SPEARff, frozen. 10 ozpkg 73 7 RUMP ROAST, bottom round, 1 lb $2.19 12.39 SIRLOIN STEAK, beef loin. 1 lb $29 $2.99 GROUND CHUCK, 1 lb $139 $2.19 PORK LOIN CHOPS, center cut, 1 lb $1J9 $2.89 HAM, smoked, boneless, 1 lb 12.69 12.39 BACON, regular elico. packaged. 1 lb 79c 89t WIENERS, all meat, ekinloss.

1 lb $1.19 $139 CHICKEN, whole fryer, froah. 1 lb 69 9S POTATOES, 5 lb, white, round 99 $1.49 CARROTS, 1 lb, whole 29'A 49t CABBAGE, green, 1 lb 49 59t LETTUCE. 1 head Iceberg 33 39e BANANAS. 1 lb 25 29t TOMATOES, 1 lb, froah 69 99 ORANGES, 3 lb, juice fruit $139 $1.15 TOTAL $47.50 Yi Staff photo by URSULA SEEMANN Food is only one type of merchandise sold at Warehouse Plus on State Road 7 in Plantation. Warehouses 1 as 1 1 1 ill hi- i tribution for a supermarket chain and provides advice on operating warehouse stores.

Pantry Pride sold Super Valu its Miami distribution center and is using the proceeds to open the Sun Supermarkets, which are based on a formula developed by Super Valu and known elsewhere in the nation as County Markets. Super Valu also owns a chain of stores named CUB, huge warehouse supermarkets covering 70,000 square feet or more, and Pantry Pride is buying the CUB concept The first store, measuring 75,000 square feet, is scheduled to start construction this summer at University Drive and Sterling Road in Davie, with an opening date sometime before the end of 1984. "Everybody in the industry is scared of CUB coming into town and taking their bread-and-butter business away," says Murphy, the Illinois consultant. In some Midwestern cities? including Kansas City, CUB and other warehouse supermarkets have grabbed half of all grocery sales. More CUB and Sun Supermarket stores are on the way in South Florida, although Pantry Pride has not yet revealed any specific locations.

The total program, Gentry said in December, will cost $50 million and could reduce the company's earnings by as much as 60 percent for as long as the next 18 months. Until the first CUB store opens later this year, the only true warehouse supermarket in South Florida is the Xtra Super Food Center in Hialeah. That supermarket, housed in what was once a Gold Triangle discount store, opened last August. Irwin Schwartz, president of Xtra, says the store is turning "a profitiandrawsvciistomttrs Irani upi i sonville. "Some of them make it, some of them don't." Adds Howard Jenkins, vice president of Lakeland-based Publix and son of company founder George Jenkins: J' A large number of our customers would prefer to get more service.

Also, our prices are very competitive. Different people like different things and we're trying to serve people that like what Publix is doing now." Wanting to serve more than one segment of the shopping public, Fort Lauderdale-based Pantry Pride last year plunged headlong into warehouse supermarkets. Chairman Grant Gentry told the company's annual meeting in December that existing Pantry Pride markets in Florida lost 6 percent of their sales last year. He blamed the loss on a decision by Publix Supermarkets, the biggest chain in the state, to start opening its stores on Sunday and an advertising splurge by other supermarkets in response to the move by Publix. Gentry, an industry veteran who guided the company out of a near-bqush with bankruptcy in 1978 when it was known as Food Fair and based in Philadelphia, took a two-pronged approach.

Last August, he announced the closing of 24 unprofitable stores in South Florida, leaving Pantry Pride today with 51 stores in Broward, Palm Beach and Dade counties, plus the Sun Supermarket which opened earlier this month. Then, just a few days later, Gentry revealed an agreement with Super Valu Stores Inc. of Minneapolis to provide support for a venture in warehouse supermarkets. Super Valu, once strictly a grocery wholesaler, now calls itself a "retail support company." la the' -4w role, Super Valu takes over dis Notes: Prices were surveyed on Feb. 6 at Sun Supermarket, 2101 N.

University Drive In Sunrise, and at Pantry Pride, 5051 NE 18th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. Lowest price available for each item are listed, whether national or house brand (generic products were not included). Where fractional prices are shown, multiple-unit prices were converted. For example, white bread at 89 cents for two loafs is shown here as 44 V4 cents a loaf. Continued from preceding page around them: "segmentation." In the good old days, the 1950s and '60s, supermarkets tried to be all things to all people.

Now, stores are positioning themselves to appeal to specific types of shoppers. Robert U. Bolinder, vice man of Albertsons sees food retailing splitting into four distinct categories: Convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven, Cumberland Farms and Little General, with limited selections and many convenient locations; Super stores, similar to today's conventional supermarket, but with a wider selection of non-food items; Combo stores, including the Albertsons stores now in South Florida, with both a supermarket and drug store under one roof; and Warehouse supermarkets. "We think there's a good market for the grocery warehouse, but it's not going to replace the conventional supermarket," says Bolinder, who is based at Albertson's headquarters in Boise, Idaho. The company already operates 18 warehouse supermarkets, known simply as the Grocery Warehouse, in three western states, but Bolinder said Albertsons is happy with its combo stores in Florida and has no plans to open warehouse stores here.

This explosion of interest in warehouse retailing so far is stirring little interest from Florida's two biggest supermarket chains, Winn-Dixie and Publix. The pair, which together control more than half of grocery sales in South Florida, insist their customers continue to want the service and convenient locations of traditional supermarkets. "Over the years, we've seen all kinds of operators," says Mickey dercVdirector of advertising at Winn-Dixie's headquarters in Jack to 10 miles away five times the reach of a conventional supermarket. Lightfoot, the New York analyst, pegs Xtra's weekly revenue at $700,000 to $800,000. Xtra is a unit of Pueblo International, based in New York- City, which operates supermarkets in Puerto Rico and the U.S.

Virgin Islands. Schwartz won't be specific, but says Xtra "has plans for future growth" in Florida. Ironically, the original warehouse supermarket in South Florida is about to bow out of the area. Basics Food Warehouse, a division of Grand Union will close its six Florida stores as part of a decision by the parent company last month to close all of its 49 stores in the state. Although Basics provided the same combination of low prices and limited service found in most ftUWiratkeia, ib s.tocejwr small some under 20,000 square feet and offered a.severly limited selection of about 3,500 items.

"Americans just aren't down to that level of scrimping and saving," says Edgar Walzer, editor-in-chief of Progressive Grocer magazine in New York City. Warehouse retailing, though, isn't limited to groceries. David Kenny, who headed the Jefferson-Ward discount chain from 1977 to 1981, opened Wholesale Plus at 15 N. State Road 7 in Plantation, in June 1982. The store sells just about anything Kenny can find at a good price food (although no produce or meats), clothing, electronics and even automobile tires.

However, as the name. Wholesale Plus implies, the store is mostly oriented toward small business owners, including restaurateurs and corner grocery rather than retail 4.