As follow up to Dominick's closing a dozen or so stores, Roundy's Supermarkets might spring in. Roundy’s to Open 10-12 Chicago Stores in Next 3 Years
Roundy's Supermarkets here said yesterday it plans to enter the Chicago marketplace during the next three years with between 10 and 12 stores that will focus on fresh foods. In an interview with SN, Robert A. Mariano, chairman and chief executive officer of the 153-store chain, said the Chicago stores will carry a new name that does not now appear on any of the chain's stores (Pick 'n Save, Copps and Rainbow Foods). Although the store will be similar to the Metro Market that Roundy's opened in the downtown area here, it will not carry that name either, Mariano said. "That [Metro] store was a learning experience for us in terms of product offerings and services. The Chicago stores will go beyond those learnings." The first store Roundy's plans to open in Chicago -- scheduled for 2008 -- will be in a diverse area on the city's North Side, on the site of the New City YMCA on North Halstead Street. Mariano knows the Chicago market well, having spent 26 years with locally based Dominick's, including a term as president and CEO from 1995 until it was sold to Safeway in 1998. Noting that Dominick's is closing some locations, Mariano said Roundy's "might be interested in [acquiring] some of them."
and from the Trib:
Roundy's joins Chicago grocery fray
Milwaukee chain plans rapid expansion here. Declaring there aren't enough grocery stores in the Chicago region, a Milwaukee-based supermarket chain says it plans to plant its flag with a new west Lincoln Park store and follow it with a rapid expansion in 2008.Roundy's Supermarkets Inc., which tried to enter Chicago market four years ago through an unsuccessful acquisition of the Dominick's supermarket chain, announced Monday that it would come to Chicago on its own by opening its first store in the Clybourn Avenue-North Avenue retail corridor.
The company did not give a time frame on the first store. But, during the next three years, the chain said it would open as many as a dozen stores here and offer employment to about 2,000 people. It currently operates 153 stores, mainly in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
"We see Chicago as an additional market for us to grow into," said Robert Mariano, chairman and chief executive of Roundy's, which operates stores under three banners--Pick 'n Save, Copps and Rainbow.
"We see the [Chicago] market as underserved and have the distribution capacity, as well as the management team, knowledge and experience, to grow rapidly," he said, declining to reveal under what name the Chicago stores will operate.
While Mariano now runs the Milwaukee chain, he is intimately familiar with the Chicago market.
He served as president and chief executive officer of Dominick's in the late 1990s, a time the chain was rolling out its "Fresh Store" concept. That concept was canceled when California-based Safeway Inc. acquired Dominick's in 1999 for $1.85 billion.
Since that acquisition, however, Dominick's has suffered. It lost customers and market share after it stumbled with the introduction of the Safeway private-label program. It has closed 30 stores, leaving it with 83 when it completes the latest round of closings in April. It now has a market share of about 15 percent.
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Roundy's first Chicago store is to be an 80,000-square-foot, two-level store, to be built at the site of the New City YMCA, 1515 N. Halsted St. The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago sold the 8.5-acre site last year to a real estate partnership planning a mixed-use facility. The site is less than eight blocks from one of Dominick's higher-grossing stores, at Division Street and Clybourn Avenue.
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also a test of my site upgrade to MT 3.34. If you see this, everything worked out fine.
