Calgary Retail Thread

[The Familia]

Sad to see Safeway as a brand start to die off. Stupid Sobeys. My first ever job was as a bag boy at the Whitehorn Safeway...good times!

 

[JonnyCanuck]

Sad to see Safeway as a brand start to die off. Stupid Sobeys. My first ever job was as a bag boy at the Whitehorn Safeway...good times!

Yes. Safeway was such a strong brand right across western Canada. Had hundreds of stores at one time. The survivor in the grocery store wars and mergers that has surprised me is Calgary Co-op. They appear to be stronger than ever.

 

[Always_Biking]

Yes. Safeway was such a strong brand right across western Canada. Had hundreds of stores at one time. The survivor in the grocery store wars and mergers that has surprised me is Calgary Co-op. They appear to be stronger than ever.

CO-OP is a funny one. They’re mostly local to Calgary and generally thought of as more expensive than the others, so you’d think they’d be ripe for a takeover but they persist.
The stores I’ve been tend to be busy all the time, especially the Midtown store, and it’s only get to get busier once 11th & 11th and West village towers are filled.

 

[potatopizzafan]

CO-OP is a funny one. They’re mostly local to Calgary and generally thought of as more expensive than the others, so you’d think they’d be ripe for a takeover but they persist.
The stores I’ve been tend to be busy all the time, especially the Midtown store, and it’s only get to get busier once 11th & 11th and West village towers are filled.

There's a Co-op planned for marda loop too. If that one goes ahead the Safeway is in trouble...

 

[CBBarnett]

CO-OP is a funny one. They’re mostly local to Calgary and generally thought of as more expensive than the others, so you’d think they’d be ripe for a takeover but they persist.
The stores I’ve been tend to be busy all the time, especially the Midtown store, and it’s only get to get busier once 11th & 11th and West village towers are filled.

I joked about this many times, but CO-OP Midtown has somehow done more for inner city redevelopment than any planner, architect or advocate in Calgary history

It's probably up to a few thousand units and a billion dollars of development activity the past decade around their painfully suburban-designed Midtown store by now. It's pretty much the only anchor around there unless $1B+ of development was attracted by the pet store. But if that was true, this whole city planning thing is just a chaotic, meaningless crapshoot and this website and my passion for cities is all but a pointless time wasting exercise in a cold and uncaring universe. So it's probably the CO-OP that helped trigger all that development.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

CO-OP is a funny one. They’re mostly local to Calgary and generally thought of as more expensive than the others, so you’d think they’d be ripe for a takeover but they persist.
The stores I’ve been tend to be busy all the time, especially the Midtown store, and it’s only get to get busier once 11th & 11th and West village towers are filled.

I did a pricing exercise recently, and found that (for my basket of items), the Midtown Coop was actually about 5% cheaper than the Beltline Safeway; the Urban Fare near 17th was the big outlier, around 20% higher overall, particularly more expensive on shelf items rather than dairy/meat/produce.

The Coop location that needs to happen IMO is on the strip mall immediately north of Chinook, which is an area with a ton of population density (and lots of lower-income rental units) but only the "upscale" Sunterra at Britannia for groceries.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I did a pricing exercise recently, and found that (for my basket of items), the Midtown Coop was actually about 5% cheaper than the Beltline Safeway; the Urban Fare near 17th was the big outlier, around 20% higher overall, particularly more expensive on shelf items rather than dairy/meat/produce.

The Coop location that needs to happen IMO is on the strip mall immediately north of Chinook, which is an area with a ton of population density (and lots of lower-income rental units) but only the "upscale" Sunterra at Britannia for groceries.

I haven't followed those regular grocery basket price reports for a while now, but back some time ago, COOP was usually the most expensive, and at one point later on they became more competitive and were in the middle of the pack, and sometimes even the cheapest.

 

[GoVertical]

The old Nelly's on 17th:

Old Starbucks on 17th is going to be a Higher Ground!

 

[Silence&Motion]

Deville took over Starbucks' location in Kensington. Great to see local businesses replace a giant multinational.

Gotta say, I'm confused by Starbucks' decision to pull out of its locations in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of suburban drive-thrus, office building lobbies, and grocery stores. Their brand seems to be tied so closely to being a chic hangout for young professionals. Maybe they just couldn't maintain that brand identity anymore and now need to accept their place in the vast landscape of boring but effortless fast food options.

 

[Disraeli]

Deville took over Starbucks' location in Kensington. Great to see local businesses replace a giant multinational.

Gotta say, I'm confused by Starbucks' decision to pull out of its locations in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of suburban drive-thrus, office building lobbies, and grocery stores. Their brand seems to be tied so closely to being a chic hangout for young professionals. Maybe they just couldn't maintain that brand identity anymore and now need to accept their place in the vast landscape of boring but effortless fast food options.

They've but out-trended by ultra chic independent cafes

 

[Surrealplaces]

Deville took over Starbucks' location in Kensington. Great to see local businesses replace a giant multinational.

Gotta say, I'm confused by Starbucks' decision to pull out of its locations in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of suburban drive-thrus, office building lobbies, and grocery stores. Their brand seems to be tied so closely to being a chic hangout for young professionals. Maybe they just couldn't maintain that brand identity anymore and now need to accept their place in the vast landscape of boring but effortless fast food options.

That's exactly what I think has happened. Stabucks' brand definitely used to be the trendy chic hangout for young professionals, but they have been consistently been losing out to other smaller brands like Caffe Artigiano, P&S, Deville, etc..

Starbucks' is now the go to place for soccer moms. A couple of reasons I think. There are so ubiquitous, cliche' and just so may location everywhere that it's watered down the brand....that and their enormous size is causing them to be more inconsistent. You go to many of the suburban locations and they are manned by high school teenagers that don't care too much how about the product.

 

[haltcatchfire]

Deville took over Starbucks' location in Kensington. Great to see local businesses replace a giant multinational.

Gotta say, I'm confused by Starbucks' decision to pull out of its locations in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of suburban drive-thrus, office building lobbies, and grocery stores. Their brand seems to be tied so closely to being a chic hangout for young professionals. Maybe they just couldn't maintain that brand identity anymore and now need to accept their place in the vast landscape of boring but effortless fast food options.

nm....surreal has it covered

 

[JTron]

I haven't been to a Starbucks' in 2 or 3 years. I don't even know if the coffee's good or bad, only that whenever I see one it reminds of MacDonald's. The fact that so many of them have drive thru's doesn't help the image of it being a serious coffee place.

 

[Mountain Man]

Starbucks coffee is almost as over rated as Tim's now, glad to see more boutique coffee shops displace some of the chain market.

 

[GoVertical]

Where BP's used to be on 17 Ave: