Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

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pseudo3d
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Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

Post by pseudo3d »

There's a former mall (de-malled in the early 2000s) in my town, Manor East Mall (the DeadMalls.com entry was written a long time ago by me and frankly I'm embarrassed that it's so amateurish). In the late 1980s it featured a Food 4 Less store, and according to tax records, was owned by Falley's Inc. (the original concept of the brand) themselves. Falley's was acquired in Yucaipa Cos. and opened the first SoCal store in 1990, starting the process that would ultimately get Ralphs (having rebranded a number of legacy supermarkets Yucaipa had picked up, including Alpha Beta, Boys, etc.) and Food 4 Less bought by Kroger.

So what about Fleming? The two Super Saver stores that Albertsons kept after the LLC breakup (and didn't immediately close) were not poorly-performing Albertsons that had been converted into the format (mostly in TX and FL), they were from when Fleming sold them the Food 4 Less stores. Just a few years earlier (2000), [url=https://www.supermarketnews.com/archive ... less-units]Fleming was prepared to quadruple their Food 4 Less stores. So how did Fleming get a large jump on the territory? Falley's operated as far south as Texas, and Fleming appeared to have a large territory, and when Fleming went under, these territories (NorCal especially) did not revert back to Kroger.

Furthermore, Fleming's spread appeared to be in the western United States where Falley's probably would never have gotten to, but it was Yucaipa that opened first in 1990, and by 2000, it strikes me as odd that they were still gung-ho about expansion even though whatever agreement they had with Falley's was still being honored by Kroger or couldn't be touched. That seems to be the case even now as one Food 4 Less (with the same logo) exists in Woodland, California owned by Nugget Markets, but unlike Fleming, they can't expand it.

So what happened exactly with Fleming and Falley's? I'm confused.
klkla
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Re: Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

Post by klkla »

It will be interesting to find the answer to this one. I remember Fleming expanding rapidly in the 90's by acquiring everything they could could get their hands on and they were also supplying Kmart with groceries. But then they crashed and burned in a very short period of time in the early 2000's.
klkla
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Re: Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

Post by klkla »

There is an interesting article here about Fleming:

https://progressivegrocer.com/cover-sto ... ing-pieces
Steve Landry
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Re: Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

Post by Steve Landry »

klkla wrote: 30 Mar 2021 22:46 There is an interesting article here about Fleming:

https://progressivegrocer.com/cover-sto ... ing-pieces
I believe their demise began earlier on.........

Their involvement with Pantry Pride, et al was ridiculous!
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storewanderer
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Re: Food 4 Less & Fleming Cos./Food 4 Less history

Post by storewanderer »

The way it was explained to me was back when Fleming had F4L, basically either Fleming or (then Ralphs - so Falley's I guess) had rights to the name in a given market. It was either one or the other. Both did not have the name in a given market.

So that is how you got Kroger F4L organically expanding into Chicago and into Las Vegas in the 00's. Fleming wasn't running F4L there.

When Fleming sold Baker's to Kroger, it actually included a single F4L Store in Nebraska in that transaction and Kroger did run that Nebraska F4L for a number of years before converting it to Baker's (it was basically a Baker's in all but name, had loyalty card, etc.).

Also Food 4 Less has expanded in northern California under C&S-supplied independents in recent years. About 15 years ago, Nugget opened a new F4L in Cameron Park, CA (new build) but it didn't do too well and they re-formatted it to a sort of quasi standard but cheaper Nugget called Forklift (it does better now). A few years ago PAQ (Stockton F4L) opened in a former Raleys on Mack in Sacramento. Last Year PAQ took two Food Source Stores from Raleys in Sacramento and Rio Linda and rebranded them as F4L. There are also a few other F4L franchisees around Fresno and down the 99 corridor who have added stores in recent years (for instance the store at 8921 N. Chestnut in Fresno was taken from Ralphs about 15 years ago).

Many of the NorCal F4L Stores were actually corporate owned by Fleming and were sold to Save Mart and promptly rebranded as Food Maxx. Kroger did get a couple of those stores due to FTC anti-trust in the 00's and rebranded them to FoodsCo. I believe one was in Fresno (Kroger since relocated it) and one was in Visalia (that FoodsCo actually went out of business).

Where it gets weird now is after Fleming went belly up, you had F4L Stores run by various independents and various suppliers. Harp's runs two F4Ls in MO (AWG supplied), there were some F4Ls in PA supplied by who knows who, there were some F4Ls up in OR supplied by Unified (then Supervalu/UNFI), etc. What I have noticed is aside from the C&S CA territory there has been zero expansion of the F4L concept by independents. So I am not sure if these far flung locations are grandfathered in with using F4L and could not add stores even if they wanted to, or there is simply no interest in expanding the banner in those far flung locations.

This article actually notes Fleming in 2003 had 7 F4L Stores in Utah. So I guess 5 stores closed. It also notes Fleming in 2003 had 6 F4L in AZ. https://www.supermarketnews.com/archive ... -save-mart

Also this article notes Save Mart was originally planning to keep using the F4L name on the stores.
https://www.supermarketnews.com/archive ... -territory
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