Supervalu-Owned Cub Foods Chain Parades its Lumberjack-Size Shopping Cart Down the Streets of Stillwater, Minnesota Today

The giant shopping cart in today's Lumberjack Days' parade.

The Sunday Supplement: Grocers Need to Go Big or Go Home When in the River City of Stillwater, Minnesota

Giant grocery shopping carts as promotional "vehicles" for grocery chains might just be the new black.

For example, we wrote about Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supemarkets' giant "Hot Rod" shopping cart in this June 28, 2011 story: Gentlemen ... Start Your Grocery Cart: Save Mart Supermarkets Goes 'Big' With 12-Foot High Motorized Shopping Cart. [Also see this related story - June 29, 2011: Save Mart Supermarkets Signs On For Five More Years' of NASCAR Sponsorship.]

The 12-foot-high Save Mart shopping cart (pictured here), which is nicknamed "Big Red" and called "Piccinini's Pride" by some Save Mart insiders (Bob Piccinini is the majority-owner, chairman and CEO of the 240-store supermarket chain) is powered by a 454 cubic inch Chevy racing engine. It can hold three grown men inside the basket, with enough room leftover for a few kids and  numerous bags of groceries.

Save Mart's "Hot Rod" cart has been making the rounds to various events in Northern California this summer (see the stories linked above), a well as stopping off at a few of the grocer's Save Mart and Lucky banner stores in the region.

The giant shopping cart's next major appearance is in August, when it will take center stage at the popular Hot August Nights celebration in Reno, Nevada, where Save Mart operates stores in addition to Northern California and California's Central Valley.

Cub Foods' 'Lumberjack-size' shopping card a parade hit

Today in Stillwater, Minnesota, thousands of miles from Modesto, California were Save Mart Supermarkets' is headquartered, Cub Foods, a local chain owned and operated by Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu, Inc. unveiled its own giant grocery shopping cart - racing motor not included - at the annual Lumberjack Days Grand Parade in Stillwater, which is located on the St. Croix River.

Supervalu, Inc.-owned Cub Foods operates 69 supermarkets in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. Of those units 58 stores are in Minnesota's Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The small River City of Stillwater, which has 18,000 residents, is located 20 miles east of downtown St. Paul.

The Cub Foods' giant shopping cart is actually a parade float, as you can see in the photograph at the top of this piece.

The cart is motorized. But unlike the 454 Chevy engine on Save Mart's "Hot Rod" cart, which CEO Bob Piccinini told us in June allows it to hit upwards of 100 miles-an-hour (if anyone is crazy enough to attempt it), the Supervalu-owned chain's version instead has a tiny motor that moves the float/cart along at a standard parade speed or pace.

Notice the over-sized food and grocery product packages in Cub Foods' giant shopping cart pictured at top? A Supervalu, Inc. spokesperson says the big cart plus the big grocery product packages featured inside it "equals big savings," which at least is the message the grocery chain says it wanted to get across in today's parade, along with having a little fun.

We do know the fun part was experienced because according to a group of parade spectators we talked to today, the giant shopping cart appeared to receive a good deal of attention and created lots of smiles among parade-goers, the viewers told us.

The annual Lumberjack Days Grand Parade is part of an event-packed five day festival in Stillwater, Minnesota called Lumberjack Days. You can see just how event and activity-packed the annual celebration of the city's heritage is by taking a look at its website here.

A number of residents of Stillwater and the surrounding area were concerned that the fast-rising St. Croix River might interfere with this year's Lumberjack Days celebration and parade, particularly after the city had five inches of rain on Friday, July 19.

But event organizer Dave Eckberg says there was no way he and his team were going to allow heavy rains and a rising river to stop the popular annual celebration of the city's heritage, which has as its title sponsor this year Supervalu, Inc. competitor Walmart Stores, Inc.

A little irony: Supervalu, Inc. is headquartered in nearby Eden Prairie, Minnesota. It's not only the dominant grocer in the state but also one of the top employers in Minnesota. It's the home state grocery chain. 

It's CEO, Craig Herkert, was a senior executive at Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart Stores, Inc. before taking the top spot at Supervalu, which owns Cub Foods and other chains like Albertsons, Save-A-Lot, Shaw's and numerous others.

One of the key states Walmart's U.S. division is putting a major focus on in terms of growing its food and grocery retailing presence nationally is Minnesota, which is the major reason it's the top-sponsor of Lumerjack Days this year. Walmart is the market share leading seller of groceries in the U.S. Supervalue, Inc. is neck-to-neck with Safeway for the number four slot. Kroger is number two. Costco is number three.

On Friday July 19th Lumberjack Days' organizer Eckberg said, "We're not compromising the event in any way. We're actually really excited about the possibilities [presented by the rising river]. The concert venue is moving west, away from the the river about 200 feet. We're clearing three parking lots and closing off most of Water Street. We'll still be right downtown, East of main Street and all events remain on schedule."

That's a spirit the town's original Lumberjacks would be proud to know still exists in Stillwater.

And we bet Supervalu's Cub Foods' chain would like to see some of that "can do" spirit in its stores, with locals filling regular-sized shopping carts to the brim, having been inspired by viewing the Supervalu-owned chain's Giant shopping cart float in today's Lumberjack Days parade.

Limited Edition Sunnyside Farms Ice Cream Flavors, Including the Latest Featuring an Iconic Cookie Brand, Hit Save Mart and Raley's Stores For the Summer Season

Private Brand Showcase

Northern California's second and third-largest supermarket chains (Safeway Stores, Inc. is number one), Modesto-headquartered Save Mart (240 stores with about $5 billion in annual sales) and West Sacramento-based Raley's (131 stores and about $3.1 billion annual sales) have a relationship that's unique among food retailing competitors in the U.S. - the two grocery chains share the same fresh, refrigerated and frozen dairy products' private brand, Sunnyside Farms, as well as a secondary value brand, Bayview Farms.

But the relationship goes far beyond merely sharing the private brand: The two competing chains are also the primary owners of the company that produces the dairy products via a joint-venture called Super Store Industries, based in Lathrop, which is located between Modesto and Stockton in the Northern Central Valley.

Save Mart operates supermarkets under the Save Mart, Lucky, S Mart and Max Value banners, along with a chain of discount warehouse format stores called Food Maxx. The stores are located throughout Northern California and south to Bakersfield in the Central Valley.

Raley's operates three supermarket banners - Raley's (combo superstores as well as supermarkets), Bel Air and Nob Hill Foods, along with a discount warehouse banner of its own, Food Source. It's stores are primarily in the Sacramento region, San Francisco Bay Area, south coast and Northern Central Valley areas. Both chains also have stores in Northern Nevada.

As a part of Super Store Industries, the main feature of which is a buying-merchandising office and massive distribution center for Save Mart and Raley's in Lathrop, the joint-venture also owns two dairy processing plants, Mid Valley Dairy/Sunnyside Farms in Fairfield and Sunnyside Farms in Turlock.

The Fairfield plant produces Sunnyside Farms' and Bayview Farms' fresh fluid milk, while the Turlock plant produces cultured dairy products - cottage cheese, yogurt and the like - and ice cream and frozen novelties under the Sunnyside Farms private brand, which is offered in the various banner stores operated by the two competitors.

And it's Sunnyside Farms brand ice cream which is the topic of this Private Brand Showcase piece today.

Earler this year the Sunnyside Farms' ice cream brand product development team at Super Store Industries' came up with a plan to create a series of limited edition ice cream flavors as a way to celebrate the key summer ice cream selling season and to create some excitement and added sales for the Sunnyside Farms brand in Save Mart and Raley's-owned stores.

The first limited edition flavor, Sunnyside Farms Limited Edition Premium Watermelon Sherbet was launched in late May. The summer-only flavor features a smooth watermelon-flavored sherbet with flakes of milk chocolate shaped to look like watermelon seeds.

The Central Valley area near Turlock where the Sunnyside Farms ice cream plant is located is a key watermelon growing area, so the limited edition flavor ties-in to one of the many locally-grown crops from the area, as well as fitting the war summer season well.

The ice cream flavor development team followed up on the seasonal Watermelon Sherbet ice cream item in late June when it launched its second limited edition ice cream flavor into the Raley's and Save Mart stores. That flavor, Sunnyside Farms Cinnamon Churro Premium Ice Cream, celebrates the popular hand-held Mexican desert item the Churro, which is a cinnamon favored bread or cake-like treat that's popular with Latinos but in recent years has also become a cross-cultural favorite, particularly in parts of the U.S. like California and Nevada which have high Latino or Hispanic populations.

California's Central Valley and much of Northern California has a significant Latino population, so like the Watermelon Sherbet the Sunnyside Farms Limited Edition Cinnamon Churro Premium Ice Cream also has a strong local angle in terms of celebrating one of the many foods Hispanics have introduced into the region and America at large.

Sunnyside Farms introduced the limited edition ice cream flavor with a Latino twist in a big way on June 26, offering free samples from its Sunnyside Farms ice cream truck at the Toyota Save Mart 350 NASCAR race at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma County. The limited edition flavor was introduced into the Save Mart and Raley's stores just a couple days earlier.

This week Sunnyside Farms is introducing its newest limited edition ice cream flavor into the stores owned by the two grocery chains. That flavor, Sunnyside Farms Circus Animal Cookie Premium Ice Cream (pictured above and at top), features swirls of pink and white cookie batter ice cream and Mother's brand Circus Animal Cookies, which have been a favorite of kids of all ages in Northern California for many decades.

Mother's is an iconic cookie brand in Northern California. And its Circus Animal Cookies have been a favorite of three generations of children - and their parents - in the region, due in large part to the fact the brand was founded in San Francisco in 1914 and baked in nearby Oakland from 1915 until 2006. [See the companion story below on the blog or read it by clicking here -

Save Mart and Raley's should have a big hit on its hands with the Limited Edition Sunnyside Farms Circus Animal Cookie Premium Ice Cream because it should evoke nostalgia in older consumers who grew up eating the Mother's Circus Animal Cookies while at the same time grabbing the attention of the latest generation of kids who will want to taste the ice cream that includes their favorite animal-shaped cookies in it.

And speaking of kids, ice cream and local angles, on Saturday (July 16) Sunnyside Farms' employees who work at the Turlock, California plant, along with volunteers from the community, gave a little something back to the community's children when they spent the day constructing a "green" play structure called the "Sunnyside Farms-Got Milk Play Structure," in Bristol Park in the city of 75,000 residents.

The "environmentally friendly" play structure (pictured above and below) is made from 41,310 recycled plastic milk jugs.

Along with wanting to provide a place for kids to have fun and get exercise, Sunnyside Farms' says it hopes the play structure will inspire Turlock residents to "take small steps daily, such as recycling and exercising, to care for our environment and build healthier families"

That play structure will come in handy after the kids (and mom and dad) enjoy the newest limited edition ice cream from Sunnyside Farms, made right in town and packed with those Mother's Circus Animal Cookies. Mom and Dad will have to find their own form of exercise though.

The way Mother's Cookies Crumbled ... and Was Reborn

The creation of Sunnyside Farms' latest limited edition ice cream featuring Mother's Circus Animal Cookies would never have happened were it not for food giant Kellogg Company buying the Mother's brand and assets in 2008 and re-launching Mother's Cookies in mid-2009.

Read why in the sidebar below:

The Mother's brand of cookies is extremely popular in Northern California, due in large part to the fact the company and brand was founded in San Francisco in 1914 by N.M. (Noah) Wheatley, who ran a newspaper stand on the corner of Market and Kearney Streets in the city and bought the rights to a recipe for some home-baked cookies from one of his customers. The recipes he bought produced the first Mother's Cookies.

In 1915 Wheatly set up a one-man-shop in a small building across the bay on 12th Avenue in Oakland, where he baked and sold about 2,000 Mother's cookies a day, until in 1922 he moved to a larger location on 18th Street in Oakland and hired some employees.

From there, sales of the Mother's brand of cookies began to soar, and by 1942 Wheatley had moved into a larger and much more modern bakery plant at 810 81st Avenue in Oakland, where he eventually had over 750 people working for him there and in sales in several additional western states.

In 1962 the Wheatley family sold the thriving Mother's Cookie brand and company to George Markham, who was a vice president at the company. 

Mother's continued to grow and Markham later sold the company to a group of employees who operated the cookie company from 1983 to 1996.

In 1996 the company was sold to to Artal NV, a Belgian company that two years later sold Mother's Cookies to Specialty Foods Corp., which was a conglomerate put together by the famous (or infamous) investor-Bass Brothers who were doing a roll up in the cookie brand category, for about $100 million.

Prior to buying Mother's Cookies, Specialty Foods Corp. purchased the Archway cookie company. After the Mother's purchase the Bass Brothers' conglomerate became the third-largest cookie-baker and marketer in the U.S., after Nabisco and Keebler.

In 2000 Specialty Foods Corp. sold the combined Archway and Mother's company (remember it was an investor roll up) to Italy's Parmalot Finanziari for about $400 million. At the time Parmalot was fast-growing and diversifying from its then primarily milk and tomato products business into cookies and other categories.

Mother's ownership merry-go-round was far from over though.

In 2005 Parmalot filed for bankruptcy amid a scandal over the illegal sale of corporate bonds that ended up taking the company down.

In 2005 Parmalot sold Archway-Mother's to the U.S. private equity firm Catterton Partners, which proceeded to close the Oakland Mother's Cookies factory in 2006, firing about 240 workers and moving the baking operations to Archway plants in Ohio and Canada.

Things got worse though.

In 2008 there was an accounting scandal at the private equity firm-owned Archway-Mother's Cookie Company, which combined with the financial crisis that hit the same year spelled the end - the company filed bankruptcy and fired all the workers, taking the Archway and Mother's brands off grocery, drug and mass merchandise store shelves.

Consumers in Northern California where Mother's Cookies got its start in 1914,took the news personally. For some it was like a loss of a family member.

Campaigns were launched asking various companies to buy the Mother's brand and assets and bring the cookies back.

Northern California grocery chains like Safeway Stores, Save Mart, Raley's and others even joined in, suggesting to companies like Nabisco, Keebler and others that if they took over the brand there was room on the shelves for it.

In 2008 Lance Inc. bought the Archway brand and assets and reopened the plant in Ashland, Ohio.

But it didn't want Mother's.

But shortly after, in December 2008, food giant Kellogg Company, which owns leading cookie brand Nabisco, got approval from the bankruptcy court to acquire the Mother's brand and assets and announced it would bring back most of the brands popular varieties, including Circus Animals, and have the cookies in the pink and white packages back on store shelves by mid-2009, which it did, re-launching Mother's Cookies in May 2009.

The first stores to get the cookies were located in Northern California.

Save Mart Supermarkets Signs On For Five More Years' of NASCAR Sponsorship

Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.

Northern California Market Region

Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supermarkets has signed a multi-year agreement to continue as co-title sponsor of the annual NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event at Infineon Raceway in Northern California's Sonoma Valley.

The announcement was made Sunday (June 26) by Save Mart majority-owner, chairman and CEO Bob Piccinini and Steve Page, president and general manager of Infineon Raceway, during the Toyota/Save Mart 350 NASCAR race, which was won by

The 240-store supermarket chain, which is number two in market share in Northern California after number one Safeway Stores, In., and Infineon Raceway have a long partnership together: Save Mart has been either title sponsor or co-title sponsor of the NASCAR Sprint Cup event at Infineon Raceway since 1992.

Additionally, Save Mart has been either the title or co-title partner of the NASCAR annual Cup event - this year's Toyota/Save Mart 350 held Sunday -  in Sonoma for two decades, celebrating its 20th anniversary as a sponsor of NASCAR in Sonoma this year.

According to Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini, Save Mart was the title sponsor of the NASCAR Cup event from 1992-1997. It has combined with partners as co-title sponsor of the event since 1998. The last five years, the event has been known as the Toyota/Save Mart 350.

Piccinini says the new agreement with the Sonoma County raceway announced Sunday is for five years, extending through 2016.

"We are excited to continue our partnership with Infineon Raceway as co-title sponsor of the Cup Series event and look forward to finding new ways to celebrate with racing fans across every community we serve," Piccinini, who's a rabid auto racing and sports fan - he's also a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors professional basketball team and the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres pro- baseball teams - says. "Our sponsorship continues to build strong brand recognition and provide great value to our loyal supplier partners and shoppers. It's been a great ride so far and we are ready for more."

One of the ways Piccinini and Save Mart found to celebrate Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 NASCAR Cup Series event, along with promoting the chain at he same time, was by featuring the grocer's 12-foot high "hot rod" shopping cart, which we wrote about in the story below on the blog. [See - June 28, 2011: Gentlemen ... Start Your Grocery Cart: Save Mart Supermarkets Goes 'Big' With 12-Foot High Motorized Shopping Cart.]

Save Mart's Lucky supermarket chain, which has 76 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California, is the official grocery chain of the Golden State Warrior's for promotional purposes.

Earlier this year Piccinini, who invested in the team (an about 20% ownership stake, according to our sources) last fall as part of a new ownership group that bought out the team's previous owners for $450 million, was named a member of the Warrior's four-person executive board, which is headed by majority owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. Read the October 27, 2010 column by our 'The Insider' about the new owners and Piccinini's involvement here: Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini Poised to Make it to the 'Bigs' as Member of Golden State Warriors' Ownership Group.

But back at the races, Steve Page, who runs Infineon Raceway in Sonoma Valley said in announcing th new five year deal with Save Mart Supermarkets he inked with Piccinini: "Our relationship with Save Mart continues to evolve in new and positive ways." They are an engaged, active and promotionally-oriented partner and the synergy between our respective organizations has only grown stronger over these 20-years. We couldn't be more delighted to announce this new agreement and extension."

Infineon Raceway is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Speedway Motorsports, Inc., which is a major marketer and promoter of motor-sports entertainment in the United States.

The new five year deal in which Save Mart will continue to sponsor the annual NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event at Infineon Raceway, also means the grocery chain's 12-foot high motorized shopping cart, which is powered by a 454 cubic inch Chevy engine, will be getting a lot more use. And that's an added reason Save Mart should look into the world record-holding potential its giant shopping cart holds, as described in our story yesterday.

Related Stories

June 28, 2011: Gentlemen ... Start Your Grocery Cart: Save Mart Supermarkets Goes 'Big' With 12-Foot High Motorized Shopping Cart

June 19, 2011: Safeway Has A Picnic in San Francisco Featuring the 'World's Longest Picnic Table' to Showcase its 'Open Nature' Natural Foods' Brand

March 23, 2011: Tesco Opens First Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in California's Northern Central Valley Today - in Modesto

March 19, 2011: Preview: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is Headed to Save Mart Supermarket's Hometown of Modesto

October 27, 2010: Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini Poised to Make it to the 'Bigs' as Member of Golden State Warriors' Ownership Group

July 15, 2010: Just Like Mr. Rogers Did, Save Mart Supermarkets' Doesn't Just Talk the Talk, it Walks the Walk in the Neighborhood

Gentlemen ... Start Your Grocery Cart: Save Mart Supermarkets Goes 'Big' With 12-Foot High Motorized Shopping Cart

Touring the track on Sunday at the Toyota/Save Mart 350.

Northern California Market Region

Northern California's two leading supermarket chains - Pleasanton, California-based Safeway Stores, Inc. and Save Mart Supermarkets, which is headquartered in Modesto - have been thinking and doing "big" this month.

But the big thinking and doing has nothing to do about the fact the grocery chains are the number one - Safeway - and number two - Save Mart - market share leaders in Northern California.

Safeway Store's big thinking and doing was on display in San Francisco on Sunday, June 17, when the grocery chain broke the Guinness World's Record for creating the longest picnic table. We wrote about the "big" (or long) event in this June 19 story: Safeway Has A Picnic in San Francisco Featuring the 'World's Longest Picnic Table' to Showcase its 'Open Nature' Natural Foods' Brand


Kyle Bush and the giant Shopping cart in the winner's circle after Sunday's race.


12-foot high 'hot rod' shopping cart

Not to be outdone by its competition when it comes to "big" thinking and doing, earlier this year Modesto-based Save Mart hired a local company, BRE Rods & Classics, located in nearby Salida, California, to create the 12-foot high, "hot rod" shopping cart (pictured at top).

The cart, which some insiders are calling "Piccinini's Pride," in honor of Save Mart majority-owner, chairman, CEO and rabid auto racing fan Bob Piccinini, who commissioned the mean machine, was featured on Sunday at the NASCAR Toyota/Save Mart 350 auto race at Infineon Raceway in Northern California's Sonoma County.

Sunday's race, sponsored annually by Toyota and Save Mart Supermarkets, was won by Kurt Bush, who held off a late-charging Jeff Gordon to claim the first-place honor.

Save Mart's mega-motorized shopping cart, which is powered by a 454 Chevy engine sponsored by Watson Racing, which allows it to hit speeds of up to 100 miles an hour, according to Jim Brown of BRE Rods & Classics, got its inaugural debut in Modesto's annual "Graffiti Fest" parade on Friday evening, June 11. (You can see the Save Mart motorized shopping cart on a test run in the brief video below.)

The three day "Graffiti Fest" event, which is sponsored by the Modesto Kiwanis Club each year, pays homage to the movie "American Graffiti," which was made by Modesto native George Lucas of Star Wars fame, and chronicles the born-and-raised in Modesto movie producer-director's childhood, growing up in what the locals like to call the "Cruising Capital of the World."

Or at least Modesto was America's cruising capital. However, a number of years ago the Modesto City Council outlawed cruising on McHenry Avenue and J Street, the main drag where most of the action took place in Lucas' era (late 1950's-to-early 1960's) and in his movie, which is set in the early 1960's. As the famous line in American Graffiti says: "Where were you in '62?

Local boosters created the annual "Graffiti Fest" event, along with a series of other events throughout the summer, called "Graffiti Summer," as a way to celebrate the tradition, along with using it as a vehicle to increase tourism and encourage people to spent money with local businesses during the summer months.

Save Mart's big, hot rod shopping cart got a bit over-heated during its trial run in the June 11 "Graffiti Fest" parade, according to a longtime Modesto-area food broker and Fresh & Easy Buzz reader who was there, and had to be sidelined. A Save Mart executive confirmed that observation for us recently.

However, the crew at BRE Rods and Classics fixed the problem and "Piccinini's Pride" was in top shape at Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 race in Sonoma County.

Sunday's big race isn't the last stop for the shopping cart. Save Mart's pit crew is taking the racing engine-powered vehicle to the California State Fair in Sacramento next.

After that the cart, which also made an appearance at one of Save Mart's Lucky banner supermarkets in Napa, California on June 23, will be featured at the annual "Hot August Nights" event in Reno, Nevada. Save Mart, like Safeway Stores, Inc., operates supermarkets in northern Nevada, as well as in Northern California.

The Save Mart "hot rod" shopping cart at the Crystal Springs Gold Course in Burlingame, California. The club's pro says course rules prohibit the shopping cart's use as a golf cart, even though it can hold a whole lot of golf bags. But he did let a photographer use the fairway to take a few "shots."

An American tradition

Creating "out-sized" things and events - giant displays in-store, parade floats, and even record-holding tables and giant shopping carts - is part of a long and historic tradition of thinking and doing "big" by U.S. grocers, as a way to not only promote their stores, but also to have plain fun.

It's good to see that Save Mart and Safeway Stores' are keeping that tradition alive - and are doing so in a "big" way.

Potential Guiness World Record?

Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supermarkets, which was founded over five decads ago by Bob Piccinini's father Mike and partner Nick Tocco, operates 240 stores in Northern and Central California and Northern Nevada under the Save Mart, S-Mart Foods, Lucky, Maxx Value (supermarkets) and FoodMaxx (discount warehouse format) banners, should contact the Guinness World Record people post-haste because a Guiness World Record might just be looking the grocer right in its eyes, so to speak.

Save Mart can't get the record for biggest/largest/tallest shopping cart. That record is already held - and at 34.4 feet high, from ground to handle, the world record-holding cart, which was made by the Al Safeer Group and Century Shopping Mall, and sponsored by Dubai UAE Duty Free, won the honors in February 2004 at the Dubai UAE Shopping Festival

But ... the record-holding shopping cart from Dubai has no motor.

Enter Save Mart's 12-foot high "muscle car-style" shopping cart, powered by the 454 Chevy engine.

Based on our research on the Guinness website, we think there just might be an opportunity for Save Mart to claim the title and honor of having the world's biggest, largest or highest (or all three) motorized shopping cart.

It's certainly worth checking out. After all, does Save Mart Supermarkets' (and its chief Bob Piccinini) really want to let Safeway Stores' have all the glory with its World's Longest Picnic Table, when it comes to Northern California-based grocery chains setting world records?

The grocery business is all about competition, right? So ... Bring it on.

Related Stories

June 19, 2011: Safeway Has A Picnic in San Francisco Featuring the 'World's Longest Picnic Table' to Showcase its 'Open Nature' Natural Foods' Brand

March 23, 2011: Tesco Opens First Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in California's Northern Central Valley Today - in Modesto

March 19, 2011: Preview: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is Headed to Save Mart Supermarket's Hometown of Modesto

October 27, 2010: Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini Poised to Make it to the 'Bigs' as Member of Golden State Warriors' Ownership Group

July 15, 2010: Just Like Mr. Rogers Did, Save Mart Supermarkets' Doesn't Just Talk the Talk, it Walks the Walk in the Neighborhood

Preview: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is Headed to Save Mart Supermarket's Hometown of Modesto

Tesco's Fresh & Easy in Northern California - 2011
News/Analysis

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is preparing to open its first store, pictured above and below, in the Northern California city of Modesto on Wednesday, March 23.

The store, one of four units Tesco's Fresh & Easy currently has planned for Modesto and next door Ceres, is in a shopping center at 1717 Oakdale Road (at Lancey Drive) in Modesto, which has a population of about 205,000 residents and is located in the Northern Central Valley. [The photographs were taken by a Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent on January 30, 2011. The store is completed and ready to open Wednesday.]


[See the following linked stories for details about the four Modesto and Ceres locations Tesco's Fresh & Easy has plans for stores at currently - May 10, 2008: New Markets: Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Move Into Modesto, California Market; Open its First Store in the City Early Next Year; November 6, 2008: Upcoming New Markets News: Tesco Will Open A Second Fresh & Easy Store in Modesto, California; March 31, 2009: Despite Having Postponed its Northern California Launch Indefinitely; Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third Store in Modesto, California; and November 3, 2010: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans New Store in Northern Central Valley, California City of Ceres.]

Modesto is a little over an hour's drive from the San Francisco Bay Area city of Concord, where Tesco opened a Fresh & Easy store yesterday. [See - March 16, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Opens Stores in Concord and Vacaville Today; Makes Five Markets in Northern California.]

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market acquired the Oakdale Road and Lancey Drive location in 2008, as we reported in this story - November 6, 2008: Upcoming New Markets News: Tesco Will Open A Second Fresh & Easy Store in Modesto, California.

The building was most-recently home to a Save Mart supermarket, which was the anchor retailer in the shopping center. However, the Modesto-based chain, which is the second-largest grocer in Northern California after Safeway Stores, Inc., closed it some years ago after building and opening a bigger and more modern supermarket a little over half-a-mile away at 2601 Oakdale Road (at Floyd).

Save Mart, which operates 241 stores in Northern California, northern Nevada and as far south as Bakersfield in the Central Valley and has about $5 billion in annual sales, is headquartered in Modesto, where it's one of the city's top private sector employers.

Save Mart Supermarkets is privately-held. It's majority-owner is Bob Piccinini and his family. Picinini is a Modesto native and resident. His father Mike and a partner, Nick Tocco, founded the chain in the 1950's, opening the first store in Modesto. In the 1980's, shortly after he became president of Save Mart, Picinini, who is chairman and CEO of the chain, bought out the Tocco family in order to have a controlling interest in Save Mart.

Save Mart had about 40 stores, all in and near Modesto, when Bob Piccinini took over the chain in the 1980's. Today the retailer's 240-plus stores are located throughout Northern California and northern Nevada, and in the Central Valley from Stockton and Modesto south to Bakersfield.

Four years ago Piccinini's Save Mart bought the Albertsons Northern California division from then-owner private equity firm Cerberus. The stores, which are located primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area but also in the Sacramento region and elsewhere in Northern California, were re-branded Lucky about a year later.

The Lucky name has a long history in Northern California, where supermarkets under the banner operated for decades. However, Albertsons Inc., which was acquired by Supervalu, Inc., Cerberus and CVS Pharmacy a number of years ago, acquired American Stores in the 1980's and a few years later changed all of the Lucky banner stores in Northern California to Albertsons. When Save Mart bought the division from Cerberus, rights to the Lucky name and brand were part of the deal. Save Mart decided to change all the Albertsons banner stores back to Lucky, rather than using Save Mart, because research found the Lucky brand still had significant equity among consumers in Northern California.

Save Mart is the dominant grocer in Modesto, both in terms of number of stores and market share. It operates five Save Mart banner supermarkets, a Maxx Value Foods hard-discount format supermarket (on Paradise Road in the western part of the city), which so far the only store in what is a smaller-sized version of its Food Maxx discount warehouse format, and one Food Maxx discount warehouse store in Modesto.

Another privately-held and fairly local (90 minute drive from Modesto) chain, West Sacramento-based Raley's, is Save Mart's leading competitor in Modesto.

The other leading major chain food retailers in Modesto are: Walmart (one supercenter and a discount format store), Safeway, Winco Foods, Trader Joe's, Costco, Grocery Outlet and 99 Cents Only, all with one store each respectively in the city.

Modesto also has numerous multi and single-store independents that operate stores of various different formats, from upscale (O'Brien's Markets; two stores) and mid-range (Sam's Food City), to hard-discount (Cost Less Food Co.; three units).

Additionally, a new independent and locally-owned grocer, Green's Market, which specializes in in-store prepared ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat fresh-prepared foods, opened a small-format store this month in downtown Modesto. The store also offers a selection of fresh produce, perishables and groceries, putting a emphasis on locally-produced, natural/organic and specialty-oriented products.

Raley's, which operates stores under the Raley's (superstores), Bel-Air, Nob Hill (supermarkets) and Food Source (discount warehouse format) banners, has four Raley's superstores in Modesto.

And like Save Mart, one of Raley's four Modesto stores is located about half-a-mile from the soon-to-be-opened Fresh & Easy store at Oakdale Road and Lancey Drive.

The photo above of the inside of the Fresh & Easy store at 1717 Oakdale Road in Modesto, which is set to open March 23, was taken by a Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent on January 30, 2010, shortly after work began on the store's interior.

The Save Mart supermarket that's a little over half-a-mile from the Fresh & Easy location at 1717 Oakdale Road is about 40,000 square-feet. The nearby Raley's superstore is about 50,000 square-feet. In contrast, the Fresh & Easy market at Oakdale Road and Lancey Drive is, like all of the grocer's fresh food and grocery markets, 10,000-12,000 square-feet.

The Fresh & Easy store opening at 1717 Oakdale Road on Wednesday isn't the first location the grocer acquired in Modesto. Rather, as we were the first publication to report nearly three years ago in this story - May 10, 2008: New Markets: Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Move Into Modesto, California Market; Open its First Store in the City Early Next Year - that honor goes to the Sylvan Square shopping center in Modesto, where Tesco signed a deal to put a Fresh & Easy market in half the building, which is about 30,000 square-feet, that formerly housed independent grocer Michotti's Marketplace, which closed in early 2008.

Fresh & Easy originally planned to make the Sylvan Square center store its first unit in Modesto. However, that was back in the days when Tesco planned to launch into Northern California in early 2009 rather than early 2011. [See - May 10, 2008: New Markets: Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Move Into Modesto, California Market; Open its First Store in the City Early Next Year. Those plans have changed, however. Fresh & Easy decided last year to make the Oakdale and Lancey store its first in the city.

It will be interesting to observe how the two family-owned and locally-based chains, particularly Save Mart, which is Modesto born, bred and based, behave from a competitive standpoint when the Fresh & Easy store at 1717 Oakdale Road, which essentially will be in the middle of the Raley's and Save Mart stores, both being only about half-a-mile away, opens on Wednesday.

Save Mart Supermarket's is known to get very aggressive with new (and existing) competitors coming into its home-base Modesto territory. Among the defensive moves the local chain could make, for example, is to except Fresh & Easy's discount store coupons at its Oakdale Road Save Mart store, like Kroger-owned Fry's is doing in Arizona, as we detailed in this recent story - January 29, 2011: Fry's Food Stores Brings Back 'Competitor Coupon Match' Promotion; Accepting Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Coupons in Arizona.

As an example of Save Mart's competitive streak, in December 2010, when it converted a Save Mart store on Paradise Road in west Modesto into its first (and currently only) Maxx Value Foods discount supermarket, the grocer launched a price and promotional war campaign against a nearby store owned by Modesto-based multi-store discount grocer Cost Less Food Co., targeting the Cost Less store on Carpenter Road in Modesto, which is the retailer's closest unit to the Maxx Value store on Paradise Road. Modesto-based Cost Less Food Co. has eight stores. Seven units are in the Central Valley and one store is in Jackson, which is in Amador County in the foothills.

Save Mart's price war campaign started with a full-page advertisement in the local daily newspaper, the Modesto Bee. In the advertisement Save Mart published a price-comparison survery that stated its prices on a chosen market basket of groceries is cheaper than the same one at the Cost Less store, showing receipts for comparable items purchased at both stores in the ad.

A few weeks later Cost Less fired back, running not a one page but instead a double truck ad in the paper, offering a survey with twice the number of items Save Mart used in its market basket sample and showing that its Cost Less store on Carpenter Road is the cheaper of the two stores, based on purchases of like items at both stores.

These types of surveys depend on the items a retailer selects to include in the market basket. And since its a self-selection process it can be easily manipulated. Consumers should beware of such surveys and retailers should be cautious in using them.

In December Save Mart Supermarkets also started running (and continues to do so) a weekly full-page ad for its Paradise Road Maxx Value Foods store in the paper's Wednesday food section, which is something Cost Less has been doing for a number of years. The ad, just like Cost Less Foods' full-page advertisement, features about 10-12 "loss leader" food and grocery items offered at or below cost.

Two other possible defensive moves Save Mart Supermarkets could make vis-a-vis the nearby Fresh & Easy market at 1717 Oakdale Road would be to offer to match or beat all advertised and everyday prices at the Fresh & Easy, which is something Save Mart already does at its Food Maxx discount warehouse stores, where its policy is to meet or beat the prices of all its competitors.

Additionally, since Save Mart is headquartered right in Modesto (about a 10-minute drive from its own and the Fresh & Easy store on Oakdale Road) it can easily offer store-specific deals at the Oakdale Road store only, targeted to Fresh & Easy, like it's doing with the Paradise Road Maxx Value Foods store against Cost Less.

Or...Save Mart could nothing more than it's already doing, which in some ways would be bad news for Fresh & Easy since it would signal that Save Mart doesn't find the new entry owned by the world's third-largest food retailer, Tesco, a serious threat to its store half-a-mile away and its hometown dominance in Modesto.

Save Mart operates supermarkets and Food Maxx units in the Fresno and Bakersfield areas where Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has 14 stores, so the chain is familiar with the Fresh & Easy format and operations.

Raley's, in addition to being a superstore operator, is a pioneer and leader in ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat fresh-prepared foods merchandising, a category that comprises a significant portion of Fresh & Easy's offering.

Raley's introduced a new line of pre-packaged refrigerated ready meals and sides in October of last year, which it's added to its already extensive selection of packaged and bulk deli-style merchandised ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat fresh-prepared foods. [See - October 30, 2010: Raley's Launches New 'Raley's TO GO' Pre-Packaged, Refrigerated Fresh-Prepared Foods Line.] The new pre-packaged line was launched in part because of Tesco's moving into Northern California this year.

All of Fresh & Easy's fresh ready meals and sides are pre-packaged. We expect Raley's to defend its prepared foods turf at the nearby store once the Fresh & Easy market at Oakdale and Lancey opens. We also expect Raley's, like Save Mart, to defend its turf across all categories at the Modesto store.

It should be an interesting competitive triangle; the Fresh & Easy market at 1717 Oakdale Road, the Oakdale Road Save Mart store and the nearby Raley's superstore, all located about half-a-mile from each other. And it begins on Wednesday, March 23, when the first Fresh & Easy store in Modesto opens at 1717 Oakdale Road. Stay tuned.

Related Stories

[Readers: Click on the following links - Fresh and Easy Northern California, Tesco's Fresh and Easy in Norcal 2011, Northern CA Launch, Northern California, Northern California Market Region, Fresh and Easy San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California Special Report - for related stories about Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Northern California.]

Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini Poised to Make it to the 'Bigs' as Member of Golden State Warriors' Ownership Group

The Insider - Heard on the Street

Bob Piccinini (at left), the majority-owner, chairman and CEO of Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supermarkets, has achieved far more than he likely imagined he would growing up as the son of an independent grocer in Modesto, where he was born and raised and returned to after doing a stint in the military and graduating from the University of San Francisco.

For example, when Piccinini took over as CEO of Save Mart in the 1980's, there were about 40 stores, all located in Modesto and in a few surrounding cities. Today, under his leadership, Save Mart, which operates 240 stores under the Save Mart, Lucky, S Mart and Food Maxx banners, is the largest privately-held grocery chain in California and in the top 10 nationally, with annual sales in the $5 billion range.

And Lucky, which Save Mart acquired a few years ago (former Albertson's Northern California) is the number two market share leader in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, behind number one Safeway Stores. Apparently Piccinini paid attention to the region all those many decades ago while he was attending the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco.

Along with selling groceries and building a business, Piccinini's other vocation and advocation has been sports. In his lifetime he's owned two minor league baseball teams: What in the 1980's and 90's was the then Oakland A's-affiliated Modesto A's (it's now the Modesto Nuts and not affiliated with the A's) and after that for a time the San Francisco Giants' Fresno, California-based minor league team. It's been a number of years since he has owned either team.

Bob Piccinini has also lead Save Mart into numerous sport-oriented sponsorships. For example, some years ago he put together a group of vendor-investors, including Pepsi, that along with the grocery chain provided much of the money to build the "Save Mart Center" on the Fresno State University campus. The combination indoor sports arena (college basketball, ect.) and entertainment venue was named after the grocery chain in return for Piccinini and company's financing a significant portion of the cost of the multi-million dollar facility.

For many years Save Mart also sponsored the California Relays in Modesto, which before they were ended a few years ago was one of the oldest and most prestigious Olympic-qualifying track and field events in the U.S.

In the 1990's, Piccinini and entertainment industry executive Peter Guber, who's now CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, along with a few other investors, made a deal to buy the Oakland A's, a deal that would have put Piccinini in the "Bigs."

Guber has said publicly it was a done deal, saying he and Piccinini bought the A's and signed the deal with the team's then owners, including offering A's baseball guru Billy Beane the position of general manager with an equity piece, which he accepted.

The investment partners had the plug pulled out from their deal though at the last minute, when Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig came up with an idea to merge the A's and the Minnesota twins, something the didn't end up happening.

Guber, who is said to love sports and entertainment in the same way Piccinini loves selling groceries and sports, went on to create Mandalay Baseball Properties, which now owns seven minor-league baseball teams. The most recent acquisition, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, the Triple-A affiliate of the Houston Astros, came last month.

The Mandalay Entertainment Group CEO is using Mandalay Baseball Properties as the base for what he hopes will be a mega-synergistic entertainment-sports empire. It makes sense: What's more logical from a business perspective than entertainment and sports, after all. And adding supermarkets, particularly a chain with numerous stores in just the right markets, could add considerably to that synergy.

Last July, Guber and Joe Lacob, a partner at the noted Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made the winning bid to buy the Golden State Warriors basketball team, agreeing to pay owner Chris Cohan $450 million for the Warriors, which is the only professional basketball team in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to nearly seven million people.

The $450 million is the highest price paid for an NBA team in the league's history.

The investment partners snatched the Warriors away from a very heavy hitter and deal maker, Larry Ellison, the multi-billionaire founder, chairman and CEO of Oracle, who was neck-to-neck with the partners until the very final leg of negotiations with Warriors owner Cohan. The arena in Oakland where the Warriors play their home games is sponsored by and named after Oracle.

Approval of the deal by the NBA has sat on the shelf since then.

However, on Friday, October 22 NBA Commissioner David Stern told Comcast SportsNet Bay Area that winning bidders Joe Lacob and Peter Guber would own the Warriors within a week. Stern, who has a track record of following through on his words, said there's a "signed contract," and that the "deal will close" by the end of this week.

On Tuesday, October 19, I "tweeted" the following missive on Fresh & Easy's Buzz's twitter feed: "From #LasVegas #1: #Savemart Supermarkets owner #Bob Piccinini appears set to join the ownership group buying the #GoldenStateWarriors. 5:06 PM Oct 19th via web ."

There have been rumors for a number of weeks that Save Mart owner and CEO Bob Piccinini was considering joining Guber and Lacob as an owner of the Warriors once the NBA approved of the sale.

However, they've mostly been rumors. And I didn't know what to make of them.

But my source, the person who told me Piccinini is in, and told me so just four days before NBA Commissioner Stern announced the sale would be final by the end of this week, is a very good one. If not, I wouldn't have put the information out in a tweet.

I'm told Piccinini will be one of two and maybe three other key investors who will join Guber and Lacob in comprising the Warriors ownership group. Lacob and Guber will remain the majority owners. My source claims it's a "Slam-Dunk." We'll see.

Another reason Piccinini's becoming one of the owners of the Warriors looks to be a "Slam-Dunk": Save Mart Supermarkets recently launched a promotional sweepstakes, featuring its various private brands, in all its Northern California stores. The promotion is called: "Slam-Dunk With Our Brands." The grand prize: A "Basketball in the Bay Package," featuring the Golden State Warriors. See here.

As I mentioned earlier, Save Mart, with its numerous Lucky banner stores in the San Francisco Bay Area and Save Mart banner stores elsewhere nearby in Northern California, adds the retail outlet synergistic element to the entertainment-sports empire Guber is attempting to build.

And, as you can already see by the promotion Save Mart is running in partnership with the Warriors, Piccinini's ownership, which would be his personally not Save Mart's corporately, gives Save Mart a professional sports team in which to cross-promote with. Of course, for Piccinini personally, it gets him, as well as Guber, into the "Bigs," particularly after the two had the plug pulled on their ownership of the Oakland A's years' ago.

With Guber's flair and entertainment industry expertise, combined with having 200-plus Save Mart, Lucky and other banner retail supermarket outlets available to cross-promote with, the Warriors have nowhere to go but up in terms of attendance and success. The team already has strong attendance in NBA terms -more than 18,000 fans per game for five straight years, including last year, despite the Warriors' pathetic 26-56 season. Imagine if they become a contender. And imagine when Guber adds the entertainment flair to the team that he's famous for.

We should know if Bob Piccinini has made it to the "Bigs" by the end of this week.

Just Like Mr. Rogers Did, Save Mart Supermarkets' Doesn't Just Talk the Talk, it Walks the Walk in the Neighborhood

Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supermarkets is currently running a television commercial (which you can view in the video above), titled, "People in Your Neighborhood," on broadcast and cable TV stations throughout Northern California and the Central Valley - from Bakersfield in the south, up the Central Valley to Modesto, over to Sacramento, and into the San Francisco Bay Area - where the grocery chain has its 244 stores.

The commercial uses the Sesame Street "People in Your Neighborhood" sound track and in many ways takes its inspiration from Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. But it gets it's philosophical and practical grounding from Save Mart's core values - localism, community and neighborhood - along with the grocer's two mission statement-oriented positioning strategies, which are - Save Mart Supermarkets: "Your Life. Your Town. Your Store." and "Save Mart Supermarkets: The People in your Neighborhood."

Watch the 60-second video at top, then read the profile below.

Modesto, California-based Save Mart Supermarkets, which began with a single store in the Central Valley city of 205,000 residents 58-years ago, is today one of the approximately five-largest privately-owned supermarket chains in America. Only a handful of other U.S. family-owned grocery chains - Meijer Inc., H-E-B and Wegmans, for example - have higher annual sales than Save Mart's about $5 billion in yearly revenue.

Save Mart, which is majority-owned by Chairman and CEO Bob Piccinini, who's father Mike and then partner Nick Tocco opened the first Save Mart store in Modesto on January 17, 1952, today operates 244 stores throughout California's vast Central Valley region, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in Northern Nevada. The chain's banners are: Save Mart, S-Mart Foods, Lucky (supermarkets), and FoodMaxx (discount warehouse stores) banners.

The primary if not sole reason for the existence of the S-Mart banner, which is only used for the grocer's stores in Stockton, California, is because a local, family-owned multi-store independent in Stockton has operated a handful of stores under the Save Mart name in the city since the days of Bob Piccinini's father, Mike. As a result, the families made an agreement long ago that Modesto-based Save Mart Supermarkets would use the S-Mart name on its stores in Stockton for as long as the local family operates there stores of the same name.

Not long after taking over Save Mart as CEO around three decades ago, Bob Piccinini bought out the interest in the company held by the Tocco family and became the majority-owner of what then was a very successful local grocery chain with about 45 stores.

He's been there ever since - although for a time Piccinini gave up the CEO title and focused on real estate acquisition as chairman. But after a number of years he took the CEO title back. These days though Bob Piccinnini has lots of capable help in the day-to-day running of the chain from president and coo Steve Junqueiro.

Save Mart is a self-distributing grocery chain. In addition to its stores, the food and grocery retailing company owns and operates: Smart Refrigerated Transport (perishables distribution/transportation), Yosemite Wholesale Warehouse in Merced (produce distribution), Vacaville Distribution Center, Roseville Distribution Center (both grocery distribution centers), and is a voting partner in Super Store Industries (SSI). SSI owns and operates a distribution center in Lathrop, California near Modesto, Mid Valley Dairy in Fairfield, California, and the Sunnyside Farms ice cream plant in Turlock, which is also near Modesto.

Save Mart's partner in SSI is its competitor, Sacramento, California-based Raley's. Both grocers pull grocery and perishable product from the facility for their stores, in what is a very unique distribution partnership between two competitors. Like Save Mart, Raley's is a family-owned chain. It has sales of about $3.2 billion annually, making it among the largest privately-owned food retailers in the U.S. as well.

A hallmark of Save Mart's success for 58-years has been its lazer-beam like focus on being a part of the communities and neighborhoods it serves with its stores. It was "local" long before local became a food and grocery retailing trend and buzzword. And for 58-years, the word "neighborhood" has been a major part of the Save Mart Supermarkets' name, not on its store signs or stationary - but in its every practice.

If you ask the leader of any community or non-profit organization in Modesto, California, where the chain is based, to name the two businesses they first go to whenever they need assistance of some sort - donations, sponsorships, ect. - they will tell you this: Save Mart Supermarkets and E.J Gallo Winery, which like Save Mart is a family-owned company that calls Modesto home.

It's the same case in an ever-growing way in the other Northern and Central California communities where Save Mart has its stores, including increasingly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the family-owned grocery chain has only been doing business for just a little over three years.

In 2007, Save Mart CEO Bob Piccinini made the biggest deal in his long career owning and running the supermarket chain - he acquired the 128-store Albertsons chain in Northern California from Albertsons LLC, which was owned by the Cerebrus private equity firm.

The deal nearly doubled Save Mart's annual revenue, and for the first time in the company's history put the grocer into the highly competitive nine-county San Francisco Bay Area market, which has been comtrolled from a market share standpoint by Safeway Stores, Inc. for...well, forever. Albertsons, now rebranded Lucky by Save Mart - its old name in the Bay Area until Albertsons Inc. changed the banner to Albertsons in the 1980's after buying the old Lucky chain from American Stores, Inc. - is (and was then) the number two market share leader in the nine-county Bay Area, home to about 7 million people.

Here's just a sample of the charities, non-profit groups and community organizations Save Mart supports on a regular basis:

MDA, City of Hope, Children's Hospitals, The Salvation Army, American Cancer Society, the Center for Human Services, March of Dimes, American Heart Association, United Way, local food banks, all public and private schools, health agencies in their market areas, and many more local civic organizations.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and doesn't do justice to the long list of people, groups and organizations the grocer helps. But we don't have enough space in this piece to list all the entities - large, medium and small - the grocer supports in various ways.

If we had to (and apparently we are going to try) sum up the keys to Save Mart's success in a few words it goes something like this:

>Local. To paraphrase the late, long-serving Democratic Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Thomas P 'Tip' O'Neil, who famously said: "All politics is local;" Save Mart's mantra is: "Grocery retailing is local," regardless of how big you get.

>Community and Neighborhood. Save Mart looks at each of its stores not as an extension of the corporation but rather as independent, neighborhood supermarkets that have the added advantage of being a part of a large chain. In other words, the whole can only exists if the sum of its parts serve each of the neighborhoods and communities in which they sell groceries in. Store Directors operate by a strong set of corporate rules. But they also have much more independent ability than their peers at most grocry chains do.

Save Mart's two mission statement positioning lines are: "Your Life. Your Town. Your Store." and "Save Mart Supermarkets: The People in your Neighborhood." The latter being the focus of its current television commercial, which is posted at the bginning of this profile. The grocery chain does an excellent job of having all it does flow from these to premises. They're mission statments and strategic markers, rather than mere positioning elements.

>Tradition. Customer service still reins supreme. And all of the male store clerks are still required to wear a white shirt and a tie, a tradition Mike Piccininni and Nick Tocco started with that first store in 1952. The same dress code applies at Save Mart's corporate headquarters in Modesto.

>Value. Save Mart isn't the low-price leader with its Save Mart and Lucky banner supermarkets, which comprise the vast majority of its 244 units. (It's FoodMaxx discount warehouse format - 45 stores - does position itself as the low-price leader though, including offering to meet any price offered by its competitors.) However, the grocery chain does a great job in delivering value, which although competitive prices must be part of any value equation, aren't the sole indicator.

>Measured Progress. Save Mart has never been the leading innovator in its markets. However it's always been innovative. The grocer innovates though in what we call a measured way, taking into account its core elements - localism, community, neighborhood, tradition and the offering and sustaining of value to its customers.

Based on its 58 year track record, we think Save Mart gets the Mr. Rogers seal of approval for its focus on "the neighborhood" and its extensive efforts in the communities where it does business, while at the same time being able to make a profit selling food and groceries, along with employing thousands of people, paying them excellent wages and offering them top-flight benefits. In fact, that's sort of what "neighborhood" and "community" should be all about in the neighborhood we call America, isn't it?

Upcoming New Markets Special Report: Raley's Trying Out New, Smaller Footprint Supermarket Format in Central Valley, California City of Oakdale

West Sacramento-based Raley's Family of Fine Stores is trying out a new, smaller-format (about 40,000 -to- 45,000 square feet) supermarket concept under the new "Raley's Fresh Market" banner in the northern San Joaquin Valley city of Oakdale, in Northern California's Stanislaus County, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned. Previously the supermarket chain has only used the Raley's name on its superstore format stores.

Oakdale, which calls itself the "Cowboy Capital of the the United States" because it holds one of the largest annual rodeos in the U.S., as well as has the most national competitive rodeo champions in the nation, is a small city of about 20,000 residents, located right next door to Modesto, which has a population of about 210,000. Stanislaus County currently has a population of about 500,000. The three-county northern San Joaquin Valley region, comprised of San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties, has a population of about 1.4 million residents.

As we reported in this piece earlier today, Raley's, which currently operates about 129 supermarkets and warehouse stores under the Raley's, Bel Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods, Food Source and now Raley's Fresh Market banners, is looking for new store sites throughout Northern California and in the Reno/Sparks/Lake Tahoe region in northern Nevada.

The new Raley's-owned store in Oakdale, called Raley's Fresh Market, is at 40,000 -to- 45,000 square feet much smaller than most of the modern day Raley's banner stores, which range from about 55,000 -to- about 75,000 square feet. It's also unique in that the "Fresh Market" banner store is located in a former supermarket building the retailer remodeled for its Oakdale store.

For example, nearly every new Raley's, Bel-Air, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source store the grocery chain has opened in recent years has been a brand new, built from the gound up supermarket, or in the case of Food Source, a discount warehouse format store.

The Oakdale store also is the first time Raley's has used the "Fresh Market" name along with its Raley's name on a supermarket.

The Oakdale store previously housed an independent supermarket named Oak Ridge Fresh Market, which was a spin-off by the owners of the building's previous grocer, Richland Markets, which built the building and operated a Richland Market banner supermarket in it for a number of years.

Richland Markets, a long-time family-owned area multi-store independent, has been selling off most of its seven supermarkets in the cities of Modesto, Turlock, Ceres and Oakdale over the last few years due to family succession and competitive issues, according to a Modesto-area food broker and regular Fresh & Easy buzz reader.

Just recently, Richland Markets agreed to sell two of its remaining three supermarkets to another locally-based multi-store independent, discount grocer Cost Less Foods, leaving Richland left with only its flagship supermarket in Turlock, which is a city of about 75,000, located 10 miles from Modesto, according to the local area food broker.

The decision to locate the store in a vacant supermarket building and to try out the new Raley's Fresh Market banner name was made for a couple of different but related reasons, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned.

We've learned Raley's decided to acquire the vacant building this spring--the Oakdale Raley's Fresh Market just opened a few weeks ago--and turn it into a new format using the Raley's Fresh Market name for three primary reasons.

First, the store is located right across the street from a Save Mart supermarket. Savemart, which is headquartered in Modesto and operates supermarkets throughout the Central Valley under the Save Mart banner and warehouse stores under the Save Maxx banner--along with supermarkets in the San Francisco Bay Area under the Lucky banner (it acquired those stores in its 2006 acquisition of Albertson's, Inc.'s Northern California Division)--is the market share leader in the northern San Joaquin Valley.

When Save Mart acquired Albertsons Inc.'s Northern California stores in 2006 (close to 200 supermarkets), for the first time the Modesto-based chain entered Raley's home turf market of Sacramento. Prior to that, Save Mart had never opened a Save Mart banner supermarket in the Sacramento market, even though its only about 65 -to- 70 miles from Modesto. The retailer always had stores as close as 20 miles from Sacramento, so going into Sacramento would not have been unusual.

Additionally, Raley's only operated a handful of stores (literally two or three only) in Save Mart's home market region of Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties.

Further, Raley's and Save Mart are partners in a grocery distribution warehouse located in the Northern San Joaquin Valley city of Lathrop. The two chains even shared the same private label, Sunny Select, as their respective store brand, until Raley's started converting most of its store brand items to the Raley's label a couple years ago.

Raley's also uses the Nob Hill Foods brand for store brand specialty and premium foods items. Raley's still sells items in certain categories under the Sunny Select brand. Save Mart continues to use it as its primary store brand across all categories.

However, with Save Mart's arrival with multiple supermarkets in the Sacramento regional market following its acquisition of Albertsons Northern California Division, Raley's got its competitive juices flowing and decided to hit Save Mart a bit harder than in the past in its home base. In the last year, Raley's has opened brand new Raley's banner superstores in Modesto and in Riverbank, which is a right next door to both Modesto and Oakdale. Raley's now has three Raley's superstores in Modesto, one in Riverbank and now the Raley's Fresh Market in Oakdale.

The Oakdale location right across the street from the Save Mart supermarket was too good to pass up for Raleys as part of its upping the competitive ante on Save Mart on its home turf.

Second, since the Raley's Fresh Market store building is smaller than a normal Raley's banner superstore (and is more a supermarket), Raley's decided it would have to limit the assortment it normally puts in its Raley's banner stores. Therefore, the retailer wanted to differentiate its name by adding "Fresh Market" to it, among other reasons fro choosing the name.

Additionally, Raley's wanted to go head-to-head with the Save Mart across the street on price and value, which meant offering lower everyday prices than it does in its Raley's superstores, along with deeper store-specific promotions. Therefore, the format tweaks required by the smaller store footprint, along with the name change, are allowing the retailer to focus more on price and price promotions in the Raley's Fresh Market in Oakdale, without creating confusion in terms of its merchandising and pricing in the Raley's superstore format stores.

Lastly, since the store is in a smaller footprint as well as existing building, its overhead and operating costs are much lower for Raley's than is the case with its newer Raley's banner superstores, which at about 55,000 -to- 70,000-plus square feet not only are bigger, which consumes more energy, but also feature lots of refrigerated and frozen cases in them. Therefore, it can offer lower everyday prices and hot promotions, which it is, designed to undercut the Save Mart across the street. In general, Save Mart supermarket prices tend to be a bit lower everyday than Raley's supercenter prices are.

Since the supermarket's previous tenant, the Oak Ridge Fresh Market, used "Fresh Market' in its name, Raley's also decided to use it as part of its new banner (or hybrid Raley's banner perhaps is a better way to phrase it) because the supermarket chain felt it allowed for some consistancy in the tranistion from the previous grocer to Raley's.

The Oakdale Raley's Fresh Market is a conventional supermarket essentially with a few twists. For esxample, it puts a much stronger emphasis on fresh foods--meats, produce, prepared foods--than a traditional 40,000 square foot supermarket does.

Price and heavy promotion also are part of the store's focus. Since opening, the store has been conducting numerous hot, store-specific promotions, which have included heavy couponing, free gasoline cards to customers who spend a certain amount of money per-purchase, deep discounts on fresh foods and groceries, and other heavy price and value-oriented promotional campaigns.

The Oakdale Raley's Fresh Market also is offering customers a $5 back on every $25 spent promotion currently, along with coupons for free items like fresh eggs, meats, produce items and other food and grocery items throughout the store.

Save Mart hasn't stood still though. It recently fired back with a thick coupon book specific to the Oakdale Save Mart location across the street, offering higher coupon values on many of the same items the Raley's Fresh Market offered in its coupon book. Save Mart also last week launched a special promotion in which it gave a gas rebate of $40 in the form of a gas card to the first 500 customers to spend $40 on groceries in the store.

Raley's has now come out with another thick coupon book for the store; which no doubt will be met by another similar one from Save Mart. Oakdale shoppers, and from what we are told those from surrounding towns, are definately benefiting from the competition between the two across the street situated grocers.

A Raley's spokesperson recently told Fresh & Easy Buzz it's possible the grocery chain may open more Raley's Fresh Markets of approximately the same size as the Oakdale store in other cities, in vacant supermarket buildings. However, she said the Oakdale store currently isn't any sort of test for rapidly rolling out a smaller-format, Raley's Fresh Market banner chain of stores anytime soon. However, the retailer isn't ruling out more, similar stores.

As we reported in this May 10 piece, Tesco plans to open its first Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery store in Modesto next year in a currently vacant building which most recently housed an independent supermarket that went out of business earlier this year.

That building, which is about 30,000 square feet, is set to be split in half by the shopping center's owner, with nearly half of it then remodeled into a Fresh & Easy small-format grocery store. Ironically, that now out of business Modesto independent supermarket, Michotti's Marketplace, bought the store (the business not the building) from Richland Markets, which is the same retailer that built and operated the Oakdale store the new Raley's Fresh Market is now located in.

We also know from our commercial real estate sources that Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is currently searching for additional store sites in Modesto and in the surrounding cities and towns.

Additionally, as we reported here, Tesco plans to locate its Northern California Fresh & Easy distribution center facility in Stockton, which is about 30 miles from Modesto. Stockton and Modesto (as well as Sacramento)--and the other cities mentioned above--are all conveniently connected along California Highway 99.

In terms of Fresh & Easy's entrance into the Modesto-Oakdale area, the Raley's and Save Mart price fight and competitive battle in the small city of Oakdale should give Tesco some idea of how much these two regional supermarket chains want to protect their respective hometown turf--the Sacramento region where Raley's is headquartered and the northern San Joaquin Valley region where Save Mart in headquartered.

Raley's, with about 129 stores, has annual sales of about $3.5 billion, while Save Mart, which has more than double Raley's total store count, had sales of nearly $6.5 billion in its latest fiscal year.

Both chains are far and away the current market share leaders in their respective headquarter regions. Additionally, Save Mart, with its acquisition of Albertsons Northern California divsion, the stores of which it now operates under the Lucky banner, is the number two market share leader in the San Francisco Bay Area, after number one Safeway Stores, Inc.