Save Mart to Shrink Limited-Assortment Format

Michael Garry

MODESTO, Calif. — Save Mart Supermarkets here, which opened a 34,000-square-foot, limited-assortment Maxx Value Foods store a year ago, plans to add more units of this banner but at a much smaller size – no more than 20,000 square feet, said Ray Agah, the chain’s vice president of engineering.

A smaller Maxx Value will offer lower costs in rents, cooling, heating and cleaning, said Agah, who spoke about the format in September at the Food Marketing Institute’s Energy & Store Development Conference in Atlanta. In addition, “we need to make it smaller because customers really like a smaller footprint,” he said. “Stores that are 200,000 or 80,000 square feet are too big for the customer who is time-starved.”

The initial Maxx Value, also located here, is a converted Save Mart that features about 17,000 SKUs, compared with a mix of 50,000 to 60,000 SKUs at a conventional Save Mart. However, future Maxx Value units will offer not more than 10,000 SKUs, said Agah. The offerings will also be “dictated by the neighborhoods we serve,” Alicia Rockwell, a spokeswoman for the chain, told SN last week. The original store was designed for Hispanic and Asian shoppers.

Prices at Maxx Value are comparable to Save Mart’s other price-oriented banner, FoodMaxx, which has 45 units. Save Mart also operates stores under Save Mart, S Mart and Lucky, for a total of 244 stores.

Save Mart has “plans to open more [Maxx Value stores] as the opportunities arise,” said Rockwell, declining to provide a specific timeline. Agah noted at the conference that the chain “is going to do a lot of these” and has “a lot on the drawing board to convert or use available real estate.”

In converting the Save Mart store to the Maxx Value format, Save Mart installed warehouse racking, used pallet displays and changed the color scheme and decor, Agah noted. The store offers prepackaged goods in all departments, including bakery/deli and meat/seafood with no service offerings. During the conversion, the store was closed for 15 days, “but that was not enough time to do a really good job,” he said. “We didn’t have a ‘wow’ factor.”

Supervalu’s FoodMaxx division is in charge of the Maxx Value format, said Rockwell. “Scott Bourbon from the FoodMaxx team [is] the only dedicated [executive]. The rest work with him as needed.”