All Vons, Ralphs to Remain Open 24 Hours a Day : Chains Swayed by Success of Convenience Stores
Vons and Ralphs supermarkets are offering a new incentive for hungry insomniacs and any others who find it difficult to get to the grocery before midnight: around-the-clock shopping chainwide.
Lucky Stores, too, has been testing a policy of staying open 24 hours a day in six stores since February and might extend the strategy throughout its Southland locations.
While a number of grocery stores--including half of Safeway’s 171 Southland supermarkets, some Hughes locations and even a handful of Ralphs stores--now stay open day and night, Vons and Ralphs would be the first major chains in Southern California to institute the policy chainwide. The decision, observers said, reflects stepped-up competition and changing life styles.
“Supermarkets have to show that they cater to the whims of customers,” said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark Inc., a Los Angeles consulting firm.
By far a grocery chain’s most important reason for moving to 24-hour-a-day operations is the “surging growth of 7-Elevens and other convenience stores,” Pirko said.
“No longer are the convenience stores nipping at supermarket heels begging for scraps,” he added. “Now many are carrying fruits and vegetables . . . putting them by the counters at (cut-rate) prices. They are no longer junk stores just there to sell candy and soda pop and a quick newspaper. They’re becoming mini-groceries.”
For Vons, this marks a return to a policy of quite a few years ago, when 20 Southland stores were open around the clock. Like many other supermarkets, Vons already operates its stores in Las Vegas day and night.
“We think customers with changed life styles, especially two-earner families, need the option of longer shopping hours,” said Roger E. Stangeland, chairman and chief executive of El Monte-based Vons.
Vons Beats Ralphs
Stangeland noted that Vons stores--which previously had been open from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. or midnight--already are staffed throughout the night with stock clerks. Therefore, he said, the policy change will be relatively simple to institute.
He said the round-the-clock operations will be accomplished at about 170 participating stores “without an expense addition that has to be reflected to the customer.”
By announcing its new policy in advertisements Monday, Vons beat Ralphs to the punch.
“Our plans all along had been to launch 24 hours this Thursday,” said Al Marasca, executive vice president of marketing for Ralphs Grocery, based in Compton. Of 129 Ralphs and Giant stores, three--in Glendale, Villa Park and Palm Desert--will be prohibited by local ordinances from staying open 24 hours a day, Marasca said.
“We had some requests” for 24-hour operations, he added. “Experience shows us that when stores stay open it satisfies customer needs, and one of our strategies is to make it more convenient to shop.”
The timing of Vons’ announcement amused Ron Rotter, an analyst with the Los Angeles investment firm of Morgan, Olmstead, Kennedy & Gardner. “Ralphs and Vons have this unbelievable, historical, long-term war with each other,” he said. “It’s almost comical what these guys do at the expense of each other.”
Rotter said Vons’ action reflects a desire to speed sales growth. “Going 24 hours a day historically does not add that much revenue, but on the other hand it adds very little in expenses,” he said.
Surprisingly, he added, 24-hour operations can add to business during traditional hours as customers begin to count on a store as being convenient.
Like Ralphs, Lucky Stores also has been testing round-the-clock operations since Feb. 1 and plans to continue the experiment until early April.
At that time, it will decide whether to expand the policy chainwide, spokeswoman Judith Decker said.
Lucky, based in Dublin, Calif., already has 24-hour-a-day operations at 136 of its 160 stores in Northern California and at its 49 stores in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson.
