Va.-based Ukrop's change to Martin's Food Markets banners

   

By Alaric DeArment

RICHMOND, Va. (Feb. 9) This spring, a grocery chain familiar to residents of Virginia since 1937 will change faces.

Giant-Carlisle, part of Dutch supermarket operator Royal Ahold, announced Monday that it would make its planned changes to the Ukrop’s chain later this spring, changing the stores to Martin’s Food Markets and rolling back business practices that analysts have blamed for costing Ukrop’s its top spot in the Richmond market. Ahold announced in December that it would acquire Ukrop’s for $140 million through its Giant-Carlisle division, which operates stores under the Giant and Martin’s banners in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Many analysts have said that Ukrop’s long-standing policy of closing on Sundays and not selling alcohol caused the family-owned chain to lose its top place in the Richmond market to Food Lion, owned by Belgium-based Delhaize Group. The rebranded Ukrop’s stores will sell beer and wine and remain open on Sundays.

Giant-Carlisle said the Ukrop family will continue to provide kitchen and bakery products to the stores. Currently, Ukrop's has around 20 pharmacies in its stores.

Wegmans, Costco top grocers in new survey

   

By Allison Cerra

BOULDER, Colo. (Feb. 9) A new consumer survey conducted by Market Force Information found that Wegmans and Costco hold the No. 1 spot as grocery retailers in the United States.

Market Force polled 6,000 consumers last month in a survey designed to shed light on which grocers are preferred in the leading grocery categories. The survey noted that quality, not quantity, could be a shaping factor. Market Force said this conclusion was based on the fact that consumers are likely to vote for retailers most familiar to them, and drilled down into its results to determine which store chain would win out when the number of store locations was factored in. For example, while Kroger has almost 2,500 stores in North America and was voted one of the top grocers in the nation, Wegmans — which scored 3% of the total votes for favorite supermarket — only boasts 75 stores.

“From high-quality produce to courteous staff, cleanliness to inviting atmosphere, Wegmans is a standout favorite grocer with consumers,” said Janet Eden-Harris, chief marketing officer for Market Force. “The fact that it can deliver all of these key performance attributes, and also rank highest on providing low prices, is an enormous accomplishment, and clearly earns the chain renowned customer loyalty.”

Meanwhile, when looking at such mass grocers as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Target and Costco, Market Force found similar results. While Walmart garnered the highest number of total votes, with fully 42% of the total, its store count also must be factored in. When re-indexed based on the number of stores, Costco took the lead. That lead is again substantiated based on the consumer ranking of mass grocers against the attributes they care about most. Costco scored highest on 12 of 16 attributes, and tied for first for the remaining four.

Report: Drug stores may benefit from patent expiries

   

By Alaric DeArment

NEW YORK (Feb. 8) Patent expiries on blockbuster branded drugs could mean huge profits for some retail pharmacy chains, according to published reports.

Bloomberg quoted investors as saying that CVS and Walgreens could see at least a 20% increase in profits as drugs with more than $100 billion in sales, such as Pfizer’s Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) and Sanofi-Aventis’ and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Plavix (clopidogrel bisulfate), face generic competition, particularly between 2011 and 2013.

Lipitor and Plavix were the first and third top-selling branded drugs in 2008, with respective U.S. sales of $7.8 billion and $4.9 billion, according to IMS Health.

CVS CFO Dave Denton reportedly said that it's too early to make predictions because profits will be determined by pricing, and prices are unknown. "The generic pipeline is robust," Denton said in an interview with Bloomberg. "The percentage boost is not something we have analyzed to that level of depth. Pricing is very competitive and we can?t know for sure what it will look like at that time."

Echoing that sentiment, Wade Miquelon, Walgreens CFO, was quoted as saying, Generic drugs "will definitely help us, but to that magnitude, considering there are other things that play in, I would hesitate to give any guidance. There are lots of moving parts in this business and different people factor them in different ways."