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Strategies & Market Trends : The Round Table: A work by the squares of the SNDK thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (164)	7/30/1999 7:54:00 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 194

Paul, it will be interesting to see how food stores evolve, to see if they can get the same transregional "presence" as say, fast food shops. I have heard that Randall's is strong in Houston, so your preference for them there is not surprising (that being their home base). I have no experience of them there, but they moved into Austin a few years ago (taking over a chain called Apple Tree) and have been trying to go head to head with HEB. The results have not been too good. Apart from a nice flagship store up in NW Austin, Randall's has occupied a second-tier slot here; HEB is just too strong. It is a real Kmart vs. Walmart type situation. As for whole Foods, they may indeed have the best chance to take advantage of the healthy/yuppie eating movement in scaling nationally. It is just ironic that they have had such a hard time against Central Market locally. They recently opened a new Central Market down in S. Austin, and I tell you it was like trying to get into the latest Star Wars on opening day (not that I tried :). Ironically I (being someone who hates to shop, even at stores with a pleasant atmosphere like Whole Foods) usually pick Whole Foods over Central Market because it is so much less crowded. Although the downtown store (where WFMI HQ is) is usually crowded due to limited parking (and a crazy parking garage separated from the store by about 80-100 yards), the store up North is almost always empty. It's a nice store, and you can get in and out very easily since there usually aren't lines. Just the impressions of a local yokel, though. Best, Greg