Save-A-Lot
From Free net encyclopedia
Save-A-Lot is a grocery store chain that is the thirteenth-largest retail chain and sixth-largest chain under a single banner with more than one thousand stores in the United States and $4 billion in sales. They are headquarted in Earth City, Missouri. They are a wholly owned subsidiary of Supervalu.
Save-A-Lot was founded in 1977 and are similar to Aldi food stores. Both Aldi and Save-A-Lot compete for the same market. They claim that their products are 40–60% cheaper than other stores.
Save-A-Lot's store format is a limited-selection store, which they call an "edited-choice store". A limited-selection store is one in which a store carries a small selection of popular items, usually only in the most common size. Save-A-lot stores have about 1,250 grocery items per store and restrict their store sizes to roughly 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). They carry mainly brands that are not generally found in other stores (which they prefer to call "exclusive label brands") and are thus perceived by some to carry inferior goods.
Many stores lack grocery-store style shelving, and instead have the items in cut-out cardboard shipping cases on industrial-style shelving, however some stores (particullary in the southeast US) have standard grocery-store style shelving. Save-A-Lot customers must bag their own groceries using available cardboard boxes. Some stores do not offer grocery bags; some of those stores which do offer grocery bags charge extra for them: 3 cents for plastic "T-shirt" bags, 5 cents for paper grocery bags, and 10 cents for reusable/poly bags. Some Save-A-Lot locations now bag groceries for the customers at no extra charge
Save-A-Lot purchased the Deal$ dollar store chain in 2002. Many Deal$ stores are located physically inside of Save-a-Lot stores in a format they call the Hybrid Store. On February 26, 2006, Save-A-Lot announced that it is selling Deal$ to Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. for $30.5 million.