Superquinn to become SuperValu

awec

Really like superquinn stuff.

Do most shopping now in lidl and aldi, but superquinn is a clear step above both of these. Walking in with the fresh bread, cakes, cheeses, olives etc, along with people giving out samples. Plus the 6 for 5 on the craft beers. Their selection of meat is great.

Plus superscan, which is also brilliant and saves so much hassle.

Supervalu and Centra are both franchise stores, so all of them are owned by different people. This is the reason some of them are ok and some of them are crap and also why the location of some of them makes no sense. I am curious as to whether they'll sell off individual superquinn stores to franchisees.

I worked in a supervalu in my teens for a number of years. It's a strange brand, it doesn't know if it is a value chain or a up-market chain, it's just confused.

Viva La Gloria

awec wrote: »

I am curious as to whether they'll sell off individual superquinn stores to franchisees.

No, all 24 Superquinn stores will be retained by the Musgrave group.

fasttalkerchat

I loved the sound of Superquinn but I found it massively overpriced and slow to get served. They never really took off outside Dublin and Louth so hopefully merging will give economy of scale.

EDIT: I had no idea there were 24 stores! I thought it was around 8-12

anncoates

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

I loved the sound of Superquinn

Have they got superior muzak and whinging kids as well?

soundsofgeisha

anncoates wrote: »

Have they got superior muzak and whinging kids as well?

My local one regularly plays the likes of the Clash and the Stone Roses... sometimes its like shopping in an indie disco...

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/supermarkets-love-affair-with-the-customer-ended-long-ago-1.1490907

soundsofgeisha

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/supermarkets-love-affair-with-the-customer-ended-long-ago-1.1490907

Don't ever remember seeing Fergal Quinn kissing customers. But he did and does shop in the store, and was always very approachable.

In fairness their quality slipped slightly; breads still very good and good value offers on wine (can regularly get good wine for 7 / 8 euro a bottle).

I will miss (if its going): the fresh bread, gluten free produce, wine deals, fresh cakes, store-made pizzas, and the superscan (I asked and the staff themselves don't know if its staying).

RayM

What happens when a small town has a Superquinn and a Supervalu? Greystones, for instance, has both. It seems strange to have two Supervalus within such close (well, close-ish) proximity.

I've always liked Superquinn, so I'm disappointed to see it go. I know it's logistically easier to rebrand 24 shops than it would be to rebrand 200 or whatever, but it makes no sense to get rid of a brand that a lot of people actually like - and replace it with one that nobody really gives a damn about.

awec

RayM wrote: »

What happens when a small town has a Superquinn and a Supervalu? Greystones, for instance, has both. It seems strange to have two Supervalus within such close (well, close-ish) proximity.

I've always liked Superquinn, so I'm disappointed to see it go. I know it's logistically easier to rebrand 24 shops than it would be to rebrand 200 or whatever, but it makes no sense to get rid of a brand that a lot of people actually like - and replace it with one that nobody really gives a damn about.

I imagine both will remain open. There are plenty of places that have multiple Musgrave stores because they are independently owned. Though I'm not sure if it's officially a franchise, because I think there is no fee for being a Supervalu, they make their money through the direct buying of goods from Musgrave.

Musgrave won't care, the more stores there are the more money they make.

Viva La Gloria

Yep, Superquinn in Charlesland will change to SuperValu in 2014 and Daly's SuperValu in the main st will remain as is

user040913

They should re-brand both shops as Super Dunnes. That way, they may even poach a few customers.

tricky D

Signage, staff clothes, products, already being phased in at Sutton.

seamus

tricky D wrote: »

Signage, staff clothes, products, already being phased in at Sutton.

Yeah pretty much the same in all the shops. The signage will continue to say Superquinn but will be in red rather than green & blue to accustom people to it. By the time they actually change the name, the shops will basically look like Supervalu's anyway.

Paddy Dangerfield

Are the drastically overrated sausages, and the rather better fresh bread, going to remain on sale only in Superquinn stores, or are they going to be sold in existing SuperValu franchises?

Daisy78

Sigh........where am I gonna get my mince pies from now? Nobody and I mean nobody does mince pies like SQ:(

And another thing nothing gets on my nerves more like the term " overpriced" ........it's "overused" and if I hear one more person using it again il scream. There are some products that are worth paying a bit more for. I don't mind paying a bit more for anything if its good quality. If its cheap auld muck your looking for aldi is >>>>>>>>>>

FlawedGenius

This has been a disaster! Lucan and Walkinstown branches anyway

Sigourney

FlawedGenius wrote: »

This has been a disaster! Lucan and Walkinstown branches anyway

Stupid red and yellow cardboard signs all over the place. One of the staff told me it reminded him of Crazy Prices.

gline

FlawedGenius wrote: »

This has been a disaster! Lucan and Walkinstown branches anyway

Same in Sundrive road, a few products already dissappearing.

Mr_Spaceman

soundsofgeisha wrote: »

My local one regularly plays the likes of the Clash and the Stone Roses... sometimes its like shopping in an indie disco...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85J99nvuDI8

Bishop_Donal

To be honest I think the standards were gone to pot in Superquinn already (long before Musgraves got their mits on it). I (for one) am going to use the rebranding as an opportunity to move my shopping to somewhere else. Question is, what are the best alternatives around Dublin?

road_high

I notice they junked a lot of superquinn products already. All the packaged bakery items are now super valu or some other brand. They used do nice packaged buns and things, shame. There were other superquinn own brand things I used like such as the sq ice cream. Also in the way out.

SpaceTime

They do really really good stuff in some of the SuperValu stores though.

I think a lot of the SuperValu own brand household and non food items are way better than what SQ could get because they never had the economies of scale to order really good private label stuff.

They should try to retain the same quality of deli and in store bakery items etc though. Many of the SuperValu franchises are at that level of quality.

The other thing to remember to though is that it's a very changed economic situation and market situation compared to the peak of SQ's fancy days. Certain things may not have been working financially.

Musgrave's is a very successful, rock solid Irish retail group.

Personally I would rather see SQ stores remain with an Irish company and survive than fret about a change of sausage recipe.

I actually though SQ was becoming really tatty looking in recent years and didn't seem to know what direction it was going.

They were trying to be high end on one hand while doing price an item ads that seemed to be trying to compete with Dunnes and Aldi.

I think it's worth giving Musgrave's a chance on this and feed back things to them too. If you don't like a change email them.
They're not some huge faceless mega-corp like Tesco. They are hugely into customer experience and local adaptation.

Give them a chance though. They're not out to do anything other that keep those stores working profitably.

TheBoffin

Does anyone know if the bakery in superquinn will stay after the transition to Supervalu?

SpaceTime

A lot of the bigger SuperValu stores have pretty decent in-store bakeries so I would imagine it would stay.

jjbrien

Thankfully my local SQ bakery still has its own bread however I went to the Tyrrelstown store and it was Cuisine De France stuff :mad:

geeky

Mrs Geeky went out today with my mother, who's bitterly disappointed at Superquinn since they became Supervalu. Apparently the cakes have gotten smaller.

She knows because she's measured.

bigron2109

I see Supervalu are selling Superquinn sausages now.

SpaceTime

The one thing to bear in mind is that SuperValu's made up of franchisees in most cases (although there are a few other non SQ direct-owned stores). The standards go up and down depending on the franchisee's level of investment.

That being said, it applies to Tesco and Dunnes too. Some of their stores are excellent, some are rather basic and old-fashioned.

SuperValu generally seems to see itself as high-end, and that's the market that most of its franchisees are competing in where they're up against Tesco and Dunnes so I can't really see them doing anything other than building upon SuperQuinn's position in Dublin / Leinster.

I think the previous owners got very confused when SQ was trying to compete with value-offers and stuff like that when it had historically been a high-end supermarket that people went to for speciality items more so.

I'd be hoping to see a bit of a synergy between Musgraves' buying power (they're huge in an Irish context) and SuperQuinn's history of customer-care and quality. There's a lot of stuff that Superquinn was doing that could be easily rolled out to the higher end Supervalu stores and some of the things that they were doing that would benefit Superquinn too.

I'd love to see Superscan being rolled out by some of the SuperValus for example.

I don't think Dublin's really had very many high-end supervalu stores historically though. Where as there are a lot of really high-end ones around Cork and elsewhere that would have been filling that same niche Superquinn did in Dublin/Leinster.

The other issue is that a lot of rural SuperValus that people are familiar with tend to be smaller and more the very local supermarket and I think that kind of colours some people's views of the brand too, if they're from rural parts.

eviltimeban

On the plus side, there's some new SuperValu branded products that are pretty good. I got some good steaks, cheese, bottled water (way cheaper than the brand names obv), and their "own brand" cereals aren't too bad - our house flies through a box of Special K in about two days, and their own brand ones are about half the price, so that's good. Own brand muesli wasn't bad either.

I don't eat sausages so that never really bothered me.

Sutton has a bakery which is not going to change, apparently. They still do the same cakes just in different boxes.

I prefer the branding of Superquinn (ie the name, logo, image, etc). But in fairness there's not really much can be done about it!

TheBoffin

The one thing to bear in mind is that SuperValu's made up of franchisees in most cases

Thats something I have been pondering. The Superquinn stores that will become Supervalu stores soon, Are they going to be franchises with an independent operator or will Supervalue run the store themselves? Surely that will have an adverse impact on lets say an older smaller family run supervalu exists compared to a massive Superquinn store converted into a Supervalu

In Waterford for example I know I would prefer the Superquinn site over the existing Supervalu site as would probably the rest of the town considering its location and convenience.