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Elizabeth City Winn-Dixie (#910) Page
Winn-Dixie Marketplace #910, Elizabeth City, NC
Different views of the Elizabeth City Winn-Dixie Marketplace on Halstead Boulevard. Winn-Dixie has had a store here since at least the 1970's. The current building was constructed in 1977 as a Mammoth Mart, which closed down the following year. Later tenants included King's Department Store and Farm Fresh. The current Winn-Dixie moved to the building in 1996 from a location across the street at the now-demolished Holly Square Shopping Center. Despite the thriving business it made, the largest Winn-Dixie in North Carolina closed down over the summer of 2004, victim of a companywide reorganization strategy to close down 156 stores in 16 non-core market regions of eastern North and South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
EC Winn-Dixie from the parking lot.
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News Timeline
From News & Observer, Raleigh, NC, April 21, 2004:
From Wednesday, April 21, 2004 7:37AM EDT
Suspense surrounds Winn-Dixie's direction
Reports say grocery will be sold or taken private
By SAMANTHA THOMPSON SMITH, Staff Writer
Remodeling hasn't worked. Lower prices haven't either. Now Winn-Dixie may be considering more drastic measures to turn around the company.
Several reports in the past month say either some or all of Winn-Dixie will be sold, or the grocery chain based in Jacksonville, Fla., will be taken private by the company's founding Davis family. And analysts are predicting that a conference call with investors April 30 will shed light on what's ahead, possibly revealing a plan to close more stores, including some or all in the Carolinas.
"They've had their struggles for a while and this is just another in the line," said Chuck Gilmer, editor of the Shelby Report, a grocery-industry trade publication.
Winn-Dixie spokeswoman Kathy Lussier would not comment on what she said was "rumor and speculation."
Adding to the suspense, the company abrubtly dismissed its senior vice president of operations, John Sheehan, on Monday. The grocer offered no explanation.
Business Week said in its April 19 issue that the Davis family, which owns 41 percent of the stock, was considering buying Winn-Dixie's outstanding shares, citing Merrill Lynch analyst Mark Husson. Husson speculated because of Winn-Dixie's low stock price, which had traded as low as $5.69 in February, the Davis family could be looking to buy back shares. That's a different spin from what was reported in March, when TheDeal.com, the Web site of the weekly financial publication The Deal, said Winn-Dixie was shopping itself to private investors.
And at least one analyst who follows the company predicted that because of Winn-Dixie's financial troubles, including weak sales in noncore regions, Winn-Dixie could be considering leaving unprofitable markets -- including the Carolinas -- to help improve operations.
"I don't think you'll see Winn-Dixie in the Carolinas," said Jason Whitmer, a retail analyst at FTM Midwest Research, based in Cleveland. "When you look at the Carolinas, where you have three big grocers, I'm not surprised to see a few going away. There's not enough room. It's too saturated. So people are getting out of the business."
Whitmer is referring to two grocery chains owned by Ahold that are being sold so Ahold can focus on its other U.S. food retail operations. They are Bi-Lo, based in Mauldin, S.C., and Bruno's, based in Birmingham, Ala.
Whitmer thinks Winn-Dixie will retreat to concentrate on its more profitable core markets, mostly in Florida, where the chain has about 40 percent of it stores.
Gilmer said Winn-Dixie has strong, but not necessarily top, market share in areas such as Miami and Jacksonville, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; and New Orleans.
"You don't necessarily have to be the top dog in a market to do well," he said. "The bottom line is the bottom line. If they are profitable in a market, you can stay there and be happy and do well."
If Whitmer's speculation is true, Winn-Dixie, which had 1,073 stores as of June 2003, would leave a significant vacancy in shopping centers throughout the region. Last year, Winn-Dixie had 107 stores in North Carolina and 60 in South Carolina, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. North Carolina had the third most Winn-Dixie stores, after Florida and Alabama. More than half of North Carolina's stores are a newer type of store called Marketplace.
Locally, the chain, once a leading grocer in the Triangle, continues to slip further behind the pack. Winn-Dixie is fifth in market share behind Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger and Lowes Foods, according to the 2003 market share report from Trade Dimension, market research group based in Wilton, Conn. Winn-Dixie, with 14 Triangle stores, had 6.2 percent of the market. Leader Food Lion has 72 stores and 31.8 percent market share.
Four years ago, Winn-Dixie, with 18 stores, had 8.9 percent of the market behind Food Lion, Harris Teeter and Kroger, according to Trade Dimension.
Winn-Dixie also has a million-square-foot warehouse in Clayton, part of a $35 million regional headquarters that opened in 1998.
Lussier said the company is still planning to open at least one more store in the Triangle in Morrisville on Davis Drive. She said the deal still has to be finished with the developer but the store should open by 2005. The town of Morrisville, however, said that the most recent plans received by the planning department have been sent back to Winn-Dixie for revision and nothing has been returned to the town.
Winn-Dixie finished in February remodeling 20 stores in the area, with better lighting, new display cases and more signs, as part of a companywide effort to update 98 stores in the chain.
Lussier said the company will continue with a plan to customize stores so they better appeal to shoppers in the neighborhood. For example, in the Triangle, the store in Knightdale Crossing off U.S. 64 has a large base of Hispanic shoppers, so store managers have stocked the store with items appealing to those customers.
After speculation that the company might be sold or taken private, Winn-Dixie's stock price soared to its highest level since the company announced in January a second-quarter loss of $79.5 million on sales of $3.56 billion.
The company's managers blamed the loss on aggressive pricing and the competitive grocery environment. In more markets, Winn-Dixie is having to compete with Wal-Mart Supercenters that often undercut other grocers on price.
Before Winn-Dixie started renovating this year, Wal-Mart's stores tended to be newer and bigger, where Winn-Dixie often has older stores that are smaller with fewer amenities.
The stock closed Tuesday at $8, up 5 cents. Winn-Dixie traded as high as $14.95 a share in June.
Staff writer Samantha Smith can be reached at 829-4563 or mailto:samantha@newsobserver.com
From Virginian-Pilot, Hampton Roads, VA, May 1, 2004:
Winn-Dixie to close or sell 156 stores, cut 10,000 jobs
By FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 1, 2004
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Struggling supermarket operator Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. plans to pull out of Virginia and reduce its North Carolina presence as it cuts 10,000 jobs by closing or selling 156 stores and other operations, the company announced Friday.
The move will wipe out Winn-Dixie’s already diminished presence in Hampton Roads, including five stores in the greater Hampton Roads region – in Norfolk, Hampton, Williamsburg, Gloucester and Franklin. The company also has stores in Elizabeth City and Edenton , but the future of those locations was unclear.
Bobby and Sybil Brown, loyal Winn-Dixie shoppers, said they would miss the store on Little Creek Road in Norfolk. “The people are nice. The store’s laid out nice,” said Bobby Brown, 68.
“It’s like a family store,” added his wife, 70. “We know everyone in here.”
The job cuts will reduce Winn-Dixie’s work force by about 10 percent.
The announcement came as the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company reported a sharp decline in its third-quarter profit as sales fell 5.5 percent.
Investors pushed its shares up 15 cents to $7.62 in active trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company said it plans to close 45 unprofitable or poorly located stores in its key markets and put another 111 stores in its less-successful regions up for sale and close them if it cannot find buyers. Its stores are mostly in the Southeast and Midwest.
In addition, Winn-Dixie said it would shutter distribution centers in Sarasota, Fla.; Raleigh ; and Louisville, Ky.
It will also try to sell its Dixie Packers, Crackin’ Good Bakery/Snacks and Montgomery Pizza manufacturing operations and consolidate its Greenville Ice Cream and Miami Dairy operations into its other dairies.
The closings and sales will leave the supermarket chain with 922 stores and about 90,000 employees.
Company officials recently evaluated Winn-Dixie’s operating areas to determine core and non-core markets. No part of Virginia was considered a core market.
“Core markets are generally where Winn-Dixie maintains a first, second or third market-share position or where management believes there may be future strategic opportunities to become a market leader,” the company said in a written statement released Friday.
Non-core regions are “areas where the company has limited opportunities to gain market share and are unprofitable in the aggregate.”
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This section last updated October 24, 2005.
