Hy-Vee Dollar Fresh
- Thread starter Cyinthenorth
- Start date
There is no sugar coating it, the Market Grills have been a massive failure for Hy-Vee. They throw out crazy food and drink deals just to get people in the door and the lack of casual seating is killing the deli too. You also have to remember that in a lot of the old stores they took square footage away from the main store to build the market grills and they have basically become dead space for the stores. It has been a lose lose deal for Hy-Vee.
I'm in the Cresco area, and pretty excited about this. I never shopped at Shopko much because the stuff was overpriced junk, but Hy Vee is a different animal. It will be nice to see Fareway have legitimate competition.
I was already pumped about the big Hy Vee coming to Decorah, but this will be along my daily commute and add a nice convenience level. Everyone I know around here has been pretty ecstatic about it.
I was already pumped about the big Hy Vee coming to Decorah, but this will be along my daily commute and add a nice convenience level. Everyone I know around here has been pretty ecstatic about it.
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I swear most of my NE friends a good amount of their easy consumables (milk, eggs, cheese, juice, hot dog buns) from Kwik Star. This will be a unique option for them.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I hate Hy-Vee because it’s too damn expensive. Here is an example, an 8 pack of Gatorade at my Hy-Vee is $7. The Walmart has the same exact product for less than $5. Only people that have too much money shop there. Fareway, Walmart, and Aldi are cheaper. And I have heard these scaled down versions are not liked by people in their towns because of a lack of options
It's a common thing, particularly on Sundays. I do most of my shopping at Fareway, but have definitely purchased those aforementioned items at Kwik Star on a frequent basis.
I think a big reason for them in addition to convenience is that KS takes Catholic school scrips.
You're drinking gatorade!?!?! Only people that have too much money buy gatorade, Allsport for life!
I like the market grill in my area go during happy hour you can get a beer appetizer and tip them right for $10. The downside is they sort of take business from other local restaurants.
Absolutely correct. I usually only go when they have all you can eat wings, or go during the weekend for bottomless mimosas. I don't go on a normal Wednesday night or for a weekend date night.
I know people that love this in eastern Iowa love this. I tried going into the Ankeny nuts and it was busy as f so I left, but they looked to have an amazing selection. Can they really compare on price when it comes to commodities like eggs, milk, and cheese?
Our Hy-Vee stopped having baked breakfast pizzas on Sunday mornings. We thought it was stupid because "who gets something to eat on Sunday morning?" But it just occurred to me that maybe they thought not having the pizza available on Sunday morning might help drive Market Grille business up. We just stopped ever going there on Sunday mornings.
I tend to do most of the grocery shopping at Fareway now. Te meat selection is better and I usually save about $15-$20 a week on groceries. Plus I can get my shopping done faster because the store is smaller.
We have had a dollar fresh for a few months now. It's nice to have a grocery store open on sundays and the liquor is probably the cheapest in town. There selection is limited but have been told they will adjust as they need to. Bakery and meat come fresh in the morning from nearby store. They have a slicer but dont think the slice a whole lot. They also are not 24 hour stores but I think alot have even gone away from that now. Our Walmart and hyvee in that's close to is have changed there hours
In the past when there is an item that a Hy-Vee doesn't carry and you talk to the Store Manager about it s/he will generally get it in. If it sells reasonably s/he will probably stock it but if it doesn't all bets are off.
I worked for Hy-Vee while in high school, through college, and a couple of years beyond. Started out as a bag boy, then cashier, night stock, night stock manager, shift manager (think they've glorified the name now), and went through management training. I worked in produce, meat, non-foods, floral on holidays,etc. I worked in 4 different stores.Things have changed a lot since I've worked there but a few observations:
#1 To move up in the company, you work your ass off. Constantly switching between 1st and 2nd shift, dealing with young kids and their parents, managers who are on 100% commission trying to get every cent out of the store, being on "salary" meant working an ungodly amount of hours, etc. It builds a good work ethic but it also makes you appreciate any other non retail job you'll ever have.
#2 Very few people in the store make good money. Meat Manager, Deli Manager, and Bakery Manager can make good money but they will work 60+ hours their whole career. Pharmacy Manager will make good money but I assume that's true everywhere. The Store Director is the big dog. 30 years ago I knew there were a lot of Directors making well over $150k($250k in today's money) and the person below them was lucky to make $50k. Since most are on commission, these amounts varied greatly per store. The interesting thing is that it's not always the stores you would think that are most profitable. A lot of times the small stores (think Indianola before remodel) were huge cash cows but some of the WDM stores made very little money. This is why you a lot of times see brand new big stores with young directors. Back then in the DSM metro it was stores like 35th street Hy-Vee and Urbandale that were king. A decade earlier it was the East Euclid Hy-Vee. Now I'm sure it's totally different. When I left I believe the top stores in the company was Overland Park, KS.
#3 Weird Departments/Changes-Hy-Vee has been doing this forever. I remember working at a store that had a trading card store inside. One of the WDM stores had a fancy clothing store inside 25 years ago. 30 years ago every store had a large video store inside. 30 years ago everyone drove up for their groceries. Some now have a big cosmetics section now. Delivery is another big experiment for them. Gas stations seem to be successful. Regal liquors was big at one time. Hell they even tried to make their own beer a couple of times(very bad). Most of these departments are high margin compared to the 2% they make in the grocery isles. We were messing with self checkouts 30 years ago. I think this is a good thing that Hy-Vee tries so many things. You can walk into about any Fareway today and it looks and smells exactly like it did 30 years ago. For some people that is the way they want it but for a lot of people they want to mix it up a little and want more selection. I think for the last few decades Hy-Vee has been worrying a lot more about Wal-Mart than Fareway and if you look how stagnant business has been for Fareway, you'll realize that was a smart move. Fareway on the other hand is probably more worried about Aldi's than Hy-Vee. On a side note, my wife has been using Hy-Vee delivery since day one and she has recently said that Target is killing Hy-Vee when it comes to picking up groceries. Hy-Vee almost always gets the order wrong, they are never fast, etc. She thinks Target is on a timer or something because they are always at her car within 2 minutes and the one time it took 5 minutes they gave her a gift card.
#4 I hate the Iowa bottle law
#5 Helpful Smile-This was preached from day one. After a 10 hour shift you would find yourself out of work saying high to everyone around you. The only time this sucked is when you had to deal with bad customers, who you knew you were jerks. A perfect example is when a customer found an item that didn't ring right at the register and would get the item for free. I had no issue with this policy but customers that would find an item that rang up cheaper than the shelf price and wanted it free annoyed me.
#6 Being a beer geek, I'm amazed at the selection of SOME of the Hy-Vee's in the metro. There are 3-4 in the area that just kill it. A big reason why they are successful is because they let the department managers have a lot of say in products.This is true for a lot of their departments.
#7 Pricing-If you stick to just the grocery isles, there is not a ton of difference between all the major grocery stores when comparing like products. If you really want to save money, use coupons or shop at Aldi's. When we did price comparisons, there was never more than 2-3% difference overall between Fareway, Dahl's, and Hy-Vee. With that said, Fareway was almost always lower price but Hy-Vee's also varied a little from store to store. I don't know if the pricing model has changed but when I worked their, each store set their own prices and the dry grocery margins were almost non existent.
#8 I hated dressing up and at the same time doing manual labor. Thank god they got rid of that. I remember unloading trucks with a tie on.
#1 To move up in the company, you work your ass off. Constantly switching between 1st and 2nd shift, dealing with young kids and their parents, managers who are on 100% commission trying to get every cent out of the store, being on "salary" meant working an ungodly amount of hours, etc. It builds a good work ethic but it also makes you appreciate any other non retail job you'll ever have.
#2 Very few people in the store make good money. Meat Manager, Deli Manager, and Bakery Manager can make good money but they will work 60+ hours their whole career. Pharmacy Manager will make good money but I assume that's true everywhere. The Store Director is the big dog. 30 years ago I knew there were a lot of Directors making well over $150k($250k in today's money) and the person below them was lucky to make $50k. Since most are on commission, these amounts varied greatly per store. The interesting thing is that it's not always the stores you would think that are most profitable. A lot of times the small stores (think Indianola before remodel) were huge cash cows but some of the WDM stores made very little money. This is why you a lot of times see brand new big stores with young directors. Back then in the DSM metro it was stores like 35th street Hy-Vee and Urbandale that were king. A decade earlier it was the East Euclid Hy-Vee. Now I'm sure it's totally different. When I left I believe the top stores in the company was Overland Park, KS.
#3 Weird Departments/Changes-Hy-Vee has been doing this forever. I remember working at a store that had a trading card store inside. One of the WDM stores had a fancy clothing store inside 25 years ago. 30 years ago every store had a large video store inside. 30 years ago everyone drove up for their groceries. Some now have a big cosmetics section now. Delivery is another big experiment for them. Gas stations seem to be successful. Regal liquors was big at one time. Hell they even tried to make their own beer a couple of times(very bad). Most of these departments are high margin compared to the 2% they make in the grocery isles. We were messing with self checkouts 30 years ago. I think this is a good thing that Hy-Vee tries so many things. You can walk into about any Fareway today and it looks and smells exactly like it did 30 years ago. For some people that is the way they want it but for a lot of people they want to mix it up a little and want more selection. I think for the last few decades Hy-Vee has been worrying a lot more about Wal-Mart than Fareway and if you look how stagnant business has been for Fareway, you'll realize that was a smart move. Fareway on the other hand is probably more worried about Aldi's than Hy-Vee. On a side note, my wife has been using Hy-Vee delivery since day one and she has recently said that Target is killing Hy-Vee when it comes to picking up groceries. Hy-Vee almost always gets the order wrong, they are never fast, etc. She thinks Target is on a timer or something because they are always at her car within 2 minutes and the one time it took 5 minutes they gave her a gift card.
#4 I hate the Iowa bottle law
#5 Helpful Smile-This was preached from day one. After a 10 hour shift you would find yourself out of work saying high to everyone around you. The only time this sucked is when you had to deal with bad customers, who you knew you were jerks. A perfect example is when a customer found an item that didn't ring right at the register and would get the item for free. I had no issue with this policy but customers that would find an item that rang up cheaper than the shelf price and wanted it free annoyed me.
#6 Being a beer geek, I'm amazed at the selection of SOME of the Hy-Vee's in the metro. There are 3-4 in the area that just kill it. A big reason why they are successful is because they let the department managers have a lot of say in products.This is true for a lot of their departments.
#7 Pricing-If you stick to just the grocery isles, there is not a ton of difference between all the major grocery stores when comparing like products. If you really want to save money, use coupons or shop at Aldi's. When we did price comparisons, there was never more than 2-3% difference overall between Fareway, Dahl's, and Hy-Vee. With that said, Fareway was almost always lower price but Hy-Vee's also varied a little from store to store. I don't know if the pricing model has changed but when I worked their, each store set their own prices and the dry grocery margins were almost non existent.
#8 I hated dressing up and at the same time doing manual labor. Thank god they got rid of that. I remember unloading trucks with a tie on.
