Posted Nov 22, 2012, 2:38 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2010
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The concept is for Bayview to be the neighourhood High Street with retail all along, but not sure if any of it would be large format. A lot of us (including Ted Fobert from FoTenn who advises all of the are developers on this kind of stuff), think that the Richcraft lot at the southwest corner of Parkdale and Scott would be the ideal place for a grocery store to serve M'sville and the 'Burg.
What I don't get is why 7-11 hasn't moved pre-emptively to meet the needs here (and maybe in Old Ottawa South and elsewhere?), where they have a good-size store, a high-traffic location, some parking and a potential monopoly position, and moved to provide the kind of grocery stores you see everywhere in France and the UK as "Petit Casino," "Carrefour City," "Tesco Express," etc., perhaps in partnership with Metro or Loblaw or Sobeys to take advantage of the grocery chain's logistics for fresh food and their popular/trusted store brands (Loblaw is especially strong here with PC, whether you like them or not).
Overseas, these types of stores will cover the complete spectrum of groceries, just offering less selection in each "category", so they won't have 20 different brands of bread or cereal or deli meat, they'll just have a couple (e.g., the store brand and maybe the discount store brand or a "national brand"), etc., only small packs of toilet paper, and detergent and no lawn furniture or clothing lines.
Right now 7-11 really under-uses their space with short shelves (visibility for safety/security) that are filled with magazines and rows of bags of chips that could easily be converted to tall shelves; though, obviously they'd need to do something about safety, overseas these stores often have a security guard on duty in the evening. 7-11 already knows how to handle some fresh-ish food with their dairy, bread and hot dog sales (ew)... so it shouldn't be impossible for them to make the change on their own (call themselves 7-11 "Market"?), or just let themselves be bought up by the Westons and be converted to "LoblawCity" (or "Superstore Express": no unions!)
I think this kind of change is inevitable as these old city neighbourhoods grow and gentrify and the big grocery chains need to find new ways to increase their market share as the big box segment continues to saturate, and there just aren't enough locations in the urban core with space for new large-format stores. But I think there is already a need that would support such a move now, and there are big advantages to getting in to market early and establishing.
I know that in France most of these types of the PetitCasinos and CarrefourCitys were independent "supermachés" or "superettes" until fairly recently, think of places like Bouchey's and Goldstein's (RIP) on Elgin. Then they were gobbled up by (or franchised to?) the big chains and were re-branded as such. There's a trade-off as the neighbourhood loses a local business, but it gains better and more reliable selection in the store and often better prices than they had before, benefiting from the big chains' logistics networks and buying power. But you still pay a premium over the larger suburban-style big box grocers (called "hypermachés" in France). The produce isn't always as good as it was at the local green grocer, or at an independent place like Bouchey's or Herb and Spice that specialize in fresh produce, (but the quality is reliably average), and the big improvement is on the selection and freshness of products like cereal, prepared food, ready-made meals, fresh-baked bread, packaged meats for stores that didn't used to have butcher/deli counters in-house (Bouchey's is rare for this), etc.
It'll be neat to see who gets into this first, I could see Couche-Tard (owns Mac's) and Metro getting together, what do you think?
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