SAVE MART SUPERMARKETS IN STOCKTON, CA

Uh...California.

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bigpimp

SAVE MART SUPERMARKETS IN STOCKTON, CA

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This artlicle was posted in last Tuesday's Stockton Record. I went into this store today and it is almost empty...this was a nasty store to begin with. It originally started as a Fry's then was acquired by Save Mart to be re-named Fry's/Food Bank then S-Mart foods, not Save Mart due to an existing chain with the same name in Stockton.

S-Mart Foods to close after quarter century


MICHELLE MACHADO
Record Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, Feb 28, 2006


STOCKTON - Bake shop shelves were nearly empty, produce tables were bare, and dairy products were in short supply Monday at a north Stockton grocery store days away from closing for good.

Save Mart Supermarkets will shut the doors to its S-Mart Foods store at 8004 N. West Lane, at Hammer Lane, on Saturday.

The grocery store has served the city for 25 years.

The store's 75 employees will be relocated to other S-Mart locations in the area.

Store locations are evaluated on business factors such as store size, store location, the competitive landscape, lease factors and cost of doing business, said company spokesman John Kelly in a written statement.

Kelly declined to comment on any impact that Wal-Mart and WinCo - discount grocers that have moved in nearby - have had on the store's business.

Long-time S-Mart shopper Donna Jones plans to drive to another one of the chain's stores.

Her daughter, a store employee, will transfer to the S-Mart at Pacific and Alpine avenues, she said.

But for Juan Jimenez, 52, deciding where to go will be harder.

"I don't know. I only have a bike," he said.

At least it had stopped raining, said Jimenez, who was bundled against the whipping wind that blew midday Monday.

An onion, a tomato, a liter of 7UP and canned dog food for his pet Chihuahuas went into his backpack before he pedaled nearly a mile back to his home on Prospector Drive.

Finding a store comparable to the Hammertown S-Mart will add more than a mile to that trip.

The nearest full-service grocery store is a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a mile-plus east on East Hammer Lane.

Another S-Mart and a Food Max Supermarket sit in shopping centers across from another, nearly two miles to the south on North West Lane.

S-Mart Foods is a division of Modesto-headquartered Save Mart Supermarkets, a privately owned supermarket chain founded in 1952.

The company owns and operates 125 stores throughout Central California, including six Stockton S-Mart stores.

In 2003, a Lincoln Center S-Mart was razed following the expiration of its lease to make way for a Safeway.

The following year, Save Mart Supermarkets closed an S-Mart on Wilson Way.

Kelly said in the statement that there is no downsizing strategy for Save Mart or S-Mart.

Contact reporter Michelle Machado at (209) 943-8547 or mmachado@recordnet.com
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