Shaws Supermarket (MA, ME, NH, RI, VT) Deals

Quote from getgreen09 : unfortunately, you guys are paying the transportation markups. fewer stores, and farther away = greater cost to transport for Shaws. And they're happily passing that on to the consumer knowing you guys don't have a choice but to go to the store. i bet they'd do more of that here, too, if they could get away with it. but there's quite a lot of competition and that makes it harder for them to do. plus kind of hard to justify, when you're close to transportation hubs, and have so many stores within a small radius.

Actually, the distribution center for Hannaford is in ME and the one for nonperishables for Shaw's is in ME; of course, perishables for Shaw's is in MA. Though, Hannaford also has a distribution center in NY. I think Walmart is more aggressive with groceries in ME than in MA (at least in my area) which offsets somewhat the lack of MB at least in quite a few areas, but lack of MB does play a role. MB has a lot of their stores center around their distribution center while you see other stores having longer hauls to get to their store. Though, I think the largest factor in their price perception is that they focus on featuring store brands more. It is what TJ's is doing too; just that their store brand is more upscale than other store brands. When people buy store brands more often, that's more profit for the store which they can reinvest into offering lower prices to drive traffic in the store since profit margins are better on store brands than name brands.

But the interesting thing is Waltham MA Hannaford is 15 minutes from Burlington MA Market Basket and that one charges ME pricing. There's other Hannafords that are about 15 minutes from a MB that are even cheaper than my store (they're about 45 minutes from me) and only otherwise gets competition from BJ's and Shaw's although there's a Walmart Supercenter in that area. They get some fish sales $1 lower/lb than we do, many regular produce prices is at the sale prices in our ad (and typically they get a small reduction when it goes on sale or the price stays the same). For example, their 2 lb baby carrots are always $1.99 and its $2.49 at my store and goes on sale at $1.99. Their Eastern peach sale this week is $.89; regular is $.99 and its $.99 with a regular of $1.29 at my store.

I think the other thing too is that a lot of ME stores are highly seasonal. Even in Bar Harbor ME by Acadia National Park, the traffic going through the Hannaford up there is a lot higher in the heart of tourist season (like now) than going during a secondary time like the week before Labor Day; I couldn't imagine how little business they do between Labor Day and Memorial Day. And there's probably a lot more examples that could be pointed to in ME.