New Safeway Eastern division president Jim Perkins is stepping into a job that he has some familiarity with, having overseen parent company Albertsons’ eastern division (Safeway, Acme and Shaw’s) from 2015 to 2016. However, during this tour of duty he will find the challenges daunting as the number two retailer in the Baltimore-Washington market faces declining share and eroding morale at the 120-store division based in Lanham, MD.
Rebuilding a sagging division is nothing new for the 35-year industry veteran who has been with Albertsons most of his career (he was also a VP with Giant/Landover for four years). In 2013, when the Boise, ID-based chain acquired nearly 900 stores from Supervalu, Perkins was named president of Acme Markets. At the time, the Malvern, PA regional chain had experienced nearly a decade-long dip in same store sales and share in a market where for many years it had been the dominant operator in the Delaware Valley.
Operating with a new decentralized system and a fresh injection of capital, Perkins and his team helped turn Acme around in 18 months. Perkins then was promoted to EVP-east region of Albertsons, then in 2016 held a similar title supervising Albertsons’ western operations, before coming back east in January 2018 to once again oversee a much larger (176 stores) but once again struggling Acme unit following the company’s acquisition of approximately 70 A&P stores.
Perkins remains an executive VP with Albertsons corporate and will remain as president of Acme while now also assuming the helm at Safeway-eastern.
It’s been a bit of a merry-go-round for the division in the past three years. When Albertsons acquired Safeway in January 2015 it replaced former eastern division president Steve Neibergall with another Safeway executive, Steve Burnham, who had never supervised a division and hadn’t worked on the East Coast. While Burnham remained on the job until September 2016, the division encountered some of the issues that had plagued them prior to their purchase by Albertsons – perceived high retails and flagging morale. Veteran Safeway executive Dan Valenzuela, who was at the time heading Albertsons’ large and profitable Seattle division, was tabbed to lead the Lanham, MD unit. Valenzuela was also a “West Coast guy” having begun his 39-year career in the San Francisco area; he also served as president of the company’s Phoenix unit from 2003-2015.
However, building sales in a fiercely competitive and diverse market continued to be challenging and last month Albertsons felt that Perkins’ experience, upbeat personality and tireless work ethic would be the best solution to help turn Safeway-Eastern around.
Upon hearing that Perkins would be running the division, one veteran Safeway-Eastern executive said: “This is really exciting news. I’ve been especially concerned with the condition of our stores, both physically and morale-wise. I’m confident that’s going to change quickly. Jim knows the business, understands the market and connects with people on a very positive level. We need that here.”
During the past year, according to data published by Food World, Safeway’s ACV share for the $27.1 billion Baltimore-Washington market dropped from 10 percent to 9.34 percent and comp store sales declined by about three percent for the period ended March 31, 2017.
Perkins was not the only change that Albertsons made at the divisional level over the past month. At its largest division in northern California based in Pleasanton, veteran Safeway executive Tom Schwilke has left the company and was replaced by Brad Street, who most recently headed the company’s intermountain division based in Boise. John Colgrove, who most recently was senior VP of the chain’s Denver division and who also has served as VP-marketing and merchandising at Albertsons Intermountain unit, is that division’s new president. Lori Raya, former president of the retailer’s Southern California unit based in Fullerton, and Shane Dorcheus, who headed Albertsons’ southwest division based in Tolleson, AZ, have swapped divisions. SoCal is a substantially larger division. Additionally, Joe Kelley, who joined Albertsons’ Shaw’s division in 2015 and most recently was VP and general manager of the company’s sister Star Market organization, has left the company.
