Springfield-based Price Cutter Supermarkets has entered an agreement to purchase the assets of Summer Fresh Supermarkets Inc. and its 10 regional grocery stores, including a Save-A-Lot store that opened last year in Springfield. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Price Cutter spokeswoman Janet Brooks said the sale is expected to close this week.
The employee-owned Price Cutter operates 46 supermarkets in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, under the names Price Cutter, Country Mart and Bistro Market locally. The Summer Fresh deal puts Price Cutter above the 50-store mark across southwest Missouri and pushes its reach into four states.
“It gives us better regional coverage between Springfield and the western side of the state,” said Brooks, noting Price Cutter’s four stores in the Joplin market. “A lot of those stores are kind of peppered in smaller communities in between.”
Summer Fresh, founded by David and Lesley Trottier and owned by siblings Brent Brown and Summer Trottier, has doubled its store count in recent years, according to a Price Cutter news release. Eight stores operate as Summer Fresh Supermarkets in Lamar, El Dorado Springs, Marshfield, Conway, Mount Vernon, Fair Grove, Greenfield and Carl Junction, while two under the Save-A-Lot banner are in Baxter Springs, Kan., and at 1117 E. Commercial St. The north Springfield store – a $1 million renovation project – marked Summer Fresh’s re-entry into the market after selling its south Springfield store to Community Blood Center of the Ozarks in fall 2007.
Summer Fresh President and CEO Brown said Price Cutter officials approached his family with an offer, and the deal came together within three weeks. The family retained the real estate and signed long-term leases with Price Cutter, he said.
“It was an asset purchase – the fixtures, the inventory, the blue sky, or goodwill, if you will,” Brown said, noting the company was intent on growing its brands until the offer was made. “This wasn’t something, at 40 years old, that I expected.
“This is the first time my family hasn’t been in the grocery business in 35 years.”
David Trottier started Smitty’s Supermarkets in 1977 before selling the 10 stores to Albertson’s in 1998. He launched Summer Fresh the next year in Lamar, and by 2005, the seven-store chain was grossing more than $60 million in sales, according to Springfield Business Journal archives.
Brooks said Price Cutter does not plan to change the stores’ names. Price Cutter President and CEO Erick Taylor said in the release Summer Fresh’s 300 associates would come on as employee-owners at Price Cutter, a subsidiary of Pyramid Foods Inc.
The Springfield grocery market has tightened in recent years with the addition of four Walmart Neighborhood Markets and a Hy-Vee supermarket within the city. Springfield City Council on Nov. 5 passed a rezoning bill that paves the way for a second Hy-Vee store, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. officials have reached an agreement to purchase land from Life360 Church at Campbell Avenue and Grand Street for a fifth Neighborhood Market. Life360 Calvary Campus secretary Carol Kline said the deal is pending city rezoning, and a first reading on the Wal-Mart plans is tentatively scheduled Jan. 14, according to City Council calendar at
SpringfieldMo.gov.
In July 2011, Brown told SBJ the Springfield grocery market was overbuilt.
“In my opinion, this market is over-stored. I’m surprised that the other retailers that are coming to town – obviously, they see an opportunity – but I’m surprised that they don’t see that it’s over-stored,” said Brown, whose market experience dates back to working for Smitty’s Supermarkets in the 1980s and ’90s.
He said last week the competition was not a factor in the sale. “It was earlier than when I expected us to be exiting the grocery business,” he said. “It was the right offer. That’s really what it came down to.”In recent years, Price Cutter has expanded its offerings with the development of a Bistro Market downtown and the opening of a Price Cutter Plus Supermarket with an expanded salad bar and hot food options at the corner of Chestnut Expressway and West Bypass. The company has not moved on plans to build a store at Republic Road and West Bypass.
“It is our intention to strengthen the Summer Fresh stores, leveraging our buying power to provide customers with greater product variety and better pricing, thereby enabling these stores to successfully thrive in an increasingly competitive market environment,” Price Cutter’s Taylor said in the release. “We believe where you shop matters. By choosing a locally and employee-owned supermarket, shoppers know they are supporting the communities they call home and protecting valuable jobs.”[[In-content Ad]]
