Fairway Market Is Still On

Big news from Fairway Market‘s fourth quarter 2015 earnings conference call: “Fairway says pushing back Tribeca store opening a year,” tweeted Bloomberg’s Matt Townsend. “But that it’s still on.” (Once the call is put up as a download, I’ll try to find that part and transcribe it.) Last we had heard was that they were trying to get out of the lease, so this is reassuring, to say the least.

UPDATE 5/27: A reader sent over the transcript of the earnings call. (Thanks again!) The relevant parts—all the quotes are from Jack Murphy, CEO.

—In his introductory remarks: “We are still wrestling with what kind of concept we might do in Tribeca.”

—In response to a question about the real estate outlook: “The Tribeca and the Staten Island, I believe that the right size for the stores is 40,000 feet. Because we have 50,000 feet, because we have 52,000 feet [in Tribeca] or whatever we have, we are going to build the stores for the maximum customer experience and productivity or profitability. So, it’s a sunk cost that we have maybe a few thousand more feet than we need right now, but we are confident that that will be more than offset by having the same kind of top line, if not better, a better customer experience and candidly a lot less shrink because we won’t be overbuilding perishable departments just to make the store out to the gunwales.”

—In response to a question specifically about Tribeca: “Well, as we’ve indicated, we pushed the opening back a year. I had a meeting just before the call with Dorothy [Carlow, Chief Merchandizing Officer] and Kevin [McDonnell, Co-President and COO] to start talking about what that store might look like. So, I don’t have any real idea of exactly how that store is going to look yet, but I can guarantee you that it will be probably different than other Fairways and we will take opportunity with the first floor and second floor to really do potentially some really interesting things based on our productivity study and really understanding the customer segmentation and the demographics there. So, actually, I’m pretty excited about the site.”

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Yahooo! But I’ll believe it when I see it!

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