30 Quotes by Neil Stern

It's the ultimate credibility to say, 'Go see who we are,'

It's almost a throwback concept. They're very clean stores. They're wholesome; very much focused on comfort food. They have very much a family orientation; a good mix of families and young kids.

It's perceptually indicative of how a brand is performing. If it's going down, that means their satisfaction is going down.

The volume is there, but the chain stores have to adapt their practices.

Their format is not only capital-intensive, it's people-intensive. Literally, they can't train people fast enough. Even if they have access to capital, from a human resources standpoint, they can't grow any faster.

If you do that kind of advertising, you better be able to execute at the store level. If you don't, you're really going to lose those customers.

In one deal, it makes Supervalu a major national player.

This is a company that came from Rochester, N.Y., ... It's not like they came from New York City or some sophisticated place. A lot of their stores are in middle-of-the-road places. In the past five or six years, they've realized if they can get a combination of density -- a lot of people -- and income, that that's where they shine.

An attractive aspect of this for them is that Albertson's owned a lot of the land under their stores. But there could be multiple reasons for buying these stores, including generating cash flow, the value of the real estate or to spin them off to another buyer.