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Save-A-Lot

Save-A-Lot is a grocery store chain that is the thirteenth-largest retail chain and sixth-largest chain under a single banner with more than one thousand stores in the United States with $4 billion in sales. They are headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri

They are a wholly owned subsidiary of Supervalu. Some locations are owned & operated by independent owners under agreement with Supervalu.

History

Save-A-Lot was founded in 1977 by Bill Moran and Chase Gabbard, and is similar to ALDI food stores. Both ALDI and Save-A-Lot compete for the same market.

Store Format

Save-A-Lot's store format is a limited-selection store, also known as an "edited assortment". A limited-selection store is one in which a store carries a small selection of popular items, usually only in the most common size. Save-A-Lot typically carries about 90% of customer's every day food needs. Save-A-lot stores have about 1,250 grocery items per store and restrict their store sizes to roughly 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). They carry mainly brands that are not generally found in other stores (which they prefer to call "exclusive label brands"). Name brands are also found as "special buys" at very low prices.

Many stores lack grocery-store style shelving, and instead have the items in specially printed cut-out cardboard shipping cases on industrial-style shelving. Some stores (particularly in the southeast US) have standard grocery-store style shelving. Save-A-Lot customers typically bag their own groceries using available grocery bags. Some stores do not offer such bags free, charging extra for them: 3 cents for plastic "T-shirt" bags, 5 cents for paper grocery bags, 10 cents for reusable "poly" bags, and 99 cents for reusable cloth bags in order to keep grocery prices low. Some Save-A-Lot locations now bag groceries for the customers at no extra charge.

Deal$

Save-A-Lot purchased the Deal$ dollar store chain in 2002. Many Deal$ stores are located physically inside of Save-a-Lot stores in a format they call the Hybrid Store. On February 26, 2006, Save-A-Lot announced that it is selling Deal$ to Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. for $30.5 million.