"Sandwich Bar" self serve

[storewanderer]

Anyone seen this before in a grocery store?

A fixture for salad bar. Now one side of it is salad bar and one side of it is "sandwich bar."

6.98/lb.

They have the rolls sitting there in the plastic air tight packages (like a bakery pack) cut in half. The rolls are about 5oz each so right there you are at over $2 just for the roll. (the rolls are being sold in a 4pk at 2.98).

Sandwich bar has a few bins with meat, cheese, and various vegetables.

Interesting concept.

Was unclear what type of meat was being used (brand, etc.).

[cjd]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

[ClownLoach]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

I miss the good sandwich bars in the grocery stores.

Ralphs made great Subway-type sandwiches for years, delicious bread, good meat and cheese, good produce. Those got me through high school and junior college, I could order a large and that was like three meals.

Vons/Safeway tried to make the sandwich bar more upscale with odd spreads and sauces.

Today my local Ralphs has the sandwich alcove turned into a sushi station. I see the sushi guy at the beginning of the day marking down dozens of trays and throwing out many more. I refuse to believe for a second they're making more money on this or the dumb Murray's cheese desk than the sandwich bar. I would split the difference, have the Murray's cheese person also make sandwiches to order.

It's insane to me that these multi billion dollar companies are incapable of funding these operations for the convenience of their customers.

[storewanderer]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

I miss the good sandwich bars in the grocery stores.

Ralphs made great Subway-type sandwiches for years, delicious bread, good meat and cheese, good produce. Those got me through high school and junior college, I could order a large and that was like three meals.

Vons/Safeway tried to make the sandwich bar more upscale with odd spreads and sauces.

Today my local Ralphs has the sandwich alcove turned into a sushi station. I see the sushi guy at the beginning of the day marking down dozens of trays and throwing out many more. I refuse to believe for a second they're making more money on this or the dumb Murray's cheese desk than the sandwich bar. I would split the difference, have the Murray's cheese person also make sandwiches to order.

It's insane to me that these multi billion dollar companies are incapable of funding these operations for the convenience of their customers.

Does Temecula Ralphs still have the sandwich bar operating? I think it does... I might be confusing it with a store further South...

The Sushi is a "vendor." They lease the space from Kroger and Kroger gets a % of the sales. This is the same arrangement in Safeway, Raleys, Albertsons, WinCo, Sprouts, etc. So aside from opportunity cost, having the Sushi vendor there costs Kroger nothing. The shrink is not Kroger's concern.

In NorCal, Safeway and Raleys used to operate hot chinese food counters. The Safeway counters were quite high volume but didn't make any profit, but drove traffic. I doubt the fried chicken/wings/potato wedges/strips they throw a 30 gallon trash bag full of out daily makes any profit either. At some point Raleys turned counters those over to the sushi vendor so they run them. Later, Safeway did the same thing. I laugh as the two Safeway ones here close the hot chinese food counter, one at 5 PM, one at 6 PM, because they are there all day and it is time to go home. Some locations pack the food up and put it out prepackaged, others not sure what they do (maybe take it home and have it for their dinner). Some of the Raleys ones close at 7 PM but have basically no food by then as they run food down all day to try to get as close to 0 food as possible by close.

I believe the old Ralphs sandwich program was profitable because a sandwich program doesn't have much waste. It is labor intensive but a lot of the labor can be done "off hours" (like preparing vegetables) and was done as part of the "salad bar" preparation. If you have the right employee working they can be very efficient at making sandwiches (Safeway can't seem to make this happen in NorCal to this day though) but many stores really struggle to get sandwich orders out in less than 5 minutes for some reason.

The Ralphs sandwich program was something Kroger should have taken and rolled out chainwide. QFC had/has a similar program, at a much higher price, with more options. At QFC you fill your order out on a piece of paper and hand it to them and they process it. This seems to be more efficient. Holiday in NorCal, the extremely high sandwich volume Corti Brothers in Sacramento, uses this program too. The employee (or 5 employees at Corti Brothers) making sandwiches basically doesn't talk to the customer other than maybe a greeting and a thank you.

[storewanderer]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

You prepare it yourself. You take meat and toppings straight out of the sandwich bar using tongs and put them on your sandwich. As much or as little as you want.

There is no service counter in this store, the bakery/deli is entirely self serve. The prep areas are all behind tall walls, there is no visibility of the employee. This chain phased out service counters some time ago. For years they had "self serve hot food" cases with the food by the pound, but this new store does not have the hot food that way. Rather it has the hot food prepackaged into various size packages weighed out already.

They had quite a few sandwiches prepackaged at 4.98. Same ingredients. Maybe that is how they break the sandwich bar down each night.

[SamSpade]

Vons/Safeway tried to make the sandwich bar more upscale with odd spreads and sauces.

Today my local Ralphs has the sandwich alcove turned into a sushi station. I see the sushi guy at the beginning of the day marking down dozens of trays and throwing out many more. I refuse to believe for a second they're making more money on this or the dumb Murray's cheese desk than the sandwich bar. I would split the difference, have the Murray's cheese person also make sandwiches to order.

It's insane to me that these multi billion dollar companies are incapable of funding these operations for the convenience of their customers.

It's OK. They can send their customers down the road to the ever-growing interest at places like 99 Ranch or T&T.

But in all seriousness, I left your part about Vons/Safeway too because it has basically become impossible to order a sandwich, and when I can get someone to do it for me here, they now just use regular pan bread, no more special rolls or really even a memory of what goes into their "pre-selected" options on the menu monitor above the bar.

The other day we were at Safeway just as baked chicken was finishing out of the oven, around 3 pm. Now, I will say they should have double-bagged because the Signature cafe paper bag sogged through, but it was honestly really delicious that day and good cold in re-use in following days- a good value and maybe tastier than the whole rotisserie birds.

[BillyGr]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

You prepare it yourself. You take meat and toppings straight out of the sandwich bar using tongs and put them on your sandwich. As much or as little as you want.

There is no service counter in this store, the bakery/deli is entirely self serve. The prep areas are all behind tall walls, there is no visibility of the employee. This chain phased out service counters some time ago. For years they had "self serve hot food" cases with the food by the pound, but this new store does not have the hot food that way. Rather it has the hot food prepackaged into various size packages weighed out already.

They had quite a few sandwiches prepackaged at 4.98. Same ingredients. Maybe that is how they break the sandwich bar down each night.

Seems that this is just an extension of the salad bars that have been common for quite some time now.

I know that many of those include meats as well as vegetables, so really the only difference here is putting it on a roll and possibly the adding of a condiment(s) (as the salad bars often have packets of dressing and not containers to put it on the salad directly, maybe if those getting it are not eating immediately it doesn't get soggy that way).

So, while certainly potential for issues, the same exists with the salad bars and the stores have managed to keep it from being an issue there.

[ClownLoach]

How are the sandwiches prepared? I’m assuming the meat and toppings are packaged and then assembled by the customer after purchasing?

I can’t imagine the customer getting ingredients and preparing in store.

Really don’t see the point in this unless staffing is really low to the point where an employee doesn’t have time to make a sandwich.

Seems messy and runs the risk of contamination.

I miss the good sandwich bars in the grocery stores.

Ralphs made great Subway-type sandwiches for years, delicious bread, good meat and cheese, good produce. Those got me through high school and junior college, I could order a large and that was like three meals.

Vons/Safeway tried to make the sandwich bar more upscale with odd spreads and sauces.

Today my local Ralphs has the sandwich alcove turned into a sushi station. I see the sushi guy at the beginning of the day marking down dozens of trays and throwing out many more. I refuse to believe for a second they're making more money on this or the dumb Murray's cheese desk than the sandwich bar. I would split the difference, have the Murray's cheese person also make sandwiches to order.

It's insane to me that these multi billion dollar companies are incapable of funding these operations for the convenience of their customers.

Does Temecula Ralphs still have the sandwich bar operating? I think it does... I might be confusing it with a store further South...

The Sushi is a "vendor." They lease the space from Kroger and Kroger gets a % of the sales. This is the same arrangement in Safeway, Raleys, Albertsons, WinCo, Sprouts, etc. So aside from opportunity cost, having the Sushi vendor there costs Kroger nothing. The shrink is not Kroger's concern.

In NorCal, Safeway and Raleys used to operate hot chinese food counters. The Safeway counters were quite high volume but didn't make any profit, but drove traffic. I doubt the fried chicken/wings/potato wedges/strips they throw a 30 gallon trash bag full of out daily makes any profit either. At some point Raleys turned counters those over to the sushi vendor so they run them. Later, Safeway did the same thing. I laugh as the two Safeway ones here close the hot chinese food counter, one at 5 PM, one at 6 PM, because they are there all day and it is time to go home. Some locations pack the food up and put it out prepackaged, others not sure what they do (maybe take it home and have it for their dinner). Some of the Raleys ones close at 7 PM but have basically no food by then as they run food down all day to try to get as close to 0 food as possible by close.

I believe the old Ralphs sandwich program was profitable because a sandwich program doesn't have much waste. It is labor intensive but a lot of the labor can be done "off hours" (like preparing vegetables) and was done as part of the "salad bar" preparation. If you have the right employee working they can be very efficient at making sandwiches (Safeway can't seem to make this happen in NorCal to this day though) but many stores really struggle to get sandwich orders out in less than 5 minutes for some reason.

The Ralphs sandwich program was something Kroger should have taken and rolled out chainwide. QFC had/has a similar program, at a much higher price, with more options. At QFC you fill your order out on a piece of paper and hand it to them and they process it. This seems to be more efficient. Holiday in NorCal, the extremely high sandwich volume Corti Brothers in Sacramento, uses this program too. The employee (or 5 employees at Corti Brothers) making sandwiches basically doesn't talk to the customer other than maybe a greeting and a thank you.

I have not visited any Ralphs that still has a sandwich bar. Only pre-made sandwiches in a case. It appears to me the program was killed in the majority of the chain, I am not exactly sure when it happened but must have been mid 2010s. They did have the paper form you could check off but most of the time it was easier to just line up and call out what toppings you wanted. I didn't shop Ralphs often during that time frame as their locations were generally inconvenient to my residence at the time. It seems they removed them during the remodels to Neighborhood format. I do remember Fresh Fare stores had moved to a more elevated sandwich bar concept similar to Safeway with more expensive breads like Ciabatta, leaf lettuce instead of shredded iceberg, and a variety of sauces for a significantly higher price, I recall they were about $3 more than regular Ralphs and the sandwich was probably half the size.

To me the regular Ralphs sandwich concept was designed to complete head to head with Subway. It was almost identical. The difference was Ralphs ingredients were superior in quality, larger portions of meat and cheese, no suspicious chemical smelling bread, the meats were better, produce fresh. Sandwiches were 6 inch or 12 inch. They also baked a sub size roll in store that was 12 inches and you could buy them at the bakery. I used to pick those up and use them when I made Philly cheesesteak sandwiches at home, they were perfect size, shape, and held up well.

Temecula does not have it, their deli seems like it's a slightly smaller footprint than Murrieta.

I think all the Pavilions stores have retained the Signature Cafe sandwich program that has seemingly disappeared from most Vons/Albertsons but I don't get to them often, the last few I was in also had expanded to a morning bagel sandwich program which is probably a good way to get more out of the space. But I never cared for all the weird spreads and sauces they used, and most of the time you could look down and see the tubs of these pre-made mayo or cream cheese based products that looked like they were sitting out too long.

I do wonder if the rapid expansion of Jersey Mike's and other "better sandwich" concepts like Which-Wich, Board & Brew, and Ike's out West killed off the market for these grocery store sandwich counters. Freshness was sometimes suspect especially in the Safeway chains. Never a question at Jersey Mike's and they're usually in the same center as most grocery stores.

[storewanderer]

I miss the good sandwich bars in the grocery stores.

Ralphs made great Subway-type sandwiches for years, delicious bread, good meat and cheese, good produce. Those got me through high school and junior college, I could order a large and that was like three meals.

Vons/Safeway tried to make the sandwich bar more upscale with odd spreads and sauces.

Today my local Ralphs has the sandwich alcove turned into a sushi station. I see the sushi guy at the beginning of the day marking down dozens of trays and throwing out many more. I refuse to believe for a second they're making more money on this or the dumb Murray's cheese desk than the sandwich bar. I would split the difference, have the Murray's cheese person also make sandwiches to order.

It's insane to me that these multi billion dollar companies are incapable of funding these operations for the convenience of their customers.

Does Temecula Ralphs still have the sandwich bar operating? I think it does... I might be confusing it with a store further South...

The Sushi is a "vendor." They lease the space from Kroger and Kroger gets a % of the sales. This is the same arrangement in Safeway, Raleys, Albertsons, WinCo, Sprouts, etc. So aside from opportunity cost, having the Sushi vendor there costs Kroger nothing. The shrink is not Kroger's concern.

In NorCal, Safeway and Raleys used to operate hot chinese food counters. The Safeway counters were quite high volume but didn't make any profit, but drove traffic. I doubt the fried chicken/wings/potato wedges/strips they throw a 30 gallon trash bag full of out daily makes any profit either. At some point Raleys turned counters those over to the sushi vendor so they run them. Later, Safeway did the same thing. I laugh as the two Safeway ones here close the hot chinese food counter, one at 5 PM, one at 6 PM, because they are there all day and it is time to go home. Some locations pack the food up and put it out prepackaged, others not sure what they do (maybe take it home and have it for their dinner). Some of the Raleys ones close at 7 PM but have basically no food by then as they run food down all day to try to get as close to 0 food as possible by close.

I believe the old Ralphs sandwich program was profitable because a sandwich program doesn't have much waste. It is labor intensive but a lot of the labor can be done "off hours" (like preparing vegetables) and was done as part of the "salad bar" preparation. If you have the right employee working they can be very efficient at making sandwiches (Safeway can't seem to make this happen in NorCal to this day though) but many stores really struggle to get sandwich orders out in less than 5 minutes for some reason.

The Ralphs sandwich program was something Kroger should have taken and rolled out chainwide. QFC had/has a similar program, at a much higher price, with more options. At QFC you fill your order out on a piece of paper and hand it to them and they process it. This seems to be more efficient. Holiday in NorCal, the extremely high sandwich volume Corti Brothers in Sacramento, uses this program too. The employee (or 5 employees at Corti Brothers) making sandwiches basically doesn't talk to the customer other than maybe a greeting and a thank you.

I have not visited any Ralphs that still has a sandwich bar. Only pre-made sandwiches in a case. It appears to me the program was killed in the majority of the chain, I am not exactly sure when it happened but must have been mid 2010s. They did have the paper form you could check off but most of the time it was easier to just line up and call out what toppings you wanted. I didn't shop Ralphs often during that time frame as their locations were generally inconvenient to my residence at the time. It seems they removed them during the remodels to Neighborhood format. I do remember Fresh Fare stores had moved to a more elevated sandwich bar concept similar to Safeway with more expensive breads like Ciabatta, leaf lettuce instead of shredded iceberg, and a variety of sauces for a significantly higher price, I recall they were about $3 more than regular Ralphs and the sandwich was probably half the size.

To me the regular Ralphs sandwich concept was designed to complete head to head with Subway. It was almost identical. The difference was Ralphs ingredients were superior in quality, larger portions of meat and cheese, no suspicious chemical smelling bread, the meats were better, produce fresh. Sandwiches were 6 inch or 12 inch. They also baked a sub size roll in store that was 12 inches and you could buy them at the bakery. I used to pick those up and use them when I made Philly cheesesteak sandwiches at home, they were perfect size, shape, and held up well.

Temecula does not have it, their deli seems like it's a slightly smaller footprint than Murrieta.

I think all the Pavilions stores have retained the Signature Cafe sandwich program that has seemingly disappeared from most Vons/Albertsons but I don't get to them often, the last few I was in also had expanded to a morning bagel sandwich program which is probably a good way to get more out of the space. But I never cared for all the weird spreads and sauces they used, and most of the time you could look down and see the tubs of these pre-made mayo or cream cheese based products that looked like they were sitting out too long.

I do wonder if the rapid expansion of Jersey Mike's and other "better sandwich" concepts like Which-Wich, Board & Brew, and Ike's out West killed off the market for these grocery store sandwich counters. Freshness was sometimes suspect especially in the Safeway chains. Never a question at Jersey Mike's and they're usually in the same center as most grocery stores.

I was in a Ralphs near Santa Monica earlier this summer and it had the Boar's Head program, sandwiches were 6.99 at the counter, and there was a line of customers buying them. They had about 6 options.

The old Ralphs program was great, I used to buy them all the time when they were in NorCal. The bread used for the sandwiches was a Maple Leaf Baguette (but it was wider than a typical baguette) and for years Smiths sold those as a par-baked product in their bakery for 1.50 each but eventually those disappeared. They were snow white in color in their par baked form and goldened up very nicely. I wish I could find a grocer who has those baguettes again sold that way. Those baguettes are still out there in the food service market and I've had them in recent years at independent sandwich places.

I don't know why Kroger was always so against these custom sandwich counters. I have to assume they had some hard data that the labor and sales didn't add up.

[storewanderer]

It's OK. They can send their customers down the road to the ever-growing interest at places like 99 Ranch or T&T.

But in all seriousness, I left your part about Vons/Safeway too because it has basically become impossible to order a sandwich, and when I can get someone to do it for me here, they now just use regular pan bread, no more special rolls or really even a memory of what goes into their "pre-selected" options on the menu monitor above the bar.

The other day we were at Safeway just as baked chicken was finishing out of the oven, around 3 pm. Now, I will say they should have double-bagged because the Signature cafe paper bag sogged through, but it was honestly really delicious that day and good cold in re-use in following days- a good value and maybe tastier than the whole rotisserie birds.

NorCal Safeway has stickers facing the customer marketing deli products or combo meals attached to the glass shield between employee and customer at the sandwich bar. The side of those stickers facing the employee is a "prep chart" for each of the sandwiches on the menu. I am surprised the division there doesn't do that. Some of the NorCal Stores still do a pretty strong sandwich volume and they have the rolls etc.

The baked chicken pieces are really really good if fully seasoned. Last time I bought fried chicken at Safeway they had no baked chicken in the case but it was the $5 8pc Dark Friday; they are weird when they run that promotion; they only make legs/thighs (no breasts/wings) for sale that day, so maybe they also don't do baked that day anymore but do baked on other days still.