Bottom Dollar setting up shop in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Business Times - by Tim Schooley
Date: Friday, November 19, 2010, 12:12pm EST

. ..Salisbury, N.C.-based Bottom Dollar, which bills itself as a “soft discount” grocery store offering an assortment of fresh produce and meats along with a host of other value-priced items, appears to be setting up shop in the Pittsburgh area.

Bottom Dollar Food Northeast LLC has acquired the former Foodland grocery store on Frankstown Road in Penn Hills for $975,000, in a sale that closed on Oct. 4, according to records with Allegheny County. At the same time, real estate sources who spoke anonymously to maintain their business relationships indicate that Bottom Dollar is eyeing between 12 to 15 locations throughout the Pittsburgh area.

The discount chain currently operates about 30 stores in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania and is currently pursuing an aggressive expansion in the Philadelphia market. Bottom Dollar is a sister store to Food Lion, a supermarket chain that operates in the central part of the state but has not expanded into the Pittsburgh region. Both chains are part of the international conglomerate Dalhaize Group, based in Brussels, Belgium, that operates more than 2,760 stores in six countries on three continents, generating 19.9 billion euros in revenue ($27.1 billion) in 2009.

A call to a spokesperson for Food Lion was not immediately returned.

The prospect of Bottom Dollar entering the Pittsburgh market comes as other discounters have been actively seeking to expand in the area, such as Save-A-Lot and Aldi, the German limited assortment grocer that has been eyeing stores on the South Side and on Baum Boulevard in the city as well as elsewhere.

Dan O’Connell, a commercial real estate agent for Carnegie-based Jabe Companies who represented the former Foodland property and has long worked with Family Dollar in Pennsylvania, added that dollar stores have also been increasing their food offerings.

“When I was an employee five years ago, we would ask for 1,000 square feet for food,” O’Connell said. “Now it’s 2,000.”

Another source familiar with Food Lion said that Pittsburgh is “under-grocered” with no competition for Giant Eagle and Wal-Mart.

He noted that Pittsburgh is always a hard market to establish a significant number of stores quickly and expects that Bottom Dollar will need to take over empty stores such as the location in Penn Hills to be able to set up enough stores here
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