Price Chopper Buys 4 SLC Stores

By SUSAN MENDE

Tops Markets has agreed to sell six former P&C Food stores to Schenectady-based Price Chopper Inc. for $14 million, including five stores in the north country.

Price Chopper Chief Executive Officer Neil M. Golub said an asset purchase agreement was signed Thursday for P&C stores in Canton, Potsdam, Massena, Gouverneur and West Carthage. The sixth store is in Lincoln, N.H.

"We're very excited about the purchase," Mr. Golub said in a telephone interview. "We've been trying to work out a deal. For us, this is familiar country and we will be a very good community member."

The six stores will remain open under Tops, based in Buffalo, until Price Chopper's ownership takes effect, most likely in early April. A closing date for the sale has not yet been scheduled.

Mr. Golub said Price Chopper plans to temporarily close the newly-acquired P&C stores while they're being converted.

"We're going to do this as quickly as we can," he said. "We will definitely have them opened by Memorial Day."

The stores will be slightly remodeled and cleaned before they're re-opened, but initial plans do not include expanding the physical size of any of the former P&C's, he said.

"We'll be installing new equipment and new computers. Those systems all have to be set up and tied together," Mr. Golub said. "The products will also be displayed differently."

Customers can look forward to improvements in the stores' seafood, bakery and floral departments, he said.

The new stores will offer Price Chopper's fuel savings program which offers customers a 10-cent per gallon discount at Sunoco gas stations for every $50 they spend at Price Chopper.

"That's very popular and important to a lot of customers. It helps customers where they need it the most," he said.

Price Chopper is a non-unionized grocery store which may limit how many current P&C employees are offered positions when the stores convert.

Both P&C and Tops employees are unionized under the Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 1, Utica.

If Price Chopper hired more than 50 percent of unionized grocery workers it would be required to recognize the union, according to federal labor regulations.

Mr. Golub said current P&C employees will be considered for available Price Chopper jobs and his company will strive to find the best workers.

"Our plan is to hire good people. They will have the opportunity to apply," Mr. Golub said. "We expect to hire 20 to 30 percent more people at the stores. As soon as the dust clears, we'll be interviewing and hiring."

He said it's likely that some people who already work for Price Chopper will be promoted to fill higher positions in the new stores and also train other employees.

Price Chopper, founded in 1932, will have a total of 125 stores once it takes ownership of the six new stores. The company already operates stores in Watertown, Ogdensburg, Malone, Lake Placid and Plattsburgh.

James M. Henderson, temporary manager at Canton's P&C store, said managers for the six impacted stores were told during a Thursday morning conference call with Tops officials that Tops will remain ownership through April 10.

Liquidation sales are scheduled to start this Saturday at the six stores, Mr. Henderson said.

"We're going to be liquidating everything in the store at a certain percentage off. I think every department will be different," Mr. Henderson said.

Although inventory will be reduced over the next several weeks, the impacted stores will continue to receive supplies of perishable staples like milk, bread, eggs and some produce, he said.

In early December, Price Chopper submitted a bid of $12.3 million for P&C stores in Canton, Potsdam, Massena and Gouverneur. The company later bid $54 million for 22 Penn Traffic stores, with that bid including the four St. Lawrence County stores as well as stores in Pulaski, West Carthage and Lowville.

Tops entered the bidding contest late in the game, submitting a bid of $85 million in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The court approved the offer, awarding Tops the majority of Penn Traffic's assets, including 79 stores. The deal closed Jan. 29.

During the past several weeks, Tops and union officials tried unsuccessfully to find another unionized grocer to purchase seven former P&C stores in the north country, including stores in Watertown, West Carthage, Gouverneur, Canton, Potsdam, Massena and Ogdensburg.

Tops claimed it wanted to sell off the Northern New York stores because they're too far from the company's core service region.