Watson IGA becoming Watson Supabarn
May 17th, 2012 at 05:23pm
On May 28, the supermarket in Watson will change allegiances, breaking its ties with the Independent Grocers of Australia chain, to become a member of the Supabarn group.
The store will, consequently, change name from SupaIGA (the branding used for larger IGA stores) to SupaExpress (denoting smaller Supabarn stores).
Watson IGA with half of its external branding changed)
None of the internal branding has changed yet, and it is unlikely that much of the product range will change later on as both IGA and Supabarn use Black & Gold as their generic brand. There is, however, a notice at the checkouts informing customers of the change, noting specifically that the staff will not change, but the IGA catalogue which is delivered to households in the area will no longer be applicable in the store.
It is not currently known whether the Supabarn catalogue, which is also distributed in the area, will apply to a SupaExpress branded store or if a separate catalogue will apply.
One thing which is certain though is that the little yellow price tag stickers will not all need to be changed as Supabarn has used the same style of price tags for many years.
The expansion of Supabarn in to smaller suburban supermarkets continues a recent trend of expansion of the main Supabarn brand in to Sydney, which came after most Supabarn stores were taken over by Woolworths in the 1990s.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Canberra Stories
3 Comments
1. Kenneth | May 17th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
I was wondering exactly what the brand would be when I went to it on Monday. Don’t recall the signs being up then.
Good to see Supabarn expanding a bit. Will be interesting to see what happens in the future with these stores. Hopefully Watson will end up being a better store than it currently is (although shame that the IGA frozen meals will most likely go). I see Florey is the only other ACT store listed on the Supabarn site (Watson isn’t listed yet)
2. Samuel | May 18th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
That’s a good point about the IGA frozen meals which, I have to admit, are surprisingly good.
It will be interesting to see what changes take place and how the changes are received by customers.
3. th30sb | May 22nd, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Actually, Supabarn is no longer supplied by Metcash (IGA) NSW anymore. supabarn and supabarn express are getting groceries from Queensland warehouse SPAR. you may have seen some of the other SPAR branded stores in Canberra.
This will also be the case for Watson Supabarn express. Black and Gold and IGA brands will not be available there soon and there will also be a reduced range of groceries on the shelf similar to when it turned into a Shop Rite not to many years ago.
When Supabarn tried to outbid Metcash (IGA) in purchasing the Franklins stores it left them in a situation where they believed they could be better off starting their own self supplied store structure. that is where we are now.
Either way, Watson (run independently by Andy, great operator) is a well run store and will not do anything to negatively effect its customers but there may be a teething period. If you don’t like what you are offered then you should let them know so they can do something about it. That is how an independent business survives by listening to its customers.