Albertsons Shares Ideas for Super Bowl Merchandising

BOISE, Idaho - Super Bowl Weekend brings not only the biggest television sports event of the year, but it is also is one of the busiest times of the year for supermarkets -- particularly for party trays, snack foods, fruits, prepared foods and now Internet-based grocery retailing.

"The grocery demand by this year's Super Bowl fans is expected to be the greatest ever," said Larry Johnston, chairman and CEO of Albertsons Inc. "Our teams have worked together with our vendors to make sure that we have adequate supplies of the preferred delicacies on hand to satisfy the hunger of football fans throughout our 30-state network of stores. We've made our preparations. We're ready for the kickoff."

Albertsons has released a press release projecting it will sell:

-- More than 1 million pounds of fried chicken -- more than twice the normal volume.

-- More than 1 million pounds of avocado, including guacamole.

-- More than 50,000 party trays with assorted varieties of cold cuts, shrimp, cheeses, fruit and salad.

-- 48 million cans of soda pop.

-- 6 million bags of chips, pretzels and other snacks.

-- 3 million bottles of water.

-- Substantially higher volumes of ground beef, hot dogs, rolls and buns, candies, pastries, and -- of course -- antacids.

Complementing this year's supermarket rush will be heavy demand for home delivery by Internet retailers, according to the Albertsons study.

"We are receiving exceptionally heavy demand for Sunday e-commerce deliveries," said Charla Giles, area VP for the Albertsons district based in San Diego, site of Super Bowl XXXVII. "It seems that people just don't want to leave their homes this Sunday. At this time, we still can accept Internet orders for party trays and most other football fanatic favorites, but we urge all e-shoppers to place their orders by Saturday. The albertsons.com delivery fleet can handle only so many deliveries on a single day, although we have increased our delivery capability in anticipation of what might be our biggest e-commerce day of the year."

Giles said she has received similar reports from her fellow executives in West Coast states from the Mexican line to the Canadian border, where the albertsons.com e-commerce service is in operation.

Throughout the country, Albertsons has been conducting Super Bowl promotions for the past two weeks, offering prizes to the most frenetic local fan, most creatively dressed customer and associate, and the winners of Super Bowl trivia contests. In addition, radio stations in all of the Company's divisions have been broadcasting live from Albertsons stores and listeners have earned valuable grocery products as prizes in a wide range of on-air contests.
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