By FITSNEWS || Just before the Columbus Day holiday weekend began, regional grocery store chain Bi-Lo announced additional store closings in South Carolina – this time in the Upstate.
In addition to shuttered supermarkets in Cheraw and Bennettsville, S.C. (costing 130 jobs), the Jacksonville, Florida-based retailer said it is also closing stores in Greenville and Taylors, S.C.
Add all four closings together and 260 people will lose their jobs by November 19 … just in time for Thanksgiving.
Say it with us, everybody: “It’s a great day in South Carolina?”
According to Bi-Lo, the Greenville and Taylors stores simply weren’t generating enough revenue – yet another sign of the Palmetto State’s flagging consumer economy. Two years ago Bi-Lo moved its corporate headquarters from Greenville, S.C. to Jacksonville, Florida – taking hundreds of jobs with it.
Incidentally, Greenville County is currently contemplating a new sales tax hike … one which would raise taxes on groceries (contrary to public statements made by city council members).
We oppose such a tax hike on principle …
As we noted in our previous reporting on the Bi-Lo closings, South Carolina’s economic situation is not what S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley claims it is. It’s worse – much worse. In fact the state’s labor participation rate in August was 57.9 percent – the sixth-lowest rate in America.
That means only 57.9 percent of the state’s working age population is employed or actively looking for a job. Meanwhile the Palmetto State’s income levels rank 44th nationally.
Since taking office in 2011 Haley has celebrated plenty of government-subsidized “jobs” announcements, to be sure, but these bailouts (which don’t always pan out) come at a cost to individual taxpayers, small businesses and our state’s broader consumer economy.
Read more at https://www.fitsnews.com/2014/10/08/small-town-sc-job-losses/#KqzDhaFBPfzjrOCZ.99
74 comments
So a private equity firm buys BiLo and levers it up and it does not perform like they think and so this is a Haley problem??? Did they get government money??? Not sure why you are running this story.
He’s running the story because he is an economic illiterate.
He keeps doing it over and over and over again.
Because folks is on the rag. She-han os a joke and the paid and bought for tom earvin has 0 traction.
Wonder who bought and paid for Ervin, if anybody?The amount of money he is spending (over 4.1 million according to THE STATE) without raising any significant money and polling at 3% with ZERO chance of winning, is certainly intriguing and raises red flags to many astute political observers and ….?????
Liberaltarians have no clue to real life facts. If a company doesn’t perform, make money, it can’t stay in business. I have seen several grocery chains go belly up during my lifetime. I even worked for one of them.
This used to be a family operated grocery store chain that was loyal and dedicated to SC. I worked there when I was 16 (just 30 years ago) when they refused to open on Sundays and the big cow was on the roof of every store. This chain should be part of the retail history of SC but instead we let it move its whole operation.
Yep
Loyality used to mean something but not these days…………….
I bagged groceries at the Whitney Road Bi-Lo in Spartanburg back in 1969.
Still do most of our major grocery shopping at “Be-Lo” in the Spartanburg area but do like Publix for some stuff……………………….
Sadly, “FITS” fits right in to the way things are in this post industrial world of today.
Just remember one thing:
Tuesday is Soylent Green day!!!!!
At my out of town apt. BiLo one block away, Publix 2.5 blocks, Fresh Market 4 blocks and Ingles 1.5 miles.
At home Food Lion is 1mile, Publix is 1.5 mile, and Kroger is 1.6 mile.
We’re a Publix family, but I do like Ingles.
It’s funny how families are loyal to one grocery chain or the other.
I remember when there was ‘Community Cash” local chain in Spartanburg area and sold the BEST damn Pimetto Cheese (their own brand) you EVER tasted!!!!!
What I wouldn’t give for a tub of Community Cash Pimetto Cheese and 6 slices of wheat toast for 3 bodaceious ‘”minter” cheese ‘samiches”!!!!!
Hey SparkleCity, do you remember when the cow was stolen from that store?
Sorry pal but Bi-Lo had been bought and sold several times since the Outlaw family owned it. They took the money and ran the first chance they got – the cow be damned. It is funny to ride through the country and notice these old fiberglass cows sitting in people’s yards.
Like the post by “scooter” stealing the “Be-Lo” bull was something every frat boy had to do!!!!!!
Remember when they had a guard with a shotgun sitting inside the business booth where they would cashed paychecks?
True story = I remember in the news back in the mid-80’s some kid got shot off the store roof by the “Be-Lo” security guy while trying to steal the ‘steer”!!!
I’m fully aware that “Be-Lo” has been bought & sold a number of times. it was managed pretty good under the Dutch firm but since then the brand has suffered (just like most instances when companies are bought & sold = no real loyality and people working there are not as motivated as they once were)
Sadly that is the way of the future and the sooner we get vaporized by a 20 megaton nuke the better.
Leave it to the cockroaches and rats to rule over the smoking ruins (which is just another way of saying Mark “Shirker” Sanfraud & Queen Namrata)
Story of Piedmont Airlines in NC, all over again.
Yep, Piedmont was a well run family airline.
I flew with pilots who used to fly for Piedmont and they still talk fondly of those times. They all said the same thing – that it was like flying with family.
one time bi lo had good people working now they have the worst mangers in the business. like sumter store manger is stupid
Looks like the free market has spoken…
Since they joined up with winn dixie in fla. their prices have went up and up you can buy 2 liter pepsi at 7 eleven cheaper than at bilo,just compare their prices with the others and you will see why they are losing buisness.
That is the word in the upstate too. It is worth driving to an Ingles for the savings and they have cleaned up their stores immensely.
We shopped at a beautiful, well run Ingles in Waynesville,NC while on vacation in Maggie Valley. I can see every BiLo within a thirty mile radius of there closing.
At the rate I watch the managers chasing down thieving lowlifes at the Gamecock Bilo, I wouldn’t be surprised if that one hits the cutting room floor eventually. I love busting some piece of shit red handed shoving steaks down his pants in there. I’ve probably saved them a couple hundred dollars.
The cruds seem to love shoving those meats down their pants. While the meat packages are more or less “sealed”, I can’t help but wonder how many times someone buys a package of meat and gets a free side order of crabs, jock itch, or maybe herpes, from the crotch of a former “customer”.
I have a hilarious Whole Bone-in Smoked Ham story. Just think of 450lber thighs and a Moo-moo dress. Ankles the size of you thighs.
Did you get to put on gloves before recovering it?
:-D
Kind of like that Van Wilder scene in the beginning. Lets just say the ham hocks were on special that day.
Oh shit! That’s why I have always been a little suspicious of some things when they went “on sale”. When I was a kid, about elementary school age, I recall my grandmother telling about going to the local Colonial Store in my hometown. She said as she went down one aisle, a large bag of sugar had apparently fallen on the floor and burst open, spilling sugar everywhere. She said a boy who worked there was sweeping it up. She noted that a few minutes later, she happened by the same aisle and there was the bag of sugar with the hold plugged using masking tape, apparently full, marked down.
People who steal in that part of Columbia are hilariously bad at it. Had a drunk guy come in once at the store I used to work at and he had a huge pack of steaks sticking out of his loose, see-through button up shirt. The manager just grabbed the steaks as he slowly stumbled out the door. I’m not even sure the guy realized he didn’t have the steaks until he got to his car.
Lots of great stories, really.
The last shoplifter I busted there was a Predator headed black dude and his skanky white girlfriend with her baseball hat turnt sideways had their cart filled with crap snack food, sugary dranks and a about a hundred pounds of various meats. I walked by as Predator head was shoving a whole bunch of something into the cargo pockets of his shorts while his girl tried to look busy shopping. She smelled funky, like fish, but not fresh fish, like bait fish that had been left out all night. Guess he was trying to find something to plug that porthole to hell she calls a vagina.
Same with my 13 years with Winn-Dixie running the meat dept. One day day I caught 32 shoplifters in a little over 8 hrs while the VP was there in a bid for a actual security person. I would guess over years I sent an easy 1500+ out in the back of a car and never had a not guilty plea that I had to go to court on. I caught so many at one store the local PD pre-printed
my affidavits with my info to try to streamline the process. Lots of fights, lots of funny as hell stories.
I used to love shoplifting at our local Food Lion in high school. One Sunday (couldn’t buy beer on Sunday) we hid about 10 bottles of MD 20/20 in our raincoats.
Where is this store so I can avoid it. I don’t like to think my package of steaks may have been stuck inside some desperate man’s sweaty drawers.
The Gamecock Bilo is at the bottom of Devine just before it turns into Garners Ferry, Columbia
Man! South Carolina really sounds like a shit hole… I guess it’s the density of Republicans.
Yeh…that’s right…you just stay the hell away from our ugly beaches, our rude peoples, and our most inhospitable climate, especially those frigid Carolina winters…people just can’t wait to exit these backwoods Carolina hamlets and flee to such sophisticated and salubrious climes as Detroit and New York, where the denizens embrace newcomers with customary hospitality and epic generosity. ..
…and atomic waste.
I think thats what your mother birthed.
It’s what they’re currently injecting into John Kerry’s deflated football face, in an attempt to make it half-way symmetrical.
Oh you do, do you?
And did you come to that conclusion all by yourself, or did you get help?
No the retarded guy your mom bribed with cookies and superman comics to fuck her told me.
You’ve certainly reached *your* potential, haven’t you?
No I want be just like you. I want to comment on every article Will posts.
Might as well set your sights high. Even if you have nothing to say, say it anyway.
Ever hear of a comma?
Last time I checked there are five interstate hwys. leaving SC. Dims are welcome to use the nearest one leaving. Pitty there aren’t doors to hit them with as they go.
Hey Douche Max. The state does suck. Keep your liberal bed wetting ass out of here.
bed wetting? I don’t think you’ve been paying attention to the stink of fear among your dimwitted cousins.
The Republicans pissed themselves so thoroughly on 9/11, they won’t even get on the plane unless everyone smells each other’s feet first.
Surely you remember 10 years ago.
The brilliant minds whose solution to terrorist nuclear dirty bombs was a roll of duct tape and plastic canvas drop?
The guys who attacked a country thousands of miles away from the origin of the attack to torture and kill people to tell you where WMD that didn’t exist was being stashed?
The chihuahuas pissing themselves with bug-eyed shivers at the prospect of a few vegetarian camel jockeys with knives who train on a jungle jim defeating the combined military might of the United States?
Is it all coming back to you now? Sure it is, because you want to send our children back into that hell hole for some crazy notion that it will “make you safer.”
How did all that shooting at shadows work out for you the first time, Barney?
Columbia is a ass backwards shithole, been run into the ground by back to back democrats for the last 25 years. Greenville, constantly making “best places to live” lists, been under Knox White’s watch for nearly 20 years. Oh, and he’s a republican. Funny how that works.
Democrats? You mean the ones that fought the Republicans over secession? The losers who bumbled the war of Northern Aggression, and then got down on their knees and prayed to Republican carpet baggers for federal money?
The scum who owned plantations with shacks for slaves, that chased down human chattel and hung them for daring to escape?
Those Democrats? The spineless cowards of the Southern Confederacy?
That’s what happens when you let Republicans run things. And Sic Willie wants to double down on the Republican-ness.
Friends we have Walmart to thank for this. Yes, walmart–that company who is cutting hours for over 30,000 p/t employees bc they don’t want to pay for health benefits. Greed is a sad thing. How many more billions do they need to have enough?
Haley’s ass is still going to jail. Sorry. #jussayin
I hate to see employees displaced and out in the streets, but part of me cannot help but gloat that Bi Lo is on hard times after they bought and closed my Piggly Wiggly last year. A lot of good people were put out of work in that move. They told me that they were told they could apply with Bi Lo but that there was no guarantee they would get hired. So much for years of loyal work on behalf of the store they were in, huh?
Over a year later, the store still sits vacant. Why did Bi Lo buy it if they weren’t going to use it? Unfortunately, it will be the Bi Lo employees who suffer, not the CEO’s and other greed mongering ass holes.
It’s always best for these companies to fire rather than relocate when they close locations. Out of work, competing with former coworkers begging for their jobs back, makes it real easy to get you to agree to doing the same stuff for less money.
Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Solyndra, GM….how many companies have gone bankrupt under Democrat rule?
Less than under the last GOP administration. And how many jobs got outsourced under the last GOP administration. Who ya gonna call? Punjab Pete – Oh Yeah!!!!
Shup up you F*#king idiot. It’s been SIX years of Obama’s undeniable Disaster. You look like a F*#king Dumb@$$ blaming everybody else, except to the Dumb@$$#$, like you, who put that D*#n fool in office.
So, you’re saying that the Republicans fuck us over so bad that not even a Democrat could fix it after six years?
SC Politico Disgust – he like it for six years before Bush mess it up, and for the last six years after. He like it when the Republican’s $#$% up the #$$, and he like to call everyone a dumb@$$, cuz that’s what his Mama call him. Obama such a disaster that outside SC – people’s got jobs. Unemployment down to 5.8%, foreclosures coming down, people getting healthy care. SC Politico like Harrell – don’t like when others get stuff he want for free.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that at all. My lord God Obama is the best president the United States ever had. I voted for him both times and am grateful to heaven above that he won both times.
Now you catchin’ it. Right on bro!!!!
So free market principals work, ie consumers choose to take their money to other stores and somehow that’s a sign of a poor economy? You need to get out in the real world. Also, labor participation is anyone over 16 years of age, not just “working age.” Getting wrapped up in that idiotic number is, well, idiotic. SC’s economy is on a tear, look around, stop playing games and get to work.
Yeah its nikki haley’s fault. How much of an asshole can Will be. Fact is Wal-Mart. Is locking up the low end grocery market. Bi lo sucked anyway. Public is a making a major push in the state. Is it that to nikki’s credit. Of course not.
She could have offered Bi-Lo state money to stay in the State. I guess she only wants to do that for big companies like Boeing. Not home-grown companies. Typical.
She could have offered Bi-Lo state money to stay in the State. I guess she only wants to do that for big companies like Boeing. Not home-grown companies. Typical.
There are about 6 supermarkets here in the Pawleys Island area. No wonder the weakest are closing. We do not need them almost side by side.
Didn’t hear this much about Piggly Wiggly’s closings or Food Lion’s retrenchments, must be a slow newts day. BTW is Slow Newts Day celebrated in SC, if so is it one of the optional “It’s a grate day in South Carolina” like President’s Day, MLK and Confederate Memorial Day?
The one in Taylors is empty all the time. Aldi put a store across the street from it and Wallmart started selling groceries next door to it. It would be wise to close that one.
The plaza that connects to it looks janky as well.
Another example of Jacksonville spanking around South Carolina. First it was the port, then the Navy, then the port again, now Bi-Lo. As for labor participation rate, why work for minimum wage in the rural South Carolina when you can make more money selling meth, and still get your food stamps.
Winn Dixie has been going downhill without missing a beat for years, then they decided to take Bi-Lo down with them.
JaxPort is well behind Charleston and just about all the East Coast ports by any measure. Jax lost a base just like Charleston did.
My cousin say they still have ships there and Navy sending more. We don’t.
There are still two bases there, but one (Cecil) was closed years ago. Charleston only had one Navy base to begin with which is now gone.
Don’t they have a sub base too in their MSA? Plus they got that World Golf Village and the PGA. But I hear their schools are almost as bad as South Carolina – at least in Jacksonville.
I guess Bilo had to close a few of their stores to pay for buying out and closing some others…like Reid’s and piggly wiggly un Cayce. This leaves only Bilo in the area!
Walmart FTW!
They could probably retain revenues if their customer service wasn’t so piss poor. I used to go there after work (until they started closing at 11pm) and I would often have to bag my own groceries. One night a new cashier was gracious enough to summon a bagger over to help out, and the guy just chastised the cashier in front of everybody in line.