Save A Lot wants to take the grocery industry by storm.

According to Grocery Dive.

Save A Lot is planned to hit the ground running in 2025 after a year of readying key initiatives, according to a recent interview with Save A Lot's chief operating officer, Bill Mayo.

In the past year, Save A Lot announced the launch of its first ever loyalty program, debuted a micro fulfillment center in New York City, and opened a Hispanic grocery store concept.

All initiatives that Mayo said will catapult the discounter's growth in 2025.

Save A Lot, which is out of St.

Ann, Missouri, for those of you that may be unfamiliar, currently operates approximately 800 stores across 32 states and said back at NRF 2024 that it has designs on growing its store count to over 3,000 locations at some point.

And I'm curious, where does Save A Lot rank on your unofficial retailers to watch list?

The unofficial and mazinga retailers to watch list of 2025.

Well, I have to say hi.

Tractor Supply is one that I've got on my list this year, but Save A Lot is the next one that I feel like I'm going to be.

Well, and Aldi, I think.

Aldi, yeah, those are, those are my top, top three right now in 2025.

And as an aside, can we just say that Bill Mayo is one of the perfectly named CEOs for someone in the grocery industry I just love?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I'm Bill Mayo and I'm the CEO of a grocery store.

Perfect.

That's pretty good.

But no, I think, I think I'm, I think there's a lot of momentum behind Save A Lot right now.

You know, he came in, there was definitely some low hanging fruit.

The creation and expansion of a loyalty program, number one, huge.

Getting them into retail media, number two, being another big thing.

But I, I really think that with the support of this, I mean, he's an innovative Wake Fern Bread leader.

He's going to take this brand and just explode with it for the year ahead.

We talked about expanding 800 stores to 3,000 stores in the next few years.

The movement into the micro fulfillment centers, which you and I got to go see the fabric in Brooklyn.

Like it makes it easier to expand the brand online and offline to introduce new people to brands where there aren't bricks and mortar locations and especially in the convenience and Hispanic grocery spaces too.

Like, talk about categories that are also getting much bigger.

Like being able to serve that need, I think is going to be another.

Like they've just, they've got all the legs of the stool going to really help them take off this year.

And then the last point is you have all this data now.

Now I think that's going to be a new, a new muscle for Save a Lot because they haven't had this much data about their consumers through loyalty programs, through, you know, the partnerships with things like, you know, the fabric MFC and getting new customers in those areas.

So that will be something that they'll have to really sure that they invest in.

But if they can do that, which it seems like they can with Bell Mayo's leadership, they, they are going to be one to watch this year.

But where do you rank them?

Well, hold the Mayo and I don't know, like, I, I, yeah, I pretty much 100% agree.

Okay, 100% agree with you.

So, I mean, you know, for all the same reasons, I, I would add sprouts into that list too, you know, and, and like Aldi, like we already discussed in this, in this episode, because unlike others, they have room to grow, right?

Yes.

You know, they have a prototype that can potentially scale or they're discovering what that is and they still have opportunity to deploy it.

So, and, and then they're doing other cool things.

Like you mentioned the Brooklyn facility we saw.

I mean, that's a, it's a ball.

The thing I give them credit for, it is a 100% ballsy move.

I mean, I don't think ballsy could be more attributed to any move in the history of retail than a St.

Ann, Missouri retailer entering New York City with no presence and seemingly seeing a flood of orders.

Regular coming regularly coming in through Uber Eats.

We were there, we were watching the Uber drivers come in.

They're like, oh my God, what is going on here?

Yeah, that's just With Uber Eats, imagine if they got on the other delivery platforms too.

So your, your, your volume is going to scale without any extra investment ultimately at the end of the day.

So.

And if that model works, you could scale that to any major city that you want to where you don't already have a presence.

So, yeah, I mean, the last thing I'll say.

Side note, I don't think I told you this.

I actually extended Mr.

Bill Mayo an open invitation over this past weekend to join us for a five insightful minutes whenever he is available.

I just gave him an open invitation and hope he takes, I hope he takes us up on it at some point because we would love to talk to him.

I know, I know you would and I would.

Yeah, he got back to me.

He said.

Yeah, thanks.

I'll let you know.

So you have a direct line to Mr.

Mayo?

Yes, I do.

Yeah, yeah.

No, we've been.

So he hasn't come admitted yet, so I'm kind of trying to turn the screws on him a little bit.

Say, come on, Bill, we want to talk to you and learn more about this, because it sounds really cool.