Consumers Sale Falls Through

Dave Montgomery, who planned to buy the 32,000-SF Consumers Food & Drug store in Bella Vista’s Sugar Creek Shopping Center, says the deal fell through when Fleming Inc., which owns Consumers, changed the terms of the agreement.

“They made me an offer, then wanted to change it, and I refused to change it,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery says he and Fleming were stalemated for three weeks before Fleming came back with a better offer. By May 14, sales at the Bella Vista store had dropped by about 25 percent, and Montgomery’s original offer was based on healthier sales at the store. He says sales dropped because Fleming had cut back on advertising in anticipation of selling the store.

Montgomery owns the 14,000-SF Montgomery’s IGA supermarket in Pea Ridge. In addition to Consumers, Harps Food Stores has a location in Bella Vista, and shoppers in that city are also near the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Bentonville.

“It’s unfortunate,” Montgomery says. “I was looking forward to being up there, but sales are so much lower it would be really tough.”

Based in Springfield, Mo., Consumers is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fleming of Oklahoma City. Fleming announced in February that it would close or sell its Consumers stores as part of a streamlining effort.

Annual earnings from Fleming’s food sales dropped to $259 million in 1998 from $283 million in 1997. Fleming’s food sales fell from $11.9 billion in 1997 to $11.5 billion in 1998 primarily because of “restructuring-related costs and lower sales,” the company says.

Fleming supplies groceries to Montgomery’s IGA.

The Bella Vista Consumers store was originally slated to be closed by the end of April.