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LARGO - Groceries are groceries. You can sell them cheap. You can sell them by offering wide selection and helpful clerks. Or you can sell them with theatrics.
Mark S. Skaggs hopes customers will see all the above when he raises the curtain Thursday on the first Jewel Osco store in Florida, at Largo Mall.
The 35-year-old son of L. S. Skaggs, chairman of the nation's largest grocery chain, American Stores Inc., Skaggs spent two years cooking up the chain's prototype store for Florida - and possibly the nation.
Skaggs has assembled a slick $15-million selling machine with all the latest bells and whistles.
American's entry in the bay area's grocery store derby is the direct opposite of newcomer Food Lion Inc. that hypes low prices.
Skaggs will offer competitive prices, but not the lowest. He wants to ``out-Publix Publix`` in service. And he's gone heavy on neon and gimmicks in creating the Tampa Bay area's glitziest grocery mart. Two other stores will appear in north Pinellas and New Port Richey this year. A Tampa store is planned for next year.
At 75,000 square feet and jammed with almost 80,000 items, Jewel Osco is the largest combination grocery-drugstore in the state. It is almost twice the size of an Albertsons.
It's also a gamble. To succeed, it must draw twice the customers of its competitors, and they will have to be persuaded to spend more - say, $20 rather than $15, the industry average.
Analysts question why American Stores - which passed up buying the Tampa-based Kash...