"It's a constant re-evaluation of all the programs that we offer," Lee Ann Jorgenson, community relations manager for Cub Foods, told Finance & Commerce concerning the companies' parting of ways.
The promotion that began as a seasonal [image-nocss] business-builder in mid-2007, said the report. Over the 29-month life of the promotion, it produced more than $20 million in fuel discounts, according to signs that recently appeared at Cub stores. The promotion lasted 883 days. During that span, Cub Foods coupons reduced gasoline bills by an average of $22,650 a day at Holiday Stationstores.
But Cub will stop distributing cents-off coupons for Holiday after November 7, with the coupons expiring November 28, Jorgenson told the newspaper. She added, however, that Cub will continue its own Cub Fuel Express Stations program, which operates at nine company-owned gas stations, and did so even during the Cub-Holiday cross-promotion.
The Cub Fuel Express promotion offers a better deal than the Holiday Stationstores gasoline discount, the report said, because it applies on up to 15 gallons of fuel instead of the 12-gallon limit on the Cub-Holiday promotion. And customers can use up to five coupons for each visit to a Cub Fuel Express station compared with three in the soon-to-be-discontinued Holiday promotion.
Cub and Holiday are winding down their joint promotion at the same time that Holiday has ramped up gasoline-discount coupon offers with other grocery retailers and posted five-cents-per-gallon coupons for up to 25 gallons of gasoline on its website, www.holidaystationstores.com.
Most of the grocers through which Holiday has started offering discounts are in outstate Minnesota cities, said the report. They include Corborn's in six cities; Elden's Food Fair in Alexandria; Elmers Country Market in three northwest cities; Ely Northland Market in Ely; Daggett's Foods in Hinckley; and Teals Market in Cold Spring.
Holiday's gasoline coupon agreement with Cub originally offered just one coupon to be redeemed. Eventually, the program expanded to allow the use of up to three cents-off coupons on up to 12 gallons of gasoline at Holiday stations, the report said.
The promotion lasted far beyond its planned sunset on Labor Day of 2007, the newspaper said.
Holiday Stationstores has 300 corporately owned stores located throughout 12 states in the northern tier region of the United States: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington also in Alaska.
Stillwater, Minn.-based Cub Foods is a unit of Supervalu Inc., Minneapolis.
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