Albertsons owner to buy Safeway

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Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, owner of the Albertsons grocery chain, agreed to buy Safeway for more than $9 billion.

In the 1980s, Safeway was the target of a hostile takeover which they thwarted by the poison pill tactic of taking on a huge amount of debt. The move made them unattractive but was a millstone around the corporation's neck.

If you read the list of grocery stores controled by Cerberus, it is quite extensive. Have your cookie ready as you enter his domain.

www.nbcnews.com

Albertsons Owner to Buy Safeway for More than $9 Billion

<p>Cerberus Capital Management offered $40 per share for Safeway, with the deal expected to close by the end of the year.</p>
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
Albertson's & Ssfeway are two grocery store chains that couldn't make it in Houston and left after only a few years. The market here is very competitive and people are not going to pay convenience store pricing for store house brands.

Plus Safeway ruined Dominick's in Chicago just like they ruined Randall's in Houston.
Both were leading grocers before Safeway got their hands on them.
 
Albertson's came into our grocery market very strong 20 years ago or so opening a bunch of stores in a relatively short time.  They were always considered to be higher priced than local chains and never thrived.  They're all gone now, selling out to a local store chain (Bakers) that is now owned by the Kroger Co.

 

Alberston's was a Mormon-owned company, I've always wondered what their "politics" are like, though it matters little in this market now.

 

We shopped at Safeway for many years until a Bakers store opened near us.  Safeway was gone by the early-80's, selling off their stores to the then latest trend of "bag-it-yourself-and-save" marketing innovations.  I still remember the store brands at Safeway, they had some very good products.
 
I am sorry to see Safeway purchased by this company... I doubt they are considering much other than the quick restructuring buck. We have all seen what that can do to a good company. The Safeways that I shop at here are all very good, one of the few stores that has competitive prices when you use their club card sales (and much less than the higher end stores) but with much better customer service than the low end stores.
 
Albertson's, Osco, Jewell, Safeway all failed in our market. Dillon's (Kroger) bought them out and closed their stores down.

We always liked Safeway the best of the bunch, their stores were clean, well stocked, and staff were your neighbors.

The Safeway stores became Food Barn, which were dirty, cockroach infested, and poor quality produce items. (Failed)

Albertson's was fined for mixing pork with their ground beef, selling the Vietnamese fish as catfish, and their stores were dirty, overpriced and stinky.

Osco/Jewell were mostly here in the pharmacy, variety store. They were very clean well stocked stores but had stiff competition from the Walgreens, CVA, and Walmarts.

Cerberus is known for gutting a company and selling off the carcass, guess they still had something to offer in that respect. Won't effect our market now were we have Dillons, Target, Aldi and Walmart. There are still a few independent IGAs around but only in outlying communities.
 
Safeway is the third largest employer in the SF Bay Area, partly due to its being headquartered in Pleasanton.  It had been headquartered in Oakland, housed in the old brick former Columbia Records factory (78 RPM) for many years before that. 

 

I've always been lukewarm about Safeway.  Sometimes their produce really sucks, and it's often overpriced.  I find the "Club Card" annoying, but the savings are worth it.  Often if what I'm looking for doesn't offer a Club Card discounted brand I won't buy it.  Without the discount, the prices are as high as a specialty supermarket such as Lunardi's or Draeger's. 

 

Where we used to live, we had options galore for grocery shopping, none more than a mile from home:  Nob Hill (owned by Raley's), Lunardi's and Whole Foods in one direction, Safeway in another,  Lucky (which became Albertons, which later reverted back to Lucky) and another Nob Hill in a different direction, and in later years, closest of all, Trader Joe's.

 

Where we live now, no matter which direction we go, the closest supermarket is a Safeway.  I wouldn't mind some competition, but I don't think we'll get any out of this merger.

 

There's a clause in the merger agreement that allows Safeway to continue to seek other offers, and Kroger has shown strong interest.  I'm not so sure a Kroger deal would be better.  They're already the nation's largest grocery chain.
 
Hmmm . . .

I don't really care much who owns Safeway as there are none in my area but there are a few Albertson's. The latter is funny, they are well distributed around SoCal so have to have all the warehouses and deliveries of a large chain but they're really not a large player at all in comparison to Ralph's and Von's. In some areas they have very competitive, well kept stores but in other areas they've seemingly given up and the stores are smaller and not so well kept, which lead to the announcement a few months ago that Albertson's would close a significant number of SoCal stores.

 

Given the intense competition for grocery stores here and razor-thin profit margins many of us are wondering if they'll eventually give up and close. I hope not because Ralph's and Von's need some mainstream competition. I'm lucky because there are both a Ralph's and a Von's within a ten minute walk of where I live so I rarely go to Albertson's, but I'd gently suggest to Cerebus to not let Albertson's manage Safeway.
 
I thought Von's was owned by Safeway.  Maybe that's a thing of the past.

 

I agree that it won't be an improvement if Safeway becomes a re-badged Albertson's.

 

One thing Safeway did back in the '90s, and I'm sure it was due to pressure preservationist groups put on the city, was a re-working of a towering neon sign that stood on property Safeway intended to re-develop, a portion of which was originally occupied by '60s vintage, dome shaped Futurama Bowl.

 

Here's a picture of the finished product:

rp2813++3-7-2014-11-23-35.jpg
 
Gorgeous Sign!

You're right, it took a minute to find on the Von's website but they are owned by Safeway. I knew they had some Safeway branded products but didn't know if this indicated common ownership or just a marriage of convenience since we have no Safeways and some of this stuff may be produced locally for sale throughout the state.

 

I do hope this doesn't mean the end of Albertson's here, if so the only real competition for Ralph's and Von's will be boutique stores like Trader Joe's and Gelson's or ethnic markets like Vallarta and 99 Ranch Market. I don't think we have any 99 Ranch Markets in the San Fernando Valley but there are plenty in the southern San Gabriel Valley which is heavily Chinese, it's always a good place to get Tsingtao beer on sale. Lots of Vallartas around, these are good for produce but overall for my use you can't beat a good big standard supermarket.
 
I'm finding it ironic...

That Safeway is now owned by their former arch-competitor in Chicago, Jewel. Or I should say, owned by Jewel's parent...

*Jewel's and Dominick's (if we use the correct Chicago S at the end of everything) were arch-rivals in the grocery scene in Chicago for many moons. Jewel sure took a new look at their old friend Dominick's locations.. and bought some.*

(Jewel used the slogan "take a new look at old friend, Jewel" for years.)
 
Well Ralph,

If it's bargains you're a shoppin for, there's always Zonotto's over on Naglee. When my mom was ill and I was living in one of my late uncle's homes around the corner on Shasta Ave I would occasionally shop there. Although they had a limited selection, prices for staple items were about double as compared with a supermarket. Years ago they caught old lady Zonotto with her thumb on the scale, but I'm sure she's gone now. There were a lot of great markets in San Jose just a few years ago. Is PW gone now too? I think that bowling pin at Futurama Lanes did in fact spin around.

PS...I recently found out I'm now part owner of that little Spanish Revival home on Shasta along with 12 other properties in San Jose. Maybe I'll move back, the awful desert heat is a comin :-)

twintubdexter++3-7-2014-14-25-16.jpg
 
Joe, I intentionally omitted Zanotto's (which due to decades of conditioning I still tend to refer to as "De Luxe") from the list above.  I only shop there when I need to pick up just a few items that aren't worth the bother of the tight Safeway parking situation and the often long lines at the check stand.   Zanotto's is always a quick run.  And oh yes, they are thieves when it comes to pricing on almost everything, but I don't know where else you can buy Marianne's Ice Cream from Santa Cruz other than at Zanotto's.

 

Locally owned PW Markets closed up shop a couple of years ago.  They just couldn't compete anymore.  I used to go there once in a while, and when my mom was still in her house, she'd send me there to do her weekly shopping most of the time.  Their newer big stores were really nice.

 

Shasta Avenue is one of my favorite streets in the neighborhood and it hasn't changed much over the years.  Come on back!

 

 
 
If Kroger....

....Is on a buying spree, I wish they'd buy the Hy-Vee closest to me at Crossroads.

A store Winn-Dixie would be ashamed of, charging Publix prices.

I don't know much about Hy-Vee in other cities, but the ones here - well, I would hesitate to post full expression of my opinion of them in the DL forum. I can get out of the two University Avenue stores, the Logan Avenue store and the new one on Ansborough with most of the enamel on my teeth intact, even if I'm never really pleased. But the one at Crossroads is a pit.
 
Safeway is Von's

Safeway also owns Pavilions, if that hasn't already been mentioned.

My very first job was at Safeway. I worked in the bottle room counting containers and issuing deposit slips, back before the automatic machines existed. It was horrible.

We have two Safeways, a Whole Foods, a Fred Meyer (Kroger), a Zupan's, and a Trader Joe's all within walking distance of the house. Most of what we buy, however, comes from Safeway or Whole Foods, plus sometimes Trader Joe's. Safeway's pricing is nothing special, but in this market they are less expensive than Albertson's, which for years has seemed unusually expensive when compared to their competition. I'm not sure how their stores here stay open. Perhaps the customers who shop in their stores do so out of convenience more than anything else.
 
Harris Teeter.... I believe that Kroger bought Harris Teeter, a slightly upscale supermarket chain that has a few stores the Washington area.

My fear, though, with these venture capital type firms buying a company like Safeway, they will be all about 'maximizing shareholder value' by 'unlocking and monetizing assets', meaning they could care less about selling groceries, it's all about stripping profitable assets out of the company and leaving a company carcass on the curb... I hope the store can make it through this, and I hope its employees don't get screwed in the process.
 

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