Kroger to aquire Albertson's

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vacerator

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for $24.6 BILLION U.S.D. Isn't Albertsons the largest chain out west? Kroger already owns so much nationwide! I feel this is a monopoly in the works.
Kroger hasn't been union friendly since 1980, and labor costs have never been lower.
Old contract people have retired.
Well, perhaps the work force can levergae better contracts with less competition. The UFCW may also merge with the SEIU.
No more 13 year olds working in hotels, or parts plants down south!!!!
The department of labor has caught a Kia/Hyundai supplier in Alabama doing it. SL injection molding LLC. They also have plants in Tennesee and Michigan.
 
Its strange

I didnt know Albertsons was still in business and havent seen a Kroger in years, neither , I have seen Krogers in the past but never a Albertsons.
 
Safeway

Albertsons owns Safeway and there are lots of Safeways in California. Safeway used to be medium priced but now Safeway is more expensive than Raley's. I usually go to Walmart or Winco Foods for groceries. Save a dollar or more on almost every item. Of course the Raley's is more pleasant overall. But I don't mind going in with the masses to shop. Cruddy but cheaper.
 
I’ve never liked Albertsons supermarkets. I used to shop at Safeway, for over 40 years. When Albertsons bought out Safeway about 12 or so years ago Safeway began to go downhill soon after. They started to carry less variety in the products they sold. And frequently the shelves weren’t stocked with brands I liked to buy. After about 5-6 years of hoping that Safeway would eventually return to the quality store I’d been used to shopping at I finally just stopped trading there. It was a hard change for me to make because I really liked many of the staff at my local Safeway, I was on a first name basis with many of them.

I switched to Target for my weekly grocery shopping and for the most part have been pleased. There is less variety, but Target’s store brands are superior across the board. However, now Target is also beginning to frequently be out of items I like to purchase, or they just stop carrying them altogether. I believe that this may be the new corporate approach to cost cutting.

Gone are the days when I could walk into just about any supermarket and find exactly what I was looking for. Retailers just don’t seem to care since they are still raking in the dough buy price gouging customers that have become accustomed to settling for substitutions because they can’t buy just what they want.

The customer is no longer king and mergers like this are a large part of the reason for this.

Eddie
 
We used to have Shaws here in CT but they pulled out several years ago. I did most of my shopping there. They had the best international foods aisle ever. I used to buy frozen veggies from Holland that I steamed and they tasted like fresh picked. Plus they had jarred soups from Italy you just heated and ate that tasted just like home made and had little salt or chemicals.
 
I've only been in one Albertson's, and that was the Brandon/Flowood, MS location. It was sometime in the late 90's when my Aunt Doris and I stopped in. When I was visiting her a few years later, we went back to that location, but it was a Brookshire's by then. The last time I was there (2013}, it had become a Kroger.
 
Interesting about Shaws/Star. Sometime in the 90's, Shaws made a half hearted attempt to enter the Southern Connecticut market. I say half hearted because they mostly just took over abandoned Grand Union and Finast/Edwards stores, and just slapped their nameplate on the store - no clean up or capital improvement and those stores were in rough shape when they acquired them. They did construct two new stores from the ground up, one in Bridgeport and one in Shelton. Both of those were always clean and well stocked and I would often shop in the Bridgeport store bypassing the one in my town. And while they had better pricing and specials than Stop & Shop (which really was their only competition at the time), the stores in Fairfield, Westport, Stratford, Orange and Darien were the most unpleasant. Not very clean and poorly maintained/stocked. Ultimately, by around 2008 or so, they exited our area with some of their stores going to Stop & Shop and others giving Shop Rite a local foothold. Also, by then, Big Y (based in Massachusetts) was starting to sniff around the area and began opening stores. And the former Bridgeport Shaw's store became a Food Bazaar - part of a small group of markets catering to the many ethnic groups in the area with a stunning array of unusual produce and large selections of all sorts of products from different countries, but sketchy pricing - usually 30% more than Stop & Shop and Shop Rite on basic items like detergent, boxed goods, etc.

Also, we are finally getting a Wegman's sometime in 2023 in Norwalk. For years, Connecticut has been surrounded by them (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts) but none within at least a 60 mile radius. They were able to secure a large parcel of land which was an office complex and will demolish the existing buildings to build the store and provide sufficient parking. Not a lot of land left (if any at all) like that here in Fairfield County. It will be interesting to see the impact on other local stores.

I don't think Albertsons will open any of its stores here again. For one thing, while we do have other markets, Stop & Shop is the dominant chain and isn't going anywhere and there just isn't readily available land to construct the size stores that are so common today, along with sufficient parking. But who knows???
 
Safeway absolutely ruined Dominick's here in Chicago - ran it into the ground. Kroger has now purchased it's replacement (more or less replacement anyway) Mariano's and it has gone massively downhill since that.

Luckily we have a fair number of local or regional chains, such as Caputo's, Pete's and Woodman's which are either better or cheaper. Particularly on produce, where both Mariano's and Jewel been shrinking the size and quality of their produce departments.

Hopefully this gets blocked on anti-trust grounds....
 
Did a little research and found out that apparently several local branded markets are already part of Albertsons/Kroger, so my statement that Albertsons won't be in Connecticut was kind of off base.
First off, there is a New Jersey based group of markets, known as King's which has been part of Albertsons for a few years. I may not be totally on point here, but my recollection is that King's was originally established as a US division of the British Marks & Spencer. Most of their stores are in New Jersey, but there is one each in Garden City, NY (Long Island) and Old Greenwich, CT. King's isn't as large as a regular supermarket and was considered more high end than the average stores. But they declared bankruptcy in 2020, closed several New Jersey stores and was acquired by Albertson's.

Then we have ACME. - which was a long established mid Atlantic chain centered mostly in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area. I think also that ACME at one point acquired the New Jersey Foodtown stores. In Connecticut, they took over several former A&P Super Fresh stores in Stamford, Greenwich, Riverside and New Canaan. Apparently somewhere along the line ACME was acquired.

Finally we have Balducci's, which is more of a high end specialty market, though they do carry a small selection of normal household items. There are only two of those left in Connecticut (Westport and Riverside) and originally were part of a small group operating as Hay Day Markets. Hay Day was acquired some years back by Washington, DC based Sutton Place Gourmet Markets and then through a series of acquisitions and mergers, renamed Balducci's and became part of the King's market group. The original Balducci's was a single family owned gourmet store on the corner of Manhattan's 6th Avenue and West 9th Street in Greenwich Village. It was one of those places that carried very unusual high end things you couldn't get anywhere else and was such an attraction that on Saturdays, you simply couldn't move anywhere in the store. Unfortunately I don't recall all of the transactions leading up to how and when the original location closed and how many other acquisitions and name changes happened throughout the all the corporate changes, just how it impacted my local Connecticut area. There is, I believe, still a small Balducci's operating somewhere near Lincoln Center, but not sure about any other locations in the NY area. I also recall that there was so much in-fighting in the Balducci family that a faction split off and established a competing store on the upper east side known as Grace's Marketplace (a branch in Glen Cove, Long Island was also established) - not sure if that nameplate is now part of a larger corporate group. I will admit to occasionally using Balducci's for their impeccable meat and some produce like berries, peaches or anything I can't find in other stores. Otherwise, their pricing is insane on most other grocery items but I am always amazed at how many times I see people with loaded carts buying their weekly groceries there. Westport is Westport after all...

So the moral of this story is that I guess Albertson's is everywhere whether we realize it or not...
 
I work for Kings as a catering manager (11 years now) . We were a small NJ owned chain that also owned Balducci's. Our executive team had some pretty lofty goals through the years and kept borrowing money and spending it on remodels and new properties. The company was sold a couple times, with the last sale seeming kind of shady to an investment firm from Qatar. Even though we made it through the Covid, the company defaulted on the loans and declared bankruptcy. We were purchased by ACME as part of the Mid Atlantic group of Albertsons. They had to close 5 Kings and 6 Balduccis leaving 19 Kings and 8 Balducci's
The conversion to Acme/Albertsons has been rough and has left a bad taste in my mouth for the company. The do not do catering as we do it and don't understand it and are pretty unwilling to adapt. Just part of big corpation now.
Even though it's 2 years away before anything happens, I don't think I have the strength to go through it again and can only imagine was being part of an even larger corporation will be like,
 
I live out in the Mountain West in the city that is home to Albertsons corporate office. Albertson's has some great super stores with infinite wine selections, but their grocery prices are highest in the area, with Kroger (Fred Meyer) being a close second. Most of the Albertsons regular stores are dated, not very clean, have poor selections, but the best seafood in the area. I actually have to go to WinCo (best prices) and Fred Meyer and Albertsons to get all the items I need. I stopped going to Walmart after I witnessed a white trash couple (not poor) get into a physical domestic fight in the nut aisle. This was complete with screaming obscenities at each other in front of their three children.(and the nearby customers) By the time store security showed up, the cops had already arrived.
 
Oh Geez!

I'm glad I'm pensioned. I was vested since 1986, and I really feel for those still working in the industry.
Our parent company A&P began closing stores when Walmart entered the local markets.
End game there with the "farm wage" many called it. One Hostess route delivery guy I knew called Walmart the devil.
I had an opportunity to work for Spartan, which aquired a local small chain VG's, which was founded by the Van Gilder family who started with us at"Farmer Jack"before we were bought by A&P. They closed up the VG's stores and merged with Nash Hudson out of Jackson Michigan, so I'm glad I didn't go there.
I just hope this nation doesn't lose the inflation relief act passed recently, becaue that would mean tax hikes for individuals and small businesses below the $200,000.00 net, and tax cuts for corporations.
 

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