The smash and grab of Kroger-Albertsons
I heard about this the other day. I can't express how much I dread it.<p>Folks get invested in their local grocery stores, we do at least.<p>And we were neck deep in the last merger with Safeway, since it destroyed the store that we went to.<p>Albertsons bought Safeway, but as part of the deal, they had to sell off some of the stores (which made sense, our store, Vons, was right across the street from the local Albertsons store). Somehow, Hagans (a small northwest chain) got roped in to sell the extra stores too. Hagans "overnight" grew from, like, 12 stores to over 200.<p>Shockingly, the transition did not go well, there were cries of shenanigans, and Albertsons ended up buying all of the stores back. Some of the local stores that closed due to the merger reopened, other's didn't.<p>Our store never reopened. In over 8 years, that space and sat empty in the downtown area. My mustache twisting cynicism tells me that Albertsons is keeping the lease on that space, and keeping it empty, to prevent an Aldi from renting it out and setting up shop right across the street.<p>Didn't help, turns out one is moving in down the street after renovating a closed hardware store. Maybe they'll give the space up now.<p>That merger was a mess, caused a lot of disruption, cost a bunch of jobs.<p>We shop at Albertsons, there's a Ralphs (Kroger) closer, but we like Albertsons better. With 3 years of COVID induced "new normal", I'm not looking forward to the collateral damage from a merger like this.