Kroger to buy Albertsons?

[Ted$8roadFan]

Bananas at Kroger have been getting worse and worse.

Now that's just bananas.

That doesn't bode well for the merger, since the Albertsons & co. produce isn't all that great, either. 

[Big John]

sour grapes?

[hbelkins]

Bananas at Kroger have been getting worse and worse.

Now that's just bananas.

[ibthebigd]

I wonder if the blocking of Spirit Jet Blue is a sign of what will happen to Albertsons Kroger.

SM-G996U

[Bruce]

I'd love if this boomeranged into breaking up these megachains up into smaller chains. We need more options and variety.

[brad2971]

I wonder if the blocking of Spirit Jet Blue is a sign of what will happen to Albertsons Kroger.

SM-G996U

Could very likely start a trend. If the Kroger people (and Alaska Airlines, for that matter) think holding out for another Trump-led Federal Trade Commission can help them overcome the likes of the WA State Attorney General, they may want to think again. Some lessons were learned from the ATT-Time Warner merger (which Trump's FTC tried to block in court), and its eventual unraveling 2-3 years afterward that suggest 1990s and 2000s era merger mania won't be back for at least a generation.

[Big John]

FTC and more states filed a lawsuit to try to block the merger: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/26/1232948796/ftc-lawsuit-krogers-albertsons-grocery-merge

[Plutonic Panda]

Good. If anything we need to start a trend where the government forces larger companies to break up. I'm not usually one for government inference but when it comes to preventing monopolies I am for it.

[ClassicHasClass]

Yeah, this seems like a no-brainer. They keep using Walmart as the boogeyman to drive this merger but it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country. If Walmart got too big the correct answer is to break it up, not to make another kaiju grocery chain to battle it. Otherwise we'd wind up like Australia where grocery marketshare ends up carved up between the Big Two (Woolworths and Coles and their sub-brands) and a bunch of little also-rans (IGA, Aldi, other independent grocers), and prices there have risen and value has diminished as a result.

[kphoger]

... it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country.

I'm a typical American consumer, somewhere in the country.  How will this be bad for me?

[jakeroot]

If Walmart got too big the correct answer is to break it up, not to make another kaiju grocery chain to battle it.

This is one of the funniest analogies I've heard in a while. I completely agree with you, to be clear.

[ClassicHasClass]

... it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country.

I'm a typical American consumer, somewhere in the country.  How will this be bad for me?

Odds are for many, even most people that they've just reduced the number of grocery companies serving their local area to one (regardless of what the marquee out front says). You'll have the regional chains still around but this makes it much easier to outlast them with loss leaders and the like. I'm not sure how one could regard this as a neutral development, let alone a positive one.

Divestment isn't going to solve that problem sufficiently either. We all know what happened to Haggen.

[Scott5114]

Having been to an Albertsons for the first time in years recently, I'm not entirely sure that this would be an altogether bad thing. Albertsons is a ripoff, and I'm not really sure that Kroger could make it worse.

But...

... it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country.

I'm a typical American consumer, somewhere in the country.  How will this be bad for me?

Isn't the line the capitalists feed us is that the reason why the private sector is so great is because the consumer gets better outcomes because different businesses compete for their business? And that competition thus incentivizes innovation and increased efficiency, in order to compete more effectively?

- If you believe that, then wouldn't a lack of competition result in worse outcomes for the consumer because there's no incentive to improve?
- If you don't believe that, why shouldn't the resulting monopoly be controlled by the state, to ensure that the consumer has a voice in how it's run?

[Bruce]

Safeway used to have very reasonable prices for a non-discount supermarket. And then the Albertsons merger happened and both stores jacked up prices while also closing their "low performers" that happened to be in areas with certain demographics...a repeat with Kroger in the mix would be absolutely devastating.

[kkt]

The purpose of a merger is NOT to make things better for the customers.  Or the employees, or the suppliers.  It's to make things worse for everyone except the corporate stockholders and maybe some of the senior executives.

[jakeroot]

Safeway used to have very reasonable prices for a non-discount supermarket. And then the Albertsons merger happened and both stores jacked up prices while also closing their "low performers" that happened to be in areas with certain demographics...a repeat with Kroger in the mix would be absolutely devastating.

I'm personally just aware of the closings related to Haggen locations (such as the Albertsons at So. 38th and Pacific Ave (WA-7)), could you expand a bit on which locations closed in "certain demographic" areas?

When I lived in Tacoma, the closest Safeways were the two on So. M St (one at So. 38th, another at Earnest S Brazill St). From my personal experience attending UW-Tacoma, and living in the area for several years, I can attest to the high crime rate in these neighborhoods. Yet, neither ever closed.

There was a Safeway at 6th Ave, near WA-16, that closed in 2020. But there is nothing demographically interesting about that location, and it has since become a Winco Foods (perhaps a gain for the neighborhood in some respects).

[Brandon]

... it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country.

I'm a typical American consumer, somewhere in the country.  How will this be bad for me?

Not much that I can see.  Even in small towns here, they still would have to compete with Walmart, Hy-Vee, and a lot of independents.  The area the merger would affect most in Illinois is Chicago where you have the Albertson's-owned Jewel-Osco and the Kroger-owned Mariano's and Food4Less overlapping.  The deal has one of those being sold off to a third party.  But, then again, there's plenty of competition: Walmart, Meijer, Target, Tony's Fresh Market, Angelo Caputo's, Fresh Thyme, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Aldi, Pete's Fresh Market, among others.  Out of these, Aldi has been more aggressively expanding into rural areas as of late.

[SP Cook]

Fill in the blank:

The fact that one of the competing grocery stores in my town is or is not the same company as one of the competing grocery stores in a city 7 states away where I will never be and will never shop effects me because ______________________________ .

[Rothman]

Fill in the blank:

The fact that one of the competing grocery stores in my town is or is not the same company as one of the competing grocery stores in a city 7 states away where I will never be and will never shop effects me because ______________________________ .

How it effects someone is an interesting, existential question indeed.

[kphoger]

... it's not going to be good for the typical American consumer, anywhere in the country.

I'm a typical American consumer, somewhere in the country.  How will this be bad for me?

Odds are for many, even most people that they've just reduced the number of grocery companies serving their local area to one (regardless of what the marquee out front says). You'll have the regional chains still around but this makes it much easier to outlast them with loss leaders and the like. I'm not sure how one could regard this as a neutral development, let alone a positive one.

I'm not many people.  I'm not most people.  I am Kyle, and I am a typical American consumer in Wichita.

You said this wouldn't be good for the typical American consumer anywhere in the country.  Please explain how it will be bad for me.

[Brandon]

If you're concerned about the overlap between stores, here's a map their locations.



From the map, the biggest overlaps are in Chicago, the Front Range, some in the Pacific Northwest, and Los Angeles.  Wichita, for example, only has Kroger, but no Albertsons stores, therefore, it won't affect kphoger at all.  Rothman and SP Cook would also see no real change.  I, kkt, and Bruce would see store changes and sell-offs.

[epzik8]

So it sounds like this could cause Harris Teeter to disappear in Maryland and NoVA...

[Ted$8roadFan]

In Massachusetts, we have Albertsons-related stories (Shaw/Star), but no Kroger-owned stores that I know of. So the merger wouldn't have that much of an impact. I imagine that the merged company would have to sell a lot of stores in places where they do overlap as a condition of merging. At least they should.

[Scott5114]

I'm not many people.  I'm not most people.  I am Kyle, and I am a typical American consumer in Wichita.

You said this wouldn't be good for the typical American consumer anywhere in the country.  Please explain how it will be bad for me.

Wouldn't we need your entire grocery list and bank account balances to do that?

[Scott5114]

Fill in the blank:

The fact that one of the competing grocery stores in my town is or is not the same company as one of the competing grocery stores in a city 7 states away where I will never be and will never shop effects me because ______________________________ .

...to be a good person requires that I care about people besides myself.