so the big guy is now buying Giant Eagle–how do you feel about that Ohio/Pennsylvania customers? Good or bad? Why?
Was Gwaihir consulted? 
In general I find Kroger better than average.
I don’t expect it’ll make much difference? A big grocery store is a big grocery store. Right now, there are a few things I buy there because I can’t get them at Aldi. I expect that will be true after this merger, too.
As is always the case with grocery stores, the history part of their Wikipedia page is aaze of twisty passages:
This is even more so than with most industries, I think, because of the back and forth with buying parts of each other.
Kroger is the biggest pure supermarket group in the US, Albertsons is the second biggest. Both of them have 20-25 different store brands. But Walmart, Amazon, and Costco all sell more groceries and I suspect their market share continues to increase. I was surprised to read that Aldi actually has the most stores in the US of any brand.
Does that include Trader Joes?
More than three times as many Aldi than TJs. 2700 vs 656.
I believe he’s referencing the fact that Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe’s.
Technically, Trader Joe’s is a sister company to one of the two Aldi companies (Aldi Nord); both companies have the same private ownership.
Aldi grocery stores in the U.S. are operated by a different company, Aldi Süd, which is closely allied with Aldi Nord (the two were originally started by two brothers), but legally and financially separate for the past 60 years.
And even without counting Trader Joe’s, Aldi still has the most stores in the U.S. The cite below shows the top 10 by number of stores; Aldi is #1 and Trader Joe’s is #7.
Source: 10 Largest grocery chains in the United States in 2026 | ScrapeHero
Kroger is losing ground to Walmart, Amazon, and Costco.
I stopped shopping at the local Kroger-owned chain years ago because I found their policies and practices to be more and more customer unfriendly to downright hostile.
Our local Giant Eagle was the store that bought out Topps, which had bought out Finast. We actually did have a Kroger here millions of years ago, before it was bought out by Acme and then shut down. Kroger/Acme was the main grocery store until Finast moved in.
I have no real opinion on the matter other than “cool, the Ohio company bought out the Pittsburgh company!”
Marketplace did a story about this back when the merger was first announced. The gist, if you don’t want to read the article, is that “traditional grocery stores” have been struggling for a while. They can’t compete with the big box stores like Walmart and Target on price. Meanwhile the well off shoppers who value quality and are willing to pay for it go to places like Whole Foods and Sprouts. So the traditional places like Safeway and Giant Eagle are losing ground from both ends of the market.
I can not see any real difference between any of the large chains- Kroger, Vons, Walmart, Target are all about the same for customer service.
Anecdote:
About 15 years ago, Roundy’s (a Wisconsin-based operator of grocery stores) opened a new chain in the Chicago area, Mariano’s (named after Bob Mariano, the then-CEO of Roundy’s, who formerly ran the defunct Dominick’s chain in Chicago). Mariano’s was just a little bit upscale, and had a number of nice touches: extensive made-in-store hot and ready-to-eat foods, a coffee bar and a wine bar, a big imported-foods section, a piano near the entrance (with a pianist playing during daytime and early-evening hours), etc.
The chain rapidly became very popular, and pulled a lot of sales away from Jewel, the longtime grocery leader in Chicago.
Then, Kroger bought Roundy’s in 2015, and gradually homogenized the Mariano’s chain, minimizing (or eliminating entirely) a lot of what had made Mariano’s popular in the first place. At this point, Mariano’s is essentially just a Kroger store with a different name.
Is customer service terrible at Mariano’s now? Not in my experience. But is it a lesser experience to shop there now than it was before it was Krogerized? Absolutely.
Yeah, we may have entered the lifecycle segment where a product/service on the downward path gets collected all under one company fighting a rearguard action.
The issue there seems to be that model was simply not profitable, $646 million in debt, and losing business due to high prices.
We had a similar chain in San Jose-
which expanded too fast and had to close several location, including Downtown San Jose. We often shopped there, but two issues- high prices, and they just failed at putting prices on stuff. Their meat dept was great.
There is a Kroger near me (1161 E Dayton Yellow Springs Rd, Fairborn, OH) that has a bar in the center of it, with around 10 beers on tap, along with wine. Can even walk around the store with it. 
And I’m impressed everyone in this thread is using the correct spelling. Lot’s of people say (and write) Kroger’s or Krogers, which is incorrect.