They became Marshall Fields.
Yep, but Target just sold them off too. I believe to Macy’s.
Mervyn’s all got closed down last year.
Maybe Mervyn’s stores closed where you are, but they are still open elsewhere.
Whenever you want to find out who owns whom, the cheapest reliable way to find out is to go to the website and see if it has a link labeled “investor relations.” Once you’re at the investor relations website, you can view the company’s annual report, which will tell you about the company’s business - including corprate affiliates, subsidiaries, etc.
Unfortunately, this technique only works part of the time. Privately owned businesses (as opposed to those that list shares on stock exchanges) are under no obligation to reveal anything about their corporate structure. And even public companies can make life difficult. For example, the Hollister website has no apparent link to Abercrombie. But if you go to the Abercrombie website, you’ll find an Investor Relations link that will ultimately reveal that Hollister is a subsidiary. That’s because the obligation is generally for parent companies to discuss subsidiaries, not the other way 'round.
Note that the buyblue website’s info is in several cases rather out of date, and fails to include more recent transactions like the likely-to-be-approved mergers of Kmart & Sears, or of May & Federated. And in some cases the info is deceptively incomplete. For example, Eckerd Drug. Eckerd was actually split between CVS and Canadian druggist Jean Coutou, so simply listing Eckerd as a CVS affiliate is incorrect.
A few other points (retail is a hobby of mine): Mervyn’s is indeed still in business, except in Minneapolis-St. Paul and a few other markets where the brand had never been particularly successful. The new owners are a private fund with diversified retail holdings. May vastly overpaid target for the Marshall Field’s chain last year. Wisely, Federated backed off, and effectively is getting Marshall Field for a lot less by acquiring May.
I must’ve lost track of Target’s relationship with Mervyn’s (I used to work for Mervyn’s). The history of the Target-Mervyn’s-DaytonHudson relationship is an interesting case study in the vicissitudes of the retail biz.
The concentration in the grocery business occurs at the next level up, the grocery wholesalers.
Almost all grocery stores get their merchandise from one of a dozen or so national wholesale companies. The top 3 (SuperValu, Fleming, & Nash-Finch) deliver about 40-45% of the groceries in the country. Then their are the large grocery chains (Kroger, Safeway, Albertson’s, etc.) which mostly run their own distribution network. And, of course, the beast from Bentonville has it’s own distribution for Wal-Mart groceries.
Your local grocery supermarket will actually get it’s groceries from one of these wholesalers. It’s not uncommon to have different stores, under different names, get deliveries from the same truck. In some small towns, all the groceries in town may come from the same wholesaler.
For example, Target Superstores get their groceries from Fleming. Most military PX’s are supplied by Nash-Finch, though SuperValu is going after this business hard. And each of these wholesalers has a dozen or more small chains that they either own or control with long-term supply arrangements.
Federated also now owns Hecht’s. It’s switching them over to Macy’s as well.
Some grocery conglomerates –
Kroger / Ralphs / Dillons / Smith’s / King Soopers / Fry’s / QFC / City Market / Hilander / Owen’s / Jay C / Cala Foods/Bell Markets / Kessel Food Markets / Pay Less / Baker’s / Gerbes / Fred Meyer / Fry’s Marketplace / Smith’s Marketplace / Kroger Marketplace / Food 4 Less / Foods Co.
Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. / A&P / Waldbaum’s / A&P Super Foodmart / Food Emporium / Super Fresh / Farmer Jack / Sav-A-Center / Food Basics / Dominion / Ultra Food & Drug / Food Basics / Barn Markets
Safeway / Vons / Pavilions / Carrs / Dominick’s / Randalls / Tom Thumb / Genuardi’s
Giant / Stop & Shop / G-Giant / Tops / Bi-Lo / Bruno’s / Peapod
Balducci’s / Sutton Place Gourmet / Hay Day Country Farm Market / High Noon (all have been renamed Balducci’s as of last year, I believe)
Whole Foods / Wellspring Grocery / Bread & Circus / Mrs. Gooch’s / Fresh Fields / Bread of Life / Amrion / Merchant of Vino / Allegro Coffee / Nature’s Heartland / Food for Thought / Harry’s Farmers Market / Select Fish / Fresh & Wild
Food Lion / Hannaford / Kash n’ Karry / Sweetbay Supermarket / J. H. Harvey Co. (Harvey’s) / Bloom
Bigg’s / Cub Foods / Farm Fresh / Hornbacher’s / Save a Lot / Shop 'n Save / Shoppers Food Warehouse / Shoppers Food and Pharmacy / Supervalu Pharmacies / Scott’s
P&C Foods / BiLo Foods / Riverside / Quality Markets / Big M / Big Bear
Some independent brands:
Meijer’s
Giant Eagle
Harris Teeter is also an independent brand, I believe.
Small updates: Royal Ahold has sold the Bi-Lo and Bruno’s chains, to focus attention on its Giant, Tops, and Stop-n-Shop brands (fat lot of good that will do them, judging by how they’ve botched Giant.)
I believe that Whole Foods has elminated all of its other brands. It caused much wailing & gnashing of teeth when Fresh Fields in DC became Whole Foods. Interestingly, the guys who founded Fresh Fields have bought what is now known as Balducci’s - f/k/a Sutton Place. Sutton Place stumbled badly by vastly overpaying (yes, we have a theme, folks) for Balducci’s at a time when their other businesses weren’t doing well. A friend of mine worked for them at the time - she saw the condition Balducci’s flagship store was in as part of the Sutton Place team that examined it after the purchase. The iconic New York City gourmet grocery featured filthy back rooms, non-functioning refrigerators and freezers, and a completely demoralized staff, in no small part to the widely-reported intrafamilial warfare among the second-generation Balduccis (who are now in their 70s and still hate each other). Sutton Place didn’t have the money to turn the space around, so they ended up abandoning it completely. (Citarella took it over after a thorough demolition.) They also abandoned my friend, who was laid off. She was very glad to see that the new owners canned all of the previous managers.
Another chain:
Albertsons/Jewel-Osco/Savon/Osco/Shaws/Star
Some independents:
Publix (employee-owned)
Winn-Dixie (which filed for bankruptcy about two weeks ago, ironically right after the eponymous movie)
HEB/Central Market (the latter is a gourmet fantasy)
Lunds/Byerly’s (both gourmet fantasies)
The Northeast in general, and New York City in particular, have resisted conglomeration - largely because the majors don’t want to deal with high land prices, congestion, and unionized work force typical here. Some of our independent chains:
Shop Rite (cooperative)
Pathmark
D’Agostino
Gristede’s
Met Foods
Associated Supermarkets
Fairway
They aren’t really very independent, but pretty much controlled by SuperValu.
The money Byerly’s used to buy out Lund’s was loaned to them from SuperValu. The buyout negotiations were actually held in the Board Room at SuperValu corporate headquarters. And Byerly’s signed a multi-year contract to buy from SuperValu. So, to say the least, SuperValu has much influence with them.
This is a strategy SuperValu has used a lot recently.
They have many small local supermarket chains (3-8 stores) that have been SuperValu customers for years and are doing well, but the founder is now in his 60’s or 70’s and wants to retire. And none of the kids want to take it over, and work as hard as they’ve see Dad do all along.
So SuperValu buys the chain, and then turns around and sells the stores to the managers/employees of each store, loaning them the money to buy it (and signing a long-term supplier contract with them). Thus SuperValu ensures that the stores continue operating, and gains loyal customers (both because they’re grateful for making the store purchase possible, and because they owe SuperValu a big loan).
And the stores probably continue to do well: the same experienced people continue to manage them, but now as part-owners. And in the extremely tight margins of the grocery business, owner-operated stores usually do better than corporate-owned stores.
[In the grocery business, it’s real hard to distinguish your store from competitors based on product; the box of Kelloggs Corn Flakes in your store is the same as that in your competitors’ store. So you can choose to compete on “lowest price” (the warehouse stores: Wal-Mart’s, CUB Foods, etc., corporate owned & operated, do well at this). Or you can compete on “best service” – friendly empoyees, personal service, convenient location, helpful carry-out boys, etc. Usually, only the small chains & owner-operated stores can succeed at this. But that’s the main options you have.]
My D.C.-area neighborhood was extremely upset in the first place when our Bread and Circus was changed to Fresh Fields. “Bread and Circus” was such a cool name.
Well, as of Sunday, March 13, the Harry’s Market in Duluth, GA was still under that name (but the brand elimination could be a new development, still being rolled out).
T-bonham, that’s really interesting, thank you. My grand-dad worked for Nash Finch for 48 years, so SuperValu was always The Enemy (although that didn’t keep Gramma from shopping at Hornbacher’s, since it was right next to her beauty parlor). That’s a cool strategy you’re describing, one that gives a little bit of hope for the survival of decent service.
Although it seems like groceries are going the way of all other things: everything’s either rock-bottom pricing or luxury, with the middle market squeezed out of existence.
Re. Harry’s: It appears that Whole Foods bought out Harry’s after their big brand-consolidation push, and from the website it appears they have no current plans to change the name (in fact, it seems they rebranded an Atlanta-area Whole Foods into Harry’s after the deal). So it seems that some new brands they’re deciding to keep.
Another interesting study in conglomeration is the casino/hotel business. About 80% of the hotels on the Vegas Strip are owned by 3 companies.
I work with some grocery chains, so I happen to know you missed some brands that are QFC (Quality Food Center) offshoots:
Loaf 'N Jug/Mini Mart / Tom Thumb / Quik Stop / Kwik Shop / Turkey Hill
URL: http://www.qfconline.com/operations_convenience_locations.htm