This isn’t really accurate. C&S is headquartered in New Hampshire, but the retail stores they operate are under the Piggly Wiggly brand (in the Midwest and the Carolinas), and the Grand Union brand (in New York and Vermont). It appears that they may be the owners of the Piggly Wiggly brand name, and franchise it out to other retailers (it’s a big grocery brand thoughout the South).
This PR release indicates that they currently operate over 160 grocery stores, and, as already noted, they are huge in grocery wholesaling to other retailers.
I’d have to imagine that the Haggen deal was a disaster waiting to happen because of the amount of debt that had to be involved for such a small chain to take over so many stores; if they tripped up even a little, the debt service would just be too much. The first report of the more recent deal would have suggested something similar might happen, but it sounds like the company involved is actually much larger.
Originally the idea was that Wal-Mart, Target, and K-Mart (and others I’m sure) were “discount stores”, meaning that they sold much the same stuff as a classical department store, but cheaper.
Over time they’ve taken over retailing, and classic department stores mainly sell a subset of what they used to - primarily higher-end clothing/shoes and stuff that people register for baby showers and weddings. I don’t even know if stores like Macy’s or Nordstrom actually sell sporting goods, toys, or electronics anymore.
Yeah, I agree. From what I can tell, modern-day department stores seem to be centered around women’s apparel, perfumes/colognes, and to a much lesser extent, men’s clothing (specifically suits and higher-end stuff), and some housewares like sheets/comforters.
It’s definitely not like going to Montgomery Ward or Sears as a kid, and running off to the toy, sporting goods, and electronics sections, where the cool stuff was, while my parents bought clothes and small appliances, etc…
Department stores definitely don’t sell the same amount of items that they used to ( my husband remembers when Macy’s had a meat department) but another difference was paying - department stores do not/did not have a central check out area where people lined up with shopping carts. Department stores have registers in each department . You could usually pay for items at any register unless one of the departments involved was a concession/
I have never seen a grocery store with a better deli than Haggen. I’m glad they’re still around after all that garbage. We have one here just outside of town (though it’s far enough away that we don’t go to it that often).
This doesn’t (necessarily) apply to large corporations using different names to separate varying formats, but a tactic used by some dodgy businesses is to have separate divisions using completely different names. That way they can 1) fool customers who’ve been burned by one their sleazy enterprises, but don’t know the new one is run by the identical sleazebags, and 2) help elude regulators who are investigating or have cracked down on/closed an earlier incarnation.
I’ve noticed this in particular with mail-order plant nurseries. The ones doing business under multiple aliases are the ones to watch out for.
My local Safeway(Albertson’s) was by far the best grocery store in town until the past few months, but it was on the divestiture list (one of the other local stores is Fry’s(Kroger)). Since around August the store has been poorly stocked, lots of stuff out of stock and only showing up sporadically. I spoke to the manager who says he keeps ordering everything but stuff just doesn’t come in. He said it has nothing to do with the merger, but I can see the rationale of giving delivery preference to the stores you are going to keep versus those which are going away soon.
Anybody see this sort of thing with other stores on the divestiture list? It will be interesting to see if things get better now that the store is going to remain a Safeway.
(I still shop with my old Wegman’s reusable bags in the hopes that “if you carry it they will come”. A futile dream…)
It’s been a running joke in the industry. They weren’t even pretending that they were going to sell those stores to C&S as running businesses. They were going to drive most of the customers to the surviving Kroger banners. C&S was buying real estate, not operating grocery stores. That or the owner of C&S was totally delusional. He’s been staggeringly successful in wholesale, but has no track record or credibility as a retail operator.
They just have shills putting out “analysis” showing how this merger wouldn’t reduce competition. Laughable stuff that was being roundly mocked on LinkedIn, with people pointing out the authors’ connections to firms “advising” either Albertsons or Kroger.
Yes. Kroger decided a few years ago that they wanted to be Harris-Teeter in NC. I have no idea why, but I guess it’s their call.
BTW, if you look at Creedmoor Road in Raleigh, just south of I-540, there are three Harris-Teeters in a space of less than 3 miles. Not three in a 3-mile radius, but three stores on the same straight stretch of road.
Good riddance to that proposed merger, I say. We lost one of our grocery stores in town in the Albertson’s/ Vons merger (the only Albertson’s in town, go figure); it briefly became a Haggen before they went bankrupt and Grocery Outlet took over half the space. I’m sure we would have lost more stores had the merger of Kroger and Albertsons (or whatever the name of Vons’ corporate overlords is now) gone through.
From some of the news stories I’ve read in the aftermath, the merger was mainly about justifying a big fat dividend to Albertsons’ largest shareholders anyway, not competing with Wal-Mart et al.
I am also glad that it was stopped. The only regular grocery stores are a Kroger owned one and an Albertsons owned one. The prices here were already high going back several years. I feared that a merger would result in further price gouging.
Mentioned upthread is that it is “Kroger” not “Krogers”. To which I note the 800 number of the company. 1-800-KROGER is one letter too short. Guess what letter they added!