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I heard about this the other day. I can't express how much I dread it. Folks get invested in their local grocery stores, we do at least. And we were neck deep

I heard about this the other day. I can't express how much I dread it. Folks get invested in their local grocery stores, we do at least. And we were neck deep in the last merger with Safeway, since it destroyed the store that we went to. 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. 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. 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. 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. That merger was a mess, caused a lot of disruption, cost a bunch of jobs. 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.

UncleOxidant 4y ago
We had Hagens around here too. They closed down and most of the sites have been empty for years. There was a Safeway not too far away that closed down several years back (maybe part of that merger agreement) that's been empty for years... now I see an Albertsons is moving in there. The main 2 chains in our area are Fred Meyer (Krogers), Safeway & Albertsons (both really Albertsons) so this merger will mean that all those stores are now really owned by the same corporation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deeblering4 4y ago
I'm quite thrilled to see low price groceries like Aldi come in and take business away from these bloated supermarket chains. After making the switch it's hard to shop at a typical grocery store. Everything is ridiculously marked up and the floor plan is ridiculously sprawling.
- auggierose 4y ago
  How times are changing. Over 20 years ago I would go with my Italian friend to a Safeway in San Francisco at midnight, just for fun. So different from boring German supermarkets. And now you are cheering for Aldi to come in ...
  - lupire 4y ago
    Safeway is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  There is a legitimate use case for these types of stores, though- some people prefer a wider selection and value it over lower prices with a narrower selection. Aldi is fine but it's not a replacement for literally everything else.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah. There's an Aldi's very close-by in basically the parking lot of a Walmart. Have peeked in a couple of times but basically nothing to interest me. Seemed like going back to a grocery store of a couple decades ago (with probably lower prices).
    - deeblering4 4y ago
      I’d encourage you to try it again with trader joe’s in mind. It’s essentially a low cost version with very similar, albeit spartan, layout.
      - dougmwne 4y ago
        And there is a reason for that as TJ’s and Aldi are owned by brother German companies, Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud, and both operate on the German grocery model.
        4y ago
GoodJokes 4y ago
dpkirchner 4y ago
The Albertsons that closed near where I grew up was replaced with a Goodwill (thrift store). Goodwill is fine, however I can't help but feel that it's a downgrade for the neighborhood. Not on the order of a cash advance, pawn shop, or self-storage opening in its place but still not great.
- overtonwhy 4y ago
  Goodwill is pretty neat. They save a lot of stuff from going to the dump. You can find some really interesting and inexpensive electronics there sometimes.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The ones around here ban most electronic donations, because people use them as an electronics disposal drop-off - dump an old compute on Goodwill, avoid the recycling fee, it doesn't sell, Goodwill has to pay the recycling fee.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      Interestingly, around here, Goodwill takes electronics for resale or disposal. I assume they get paid for the latter by the state.
      - lucas_membrane 4y ago
        More interestingly, and even strangelier, however, the Goodwills around here take electronics for resale and put it all on the shelves without verifying that anything works at all. I returned an item once because it started sparking when I turned it on. I could not get my money back, they don't do that, only in-store credit for the amount paid, good for only 30 days, and only at the same store as the original purchase. Fat chance that I found anything there on which to use a credit of $60 or $70 within a month. But I went back the next week to look for anything plausible. The same piece of smoldering dumpster-fire trash I had returned was back on the shelf.
  - 4y ago
shrubble 4y ago
It's possible that the company is locked in to a rental contract that does not allow them to break it. Since Aldi store are much smaller the total rental amount would not cover the landlord letting Albertson's out of the existing contract.
- sroussey 4y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted, this does happen. That said, landlords often try to not allow “going dark” and paying rent. Usually, grocery is an anchor, and the rents at the smaller stores are higher per square foot. Those will close if the anchor closes and stops advertising the location. Not to mention crime increases, etc. On the other hand, grocery store sizes are weird for other uses, and there can be a small set of interested parties. And if they are all a pass, then you have an empty store. The original store left for a reason.
colinmhayes 4y ago
Aldi is like a fifth of the size of traditional grocery stores. The smaller size is largely the point. "We may not have the same selection, but we have what you need and you can get in and out in 10 minutes." They probably didn't want that space.
- lightbendover 4y ago
  I can get in and out of my large nearby grocery store in 10 minutes just fine and they have everything I could possibly want. I'm not price-sensitive and that's the real difference between that store and Aldi, completely different customer cohort.
  - lupire 4y ago
    This is correct ALDI's entire brand image is "lower price". That's why people go there.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Except I'm not price sensitive either and mainly shop at Aldi because it is much faster. Obviously a lot of people are there for the prices, but the size is a big draw too.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    I am not price sensitive and Aldi’s is great. First, most of the missing food products are the sugary highly processed junk food that I don’t want to wade through, plus there are a good number of euro items that I prefer. Second, I don’t have to go through the cognitive exhaustion of wading through 29 types of peanut butter. Thirdly, is really is faster, a lot faster. I can have half my shopping done in the time it takes to find the aluminum foil in the big store.
evan_ 4y ago
A bunch of our local Albertsons turned into Hagans as well, including the one near my house- in the days before the changeover, Albertsons swapped out all of the old and broken refrigeration units from the remaining stores with working ones from the soon-to-be-Hagans. They've since gone back to being Albertsons so I don't know what the point of any of it was.
- specialist 4y ago
  Sometimes it's union busting. Something about a change of ownership resets or moots the relationship.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    No need to speculate, the article clearly outlines the reason behind all of this - it was an FTC mandate that failed.
    - specialist 4y ago
      Article quotes Haggen's blame. I'm quoting my friend who was CFO for a regional chain. Stuffing Labor is just as loathsome as private equity stuffing all other stake holders. Though I'm certain Labor suffered during the last debacle, I'd accept that it was just a happy side effect and not the primary motivator. Prior covert Union busting is worth noting given the corptocracy's current well publicized jihad against Labor.
      - dendrite9 4y ago
        The Haggen's purchase of the other stores was paid for by selling the real estate of a number of the stores, then leasing. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/haggens-risky-expansion-largely-bankrolled-itself/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/haggens-risky-e... There also were some union shenanigans mentioned in this article. A happy side effect is probably the right description. https://www.heraldnet.com/business/inside-the-haggen-grocery-chains-spectacular-acquisition-failure/ https://www.heraldnet.com/business/inside-the-haggen-grocery...
bee_rider 4y ago
> Folks get invested in their local grocery stores, we do at least. It is kinda funny (Stop & Shop or starvation I say!). I suspect it is because getting groceries is one of the rare shopping activities that is just 100% always a chore. Like if you are going clothes or electronics shopping, you are probably hoping to stumble across something surprising. Food -- I know what food I want, no need for novelty, I just want to get in and out.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  That is why I always go by the deli section. Cheese from random foreign country inserts a bit of novelty.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Right, but Kroger would like you to wander around the store admiring their huge retail inventory. Perhaps they can sell you a new patio set or some swag from your local pro soccer team, or some pots and pans. They have been passive-aggressive about online ordering and have basically been forced into it by a perceived competition with Amazon (abject paranoia). They hate it. For some reason you can never get all of the items on your order. They have "been trying to fix this" for years now. At one point, over two years ago, I was in talks with recruiters about joining the team that was "trying to fix it" at Kroger. Their software dev ranks and tech in general is a fast revolving door. I refused to join because of all the people I knew who had joined and left almost immediately. The last thing you want is a bigger Kroger. My initial take was that this merger would be the thing that causes them to fail.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The dirty secret behind all the online ordering stuff is just how ABSOLUTELY BAD at inventory many stores were (and still are!). Things like "we get a pallet of oranges every Monday, and every Sunday night we throw any remaining away" but across all swaths of items. That's before you even get into tracking where in the store the items might be, because they're not always in the same location, end caps, etc. And then on top of that add lazy pickers who are just trying to finish as many orders as they can, and the "not available" button is right there ...
stormbrew 4y ago
> In over 8 years, that space and sat empty in the downtown area. Empty properties that once had a grocery store in them are often that way because the property is under a restrictive covenant preventing any use as a grocery store for some absurdly long period of time (decades, usually)[1]. It's a weirdly unique thing about grocery stores, and can be really harmful to communities where it's just not practical to build new grocery store buildings (and grocery store buildings don't always translate well to other kinds of retail). It's a common enough problem that it's banned in some places[2]. [1] an example: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-close-little-legal-phrase-can-prevent-new-ones-opening/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-c... [2] eg. DC: https://code.dccouncil.us/us/dc/council/laws/22-138 https://code.dccouncil.us/us/dc/council/laws/22-138
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  Seems like a legit case for eminent domain.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    Exactly. The city should buy the land under ED and then rent out the space preferentially to another grocery store.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > The city should buy the land under ED and then rent out the space preferentially to another grocery store. As I understand it, there is mixed case law on whether and when restrictive covenants constitute property interests of the beneficiaries which must be separately compensated in ED condemnation.
- sroussey 4y ago
  Banks do this as well.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
joe-collins 4y ago
The Vons near my work had contained a Panda Express, Starbucks, and Wells Fargo. When it converted to Haggen, it lost the first two. When Haggen closed, the building was partitioned and the Wells Fargo remained open in the front corner for a short while. Eventually, the larger half of the partitioned building became a Smart & Final, the smaller side became a Dollar Tree, and the Wells Fargo and Panda Express reappeared in the adjacent strip mall.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

We had Hagens around here too. They closed down and most of the sites have been empty for years. There was a Safeway not too far away that closed down several years back (maybe part of that merger agreement) that's been empty for years... now I see an Albertsons is moving in there. The main 2 chains in our area are Fred Meyer (Krogers), Safeway & Albertsons (both really Albertsons) so this merger will mean that all those stores are now really owned by the same corporation.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deeblering4 4y ago

I'm quite thrilled to see low price groceries like Aldi come in and take business away from these bloated supermarket chains. After making the switch it's hard to shop at a typical grocery store. Everything is ridiculously marked up and the floor plan is ridiculously sprawling.

auggierose 4y ago
How times are changing. Over 20 years ago I would go with my Italian friend to a Safeway in San Francisco at midnight, just for fun. So different from boring German supermarkets. And now you are cheering for Aldi to come in ...
- lupire 4y ago
  Safeway is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
idiotsecant 4y ago
There is a legitimate use case for these types of stores, though- some people prefer a wider selection and value it over lower prices with a narrower selection. Aldi is fine but it's not a replacement for literally everything else.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah. There's an Aldi's very close-by in basically the parking lot of a Walmart. Have peeked in a couple of times but basically nothing to interest me. Seemed like going back to a grocery store of a couple decades ago (with probably lower prices).
  - deeblering4 4y ago
    I’d encourage you to try it again with trader joe’s in mind. It’s essentially a low cost version with very similar, albeit spartan, layout.
    - dougmwne 4y ago
      And there is a reason for that as TJ’s and Aldi are owned by brother German companies, Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud, and both operate on the German grocery model.
      - 4y ago

GoodJokes 4y ago

dpkirchner 4y ago

The Albertsons that closed near where I grew up was replaced with a Goodwill (thrift store). Goodwill is fine, however I can't help but feel that it's a downgrade for the neighborhood. Not on the order of a cash advance, pawn shop, or self-storage opening in its place but still not great.

overtonwhy 4y ago
Goodwill is pretty neat. They save a lot of stuff from going to the dump. You can find some really interesting and inexpensive electronics there sometimes.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The ones around here ban most electronic donations, because people use them as an electronics disposal drop-off - dump an old compute on Goodwill, avoid the recycling fee, it doesn't sell, Goodwill has to pay the recycling fee.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    Interestingly, around here, Goodwill takes electronics for resale or disposal. I assume they get paid for the latter by the state.
    - lucas_membrane 4y ago
      More interestingly, and even strangelier, however, the Goodwills around here take electronics for resale and put it all on the shelves without verifying that anything works at all. I returned an item once because it started sparking when I turned it on. I could not get my money back, they don't do that, only in-store credit for the amount paid, good for only 30 days, and only at the same store as the original purchase. Fat chance that I found anything there on which to use a credit of $60 or $70 within a month. But I went back the next week to look for anything plausible. The same piece of smoldering dumpster-fire trash I had returned was back on the shelf.
- 4y ago

shrubble 4y ago

It's possible that the company is locked in to a rental contract that does not allow them to break it. Since Aldi store are much smaller the total rental amount would not cover the landlord letting Albertson's out of the existing contract.

sroussey 4y ago
Not sure why you are downvoted, this does happen. That said, landlords often try to not allow “going dark” and paying rent. Usually, grocery is an anchor, and the rents at the smaller stores are higher per square foot. Those will close if the anchor closes and stops advertising the location. Not to mention crime increases, etc. On the other hand, grocery store sizes are weird for other uses, and there can be a small set of interested parties. And if they are all a pass, then you have an empty store. The original store left for a reason.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Aldi is like a fifth of the size of traditional grocery stores. The smaller size is largely the point. "We may not have the same selection, but we have what you need and you can get in and out in 10 minutes." They probably didn't want that space.

lightbendover 4y ago
I can get in and out of my large nearby grocery store in 10 minutes just fine and they have everything I could possibly want. I'm not price-sensitive and that's the real difference between that store and Aldi, completely different customer cohort.
- lupire 4y ago
  This is correct ALDI's entire brand image is "lower price". That's why people go there.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Except I'm not price sensitive either and mainly shop at Aldi because it is much faster. Obviously a lot of people are there for the prices, but the size is a big draw too.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  I am not price sensitive and Aldi’s is great. First, most of the missing food products are the sugary highly processed junk food that I don’t want to wade through, plus there are a good number of euro items that I prefer. Second, I don’t have to go through the cognitive exhaustion of wading through 29 types of peanut butter. Thirdly, is really is faster, a lot faster. I can have half my shopping done in the time it takes to find the aluminum foil in the big store.

evan_ 4y ago

A bunch of our local Albertsons turned into Hagans as well, including the one near my house- in the days before the changeover, Albertsons swapped out all of the old and broken refrigeration units from the remaining stores with working ones from the soon-to-be-Hagans. They've since gone back to being Albertsons so I don't know what the point of any of it was.

specialist 4y ago
Sometimes it's union busting. Something about a change of ownership resets or moots the relationship.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  No need to speculate, the article clearly outlines the reason behind all of this - it was an FTC mandate that failed.
  - specialist 4y ago
    Article quotes Haggen's blame. I'm quoting my friend who was CFO for a regional chain. Stuffing Labor is just as loathsome as private equity stuffing all other stake holders. Though I'm certain Labor suffered during the last debacle, I'd accept that it was just a happy side effect and not the primary motivator. Prior covert Union busting is worth noting given the corptocracy's current well publicized jihad against Labor.
    - dendrite9 4y ago
      The Haggen's purchase of the other stores was paid for by selling the real estate of a number of the stores, then leasing. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/haggens-risky-expansion-largely-bankrolled-itself/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/haggens-risky-e... There also were some union shenanigans mentioned in this article. A happy side effect is probably the right description. https://www.heraldnet.com/business/inside-the-haggen-grocery-chains-spectacular-acquisition-failure/ https://www.heraldnet.com/business/inside-the-haggen-grocery...

bee_rider 4y ago

> Folks get invested in their local grocery stores, we do at least. It is kinda funny (Stop & Shop or starvation I say!). I suspect it is because getting groceries is one of the rare shopping activities that is just 100% always a chore. Like if you are going clothes or electronics shopping, you are probably hoping to stumble across something surprising. Food -- I know what food I want, no need for novelty, I just want to get in and out.

stonemetal12 4y ago
That is why I always go by the deli section. Cheese from random foreign country inserts a bit of novelty.
datavirtue 4y ago
Right, but Kroger would like you to wander around the store admiring their huge retail inventory. Perhaps they can sell you a new patio set or some swag from your local pro soccer team, or some pots and pans. They have been passive-aggressive about online ordering and have basically been forced into it by a perceived competition with Amazon (abject paranoia). They hate it. For some reason you can never get all of the items on your order. They have "been trying to fix this" for years now. At one point, over two years ago, I was in talks with recruiters about joining the team that was "trying to fix it" at Kroger. Their software dev ranks and tech in general is a fast revolving door. I refused to join because of all the people I knew who had joined and left almost immediately. The last thing you want is a bigger Kroger. My initial take was that this merger would be the thing that causes them to fail.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The dirty secret behind all the online ordering stuff is just how ABSOLUTELY BAD at inventory many stores were (and still are!). Things like "we get a pallet of oranges every Monday, and every Sunday night we throw any remaining away" but across all swaths of items. That's before you even get into tracking where in the store the items might be, because they're not always in the same location, end caps, etc. And then on top of that add lazy pickers who are just trying to finish as many orders as they can, and the "not available" button is right there ...

stormbrew 4y ago

> In over 8 years, that space and sat empty in the downtown area. Empty properties that once had a grocery store in them are often that way because the property is under a restrictive covenant preventing any use as a grocery store for some absurdly long period of time (decades, usually)[1]. It's a weirdly unique thing about grocery stores, and can be really harmful to communities where it's just not practical to build new grocery store buildings (and grocery store buildings don't always translate well to other kinds of retail). It's a common enough problem that it's banned in some places[2]. [1] an example: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-close-little-legal-phrase-can-prevent-new-ones-opening/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-c... [2] eg. DC: https://code.dccouncil.us/us/dc/council/laws/22-138 https://code.dccouncil.us/us/dc/council/laws/22-138

CoastalCoder 4y ago
Seems like a legit case for eminent domain.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  Exactly. The city should buy the land under ED and then rent out the space preferentially to another grocery store.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > The city should buy the land under ED and then rent out the space preferentially to another grocery store. As I understand it, there is mixed case law on whether and when restrictive covenants constitute property interests of the beneficiaries which must be separately compensated in ED condemnation.
sroussey 4y ago
Banks do this as well.
- stormbrew 4y ago

joe-collins 4y ago

The Vons near my work had contained a Panda Express, Starbucks, and Wells Fargo. When it converted to Haggen, it lost the first two. When Haggen closed, the building was partitioned and the Wells Fargo remained open in the front corner for a short while. Eventually, the larger half of the partitioned building became a Smart & Final, the smaller side became a Dollar Tree, and the Wells Fargo and Panda Express reappeared in the adjacent strip mall.