Haggen to close, liquidate 100 more stores

[klkla]

I'm not a big fan of how Albertson's has handled themselves in this entire manner. But that being said maybe there is some truth to the argument that the FTC shouldn't have requested divestitures in the first place. Thirty years ago people bought 90% of what they ate at a supermarket so anti-trust concerns were more important. Today, in addition to supermarkets you can buy groceries at club stores, convenience stores, discount stores, dollar stores, small box specialty stores (Aldi, Trader Joe's, et.c...), organic/health food markets and probably some other formats I forgot to mention. Not to mention that people eat out more often at restaurants and have many more choices than back then. So there is a lot more competition and the conventional supermarket as we know it now is getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie every year.

[pseudo3d]

I'm not a big fan of how Albertson's has handled themselves in this entire manner. But that being said maybe there is some truth to the argument that the FTC shouldn't have requested divestitures in the first place. Thirty years ago people bought 90% of what they ate at a supermarket so anti-trust concerns were more important. Today, in addition to supermarkets you can buy groceries at club stores, convenience stores, discount stores, dollar stores, small box specialty stores (Aldi, Trader Joe's, et.c...), organic/health food markets and probably some other formats I forgot to mention. Not to mention that people eat out more often at restaurants and have many more choices than back then. So there is a lot more competition and the conventional supermarket as we know it now is getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie every year.

Also the Washington area (where Haggen is located) also has Amazon Fresh as competition.

But yeah. Back in the late 1990s, a non-supercenter discount store would rarely have more than junk food and maybe some other staples (bread, milk). I was reading about an old article about the local supermarket scene in my area (which once had a rather impressive collection of stores, even if only single-location ones...Randalls, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, H-E-B Pantry, Kroger, AppleTree, AND Winn-Dixie...what a gallery!) and it noted the potential competition of Target and Sam's Club as grocery stores. I'd almost applaud it for being forward thinking given that Target had almost no food department like we know today, though the same article had a sidebar of goofy supermarket predictions (like having a grocery store on the moon).

[marshd1000]

There will be a few more closures with the Albertsons purchase:

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news ... j=71351022

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/lo ... 64437.html

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/re ... -albertson

[pseudo3d]

The closures of the four stores were already announced prior to the official buyout. All of them, I believe, were acquired stores, and they don't include immediate overlapping stores like Oak Harbor which seem to be staying open at least for now. And that means that Albertsons won't be acquiring them, so they won't stay as dark stores.

[marshd1000]

These are actually 3 of the "core" stores that are closing, in addition to the 4 announced the other day. One is actually a "legacy" Haggen in Puyallup. There was another Haggen in Puyallup that was acquired from Albertsons previously that is Albertsons again. But the "legacy" Haggen in Puyallup had been a Top Foods as had the Auburn/Lake Tapps store. I have been in the Puyallup store and it had not seemed that busy. It was also not remodeled nearly as nicely as the Auburn store, which is in a relatively new upscale development called Lakeland Hills. It is also the only game in town. I am not really surprised that that the Puyallup store is going away!

[SamSpade]

In Oregon, Albertsons is taking back the stores they operated. The announced core store that is closing is Oregon City. The last "true" Haggen operating in Oregon / SW Washington.

[pseudo3d]

These are actually 3 of the "core" stores that are closing, in addition to the 4 announced the other day.

The four stores that were announced recently to close are the only ones closing. There were 33 "core" stores as of December, which have been kept open, there have been two announcements of store closures (two each), and now Albertsons buys the remaining 29. As far as I know, Albertsons has not announced any Haggen store closures yet of its own nor will it buy the closed four, so those are fair game for whoever wants the real estate.

[marshd1000]

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. There were 4 stores previously announced to be closing, listed here in this article. Last fall, they had been announced to be core stores, then the company changed their mind, yet kept them open. You'll find that in this article here:

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/lo ... 01912.html

However there are 3 ADDITIONAL stores that had been considered core stores up until today's announcement. Here is the article telling about that:

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/lo ... 64437.html

So in total, SEVEN more stores will be closed with thre rest going to Albertsons!

EDIT...I may be misunderstanding. I don't believe that Albertsons announced any closures of any Haggen stores. I believe it was all Haggen generated. But I do believe that Albertsons was not interested in purchasing the 3 announced for closure today, so I am thinking that Haggen just closed them instead of insisting that Albertsons buy them.

[storewanderer]

I'm guessing the FTC may have not allowed the purchase of the 3 additional core stores being closed; there is a very heavy Albertsons/Safeway penetration in those locations already. It is interesting the stores are being closed rather than being forced to be sold off. Maybe nobody else wanted the stores...

When Albertsons LLC sold NorCal to Save Mart there were two very sudden Albertsons Store closures in Oroville and Sonora both of which were profitable, medium size, medium volume stores. It was my understanding those stores closed because of FTC concerns as Save Mart already had operations in those areas and there were few other competitors.

Very sad to see the Oregon City Haggen go, it was a nice store and really well run.

[pseudo3d]

I'm guessing the FTC may have not allowed the purchase of the 3 additional core stores being closed; there is a very heavy Albertsons/Safeway penetration in those locations already. It is interesting the stores are being closed rather than being forced to be sold off. Maybe nobody else wanted the stores...

When Albertsons LLC sold NorCal to Save Mart there were two very sudden Albertsons Store closures in Oroville and Sonora both of which were profitable, medium size, medium volume stores. It was my understanding those stores closed because of FTC concerns as Save Mart already had operations in those areas and there were few other competitors.

Very sad to see the Oregon City Haggen go, it was a nice store and really well run.

With accusations of the FTC just allowing all this to happen to keep jobs, I can't imagine that they'd force Albertsons to leave those four stores alone based on that alone. I don't know the situation at NorCal, but it seems to have been very sudden and last-minute, as the deal was announced in late 2006 and the stores announced closing in February 2007.