Safeway East, Acme, and Shaw's are absolutely lagging behind the Ahold chains they compete against in their respective markets.norcalriteaidclerk wrote: ↑August 12th, 2022, 7:52 pm Maybe it's just me,but the ACI Atlantic seaboard operations may be lagging compared to those of ahold Delhaize, which could factor in antitrust reviews should they do merge.If they do merge, hopefully the post-merger ahold Delhaize USA headquarters would either be in Pleasanton or New England rather than Boise.
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The location of the headquarters isn't as important as giving the right amount of local control to each region. The headquarters could be in Iceland if that headquarters was for administrative functions and very basic merchandising only and left a good chunk of the merchandising, marketing, and policy decisions down to the regional offices.
The problem is with history you have Safeway headquartered in Pleasanton- chain didn't make it; huge region sell offs in the 80's; then in the 00's pulled out of IL/PA outright, sold out of Canada, eventually sold out to Albertsons. Tried to run their entire chain like California and it flopped (probably wouldn't have flopped if they hadn't PRICED the entire chain like California...). Albertsons and Boise, same story, bad history there of Boise knows best and a huge flop as a result. But either location could work if the company figures out the right balance between local control vs. centralized control. Kroger had it right in the Dave Dillon days, they figured out the balance.