I have a suspicion that Albertsons is running the strong Safeway ads here in the DC area to see who gets more traffic, them or Kroger. One of the two of them presumably has to go if the merger goes through. Harris Teeter has always done a lot of BOGO and big loss leader sales to get people into the stores. Safeway has historically been very expensive with minimal ad savings. Initially Albertsons did bring down pricing but it only went up again, and dramatically, when inflation hit last year. It is only with their ads and "For U" offers that you can bring pricing down to a reasonable level. With the Philly area having the same ads as down here I wonder if Albertsons is grouping Acme and Safeway together as a potential group sale if the merger actually goes through. Kroger doesn't have any stores in PA anymore. However, assuming Kroger is the surviving entity of the merger, if they sold off Safeway and Acme they could expand with some banner into PA again. By the way, the few Safeway stores in Delaware are from the union claiming jurisdiction going back to the 1980s and before when Safeway had a good group of stores in Delaware and the eastern shore. Those stores closed when Safeway went through the leveraged in the 1980s. When Safeway went back around the time of the Genuardi's buyout that is when the union got involved.
From what I see, Albertsons is running very strong ads and a lot of loss leaders via app and/or coupon offers in basically every one of their markets. Everyday pricing continues to be quite awful. You basically go for the loss leaders and don't touch anything else because the pricing is so terrible. Even markets like NorCal where it isn't really needed they are doing this heavy loss leader thing.
I suspect it has already been decided what stores are going to be offered up for divest, and what the surviving combined entity's store/division structure will look like. Acme obviously should be very safe as there is like zero (?) overlap with Kroger. Safeway DC/MD/VA is another matter and we will see what happens. I don't see a good solution in DC/MD/VA. I don't see Safeways being good candidates to convert to Harris Teeter and at the same time I don't see Harris Teeter stores being good candidates to convert to Safeway either.
storewanderer wrote: ↑July 20th, 2023, 12:02 am
From what I see, Albertsons is running very strong ads and a lot of loss leaders via app and/or coupon offers in basically every one of their markets. Everyday pricing continues to be quite awful. You basically go for the loss leaders and don't touch anything else because the pricing is so terrible. Even markets like NorCal where it isn't really needed they are doing this heavy loss leader thing.
I suspect it has already been decided what stores are going to be offered up for divest, and what the surviving combined entity's store/division structure will look like. Acme obviously should be very safe as there is like zero (?) overlap with Kroger. Safeway DC/MD/VA is another matter and we will see what happens. I don't see a good solution in DC/MD/VA. I don't see Safeways being good candidates to convert to Harris Teeter and at the same time I don't see Harris Teeter stores being good candidates to convert to Safeway either.
The question would be, does either have to occur? Seems like there are places where the two don't overlap at all (such as areas in MD where I've been that had Safeway but never saw Harris Teeter name anywhere), and even where they do, it would only pose an issue if there weren't something else around to provide competition.
storewanderer wrote: ↑July 20th, 2023, 12:02 am
From what I see, Albertsons is running very strong ads and a lot of loss leaders via app and/or coupon offers in basically every one of their markets. Everyday pricing continues to be quite awful. You basically go for the loss leaders and don't touch anything else because the pricing is so terrible. Even markets like NorCal where it isn't really needed they are doing this heavy loss leader thing.
I suspect it has already been decided what stores are going to be offered up for divest, and what the surviving combined entity's store/division structure will look like. Acme obviously should be very safe as there is like zero (?) overlap with Kroger. Safeway DC/MD/VA is another matter and we will see what happens. I don't see a good solution in DC/MD/VA. I don't see Safeways being good candidates to convert to Harris Teeter and at the same time I don't see Harris Teeter stores being good candidates to convert to Safeway either.
The question would be, does either have to occur? Seems like there are places where the two don't overlap at all (such as areas in MD where I've been that had Safeway but never saw Harris Teeter name anywhere), and even where they do, it would only pose an issue if there weren't something else around to provide competition.
If the FTC looked at this merger purely from a competition standpoint, there are a lot of areas that have multiple grocery stores even if Harris Teeter or Safeway were eliminated in the merger. In my immediate area we have Wegmans, Giant-MD, Safeway and Harris Teeter in the traditional grocery area. Wegmans may not be traditional in the truest sense but they aren't a Supercenter, a deep discounter or an ethnic store. If Safeway or Harris Teeter closed due to the merger you would still have two other choices assuming the closed stores are never grocers again. And in additional to those choices you have Walmart Supercenters, Whole Foods, Aldi, Lidl and the ethnic grocers. Also to your point, Loudoun County has a strong presence of Harris Teeter but only two Safeway stores. Both Safeway locations aren't near Harris Teeter stores and both have other competitors near them. Keeping those two Safeway stores open isn't going to stifle competition, it would preserve it. I'd compare it to the handful of Food Lion stores that are still open in Northern Virginia. They add to people's choice but they certainly aren't creating a monopoly along with their sister Giant-MD stores.
storewanderer wrote: ↑July 20th, 2023, 12:02 am
From what I see, Albertsons is running very strong ads and a lot of loss leaders via app and/or coupon offers in basically every one of their markets. Everyday pricing continues to be quite awful. You basically go for the loss leaders and don't touch anything else because the pricing is so terrible. Even markets like NorCal where it isn't really needed they are doing this heavy loss leader thing.
I suspect it has already been decided what stores are going to be offered up for divest, and what the surviving combined entity's store/division structure will look like. Acme obviously should be very safe as there is like zero (?) overlap with Kroger. Safeway DC/MD/VA is another matter and we will see what happens. I don't see a good solution in DC/MD/VA. I don't see Safeways being good candidates to convert to Harris Teeter and at the same time I don't see Harris Teeter stores being good candidates to convert to Safeway either.
The question would be, does either have to occur? Seems like there are places where the two don't overlap at all (such as areas in MD where I've been that had Safeway but never saw Harris Teeter name anywhere), and even where they do, it would only pose an issue if there weren't something else around to provide competition.
That depends how committed Kroger is to operating multiple conventional format stores under different names/different formats in the same markets (or adjacent markets). Given Kroger's push the past 8 years to make everything the same, I don't hold much hope. They've centralized more and more and this past 8 years of centralization not been a positive thing for the consumer at Kroger- operations are worse and pricing/promotions are not as good. Albertsons had decentralized after buying Safeway in an effort to un-do Safeway's awful centralization efforts, but the past couple years started to re-centralize and their re-centralizing efforts have been a mixed bag.
That is another reason why this merger is not a good idea for the consumer. But if you take out competition, it really doesn't matter much if that previously nicer/slightly upscale Harris Teeter you liked is now a lousy Safeway but the hot ads you heard Safeway used to run are now gone, and that Safeway you liked that used to run hot ad specials is now a higher priced Harris Teeter but for some reason the store doesn't seem any better than it did as Safeway, because since you don't really have much other choice you basically get to shop at whatever format Kroger decides it wants to give you and whatever semi-boring ad promos they decide to run...
