Retail Watchers

I'd also put Bella Bottega (Redmond) and Downtown Bellevue among the nicer QFC stores. Possibly also Crossroads Bellevue, Kirkland Urban (the former Parkplace store which got rebuilt during the redevelopment of that complex), Mercer Street and Broadway Market (Capitol Hill), but Broadway Market was...

As for Haggen being really a Safeway with a Haggen sign, I was just in the Auburn/Lake Tapps and Oak Harbor locations just recently. The Oak Harbor store is the only Safeway divest store from the Albertsons and Safeway merger that stayed Haggen. That store actually seems to do well as a Haggen. It i...

The Reuters article doesn't mention that the Safeway banner will be licensed to C&S in Arizona and Colorado. The Kroger website mentioned that! But here in Washington, I think that IF the merger happens, Haggen and QFC kind of belong together. I wonder if the Haggen banner will stay in King, Pie...

It seems to be that this merger would have had a better chance if they had divested to other retailers? Like in California, divesting to Save Mart with a rebrand of the stores to Lucky. In Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska, divesting QFC and Carr’s to URM, the owner of Rosauers would have made se...

At least as of January 5th, the merger is still alive as Kroger, Albertsons and the FTC are still talking. Here’s the latest!

https://boisedev.com/news/2024/01/05/al ... r-ftc-neg/

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4052714-k ... etails-ftc

They may want to acquire more stores. Perhaps Town & Country would be a good fit? Maybe URM/Rosauer's?

I have been in their Save-On-Foods, Urban Fare and Price Smart Foods stores in British Columbia. Save-On is close to a Safeway in terms of product mix and operation. They acquired Safeway on Vancouver Island as Sobeys already had Thrifty Foods. Urban Fare is similar to Metropolitian Market. Price Sm...

This might be a crazy thought but if the merger doesn’t happen, do you think Albertsons might try to buy Rite Aid out of bankruptcy? I’m thinking that looking in retrospect, Rite Aid shareholders wouldn’t be holding worthless stock right now had they allowed the Albertsons Rite Aid merger to happen!

It has been shown that Albertsons is ok with operating multiple banners in a region. Puget Sound for example has Albertsons, Safeway and Haggen. On the Kroger side of things it also has QFC and Fred Meyer. In the past, it seems that Kroger likes to have just one banner. But in the Puget Sound exampl...

I’m a Washington native and very familiar with the Downtown Seattle Nordstrom. I’m also familiar with the current issues of Downtown Seattle. I have feared Nordstrom closing the Downtown Seattle store and moving offices to Bellevue and designating the Bellevue Square store as the flagship! But accor...