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Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Posted: December 3rd, 2016, 7:33 am
by veteran+
klkla wrote:
pseudo3d wrote: As for "not selling to failing companies", when Safeway and Albertsons merged, the goal was to find companies that could accept the unionized stores in the West Coast. Problem is, when you took Safeway and Albertsons out of the equation, there weren't a lot of stores that were even eligible. Neither Ralphs nor Stater Bros., two of the eligible candidates, decided to go for it. They have shown that they are not interested in expanding.
This has been discussed before. Neither Ralphs or Stater Bros. were even given the chance to bid on the stores when they were worth bidding for. Albertson's approached Haggen and there is no evidence that they even looked at any competing bids. Jack Brown of Stater Bros. even stated publicly that they were interested in some of the stores when Albertson's and Safeway first announced their merger.

And there's no evidence to support your statement that their 'goal' was to look for companies that would accept unionized stores. If you look at past mergers in Southern California (Vons/Safeway, Albertson's/Lucky, Ralphs/Hughes) that happened when the unions were much stronger the stores were sold individually with the best stores going to the established unionized chains in the area and the lower volume stores going to Unified Grocers and mostly non-union independents. Everyone assumed that would happen in this case but obviously Albertson's had a different idea and specifically sought out Haggen, Minyard and even SuperValu to buy stores knowing that they would fail. It's still amazing to me to this day that the FTC let them get away with it.
Not that it matters but, Gelson's is also a union shop!

:-)

Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Posted: December 3rd, 2016, 4:51 pm
by pseudo3d
veteran+ wrote: Not that it matters but, Gelson's is also a union shop!

:-)
But that's the point, union or not, there just weren't enough traditional supermarkets in SoCal (or the other markets) to pick up the demand. Gelson's is very upscale and not to the level Vons and Albertsons were. The East Coast is very different in that there are.

Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Posted: January 25th, 2017, 10:17 am
by pseudo3d
They called off the acquisition talks. Probably for good reason on both sides.

http://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-f ... ources-say

Still, it reveals that Golub is still set on converting Price Chopper to "Market 32" but doesn't have the assets to pull it off, that they could sell for $1B (which if I recall from an earlier article, felt like that was a relatively lowball offer). That being said, I can imagine Golub shedding some Price Chopper stores for cash to convert others, and there are some that mingle around the southern New York area where ACME territory ends and Price Chopper territory begins.

Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Posted: January 26th, 2017, 9:22 pm
by cathandler
pseudo3d wrote:They called off the acquisition talks. Probably for good reason on both sides.

http://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-f ... ources-say

Still, it reveals that Golub is still set on converting Price Chopper to "Market 32" but doesn't have the assets to pull it off, that they could sell for $1B (which if I recall from an earlier article, felt like that was a relatively lowball offer). That being said, I can imagine Golub shedding some Price Chopper stores for cash to convert others, and there are some that mingle around the southern New York area where ACME territory ends and Price Chopper territory begins.
I thought the $1B figure being floated was without the real estate, which might have made some sense in terms of valuation. Food Trade News paints a pretty bleak picture at Golub Corp, where market share is sliding and the Market 32 conversions aren't paying off. Not an attractive situation for a would-be suitor to get involved in. I don't see the Albertsons IPO being any more attractive than it has been since 2015 when the idea was first floated, either.
http://best-met.com/news/albertsons-rep ... e-chopper/

Re: Price Chopper/Market 32 for sale

Posted: January 26th, 2017, 9:59 pm
by pseudo3d
The Market 32 conversions remind me of Safeway's Lifestyle initiative, but that way just leads to disaster. Safeway's intent was to remake the chain with a new image, but that turned out to be just "expensive", and in the process, got rid of their Chicago division (Dominick's), half of their Eastern division (Genuardi's), their Canadian division, and ultimately sold the company. So much for that.

Golub needs new leadership that can save their company without some uneconomical "chain makeover", though I don't think Albertsons would be the one that can do that.