Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday sued to block the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, two of the nation’s largest grocery chains.
In the suit filed in King County Superior Court, Ferguson argued that the $25-billion deal would harm consumers and raise prices, The Seattle Times reported. Kroger and Albertsons have more than 300 locations in the state and account for more than half of its grocery sales, according to the suit.
“This merger is bad for Washington shoppers and workers,” Ferguson said in a news release Monday. “Shoppers will have fewer choices and less competition, and, without a competitive marketplace, they will pay higher prices at the grocery store.”
Kroger owns so many other grocery chains that I kind of assumed Albertson’s was already one.
Albertsons is the same they have like 14-15 brands they bought out. So these two merging would be a huge market share of grocery stores.
Kroger typically just operates one chain per region, which was a local chain they bought out for expansion. They don’t have multiple stores in an area that compete with each other or have different names.
Seattle area we have qfc, Metro market, and Fred Meyer who are all Kroger brands. To be honest I thought Safeway was part of Kroger as well but just learned they are owned by Albertsons.
Yeah if this goes through there’s not going to be any choice left for groceries near me. We already only barely have a choice here this merger would be bleak
Winco, Costco, PCC, Whole Foods (yay amazon), and all the Asian places like H Mart and Ranch Market. Probably only applies to the I-5 corridor from Tacoma to Everett.
There’s also central market (now Town and Country Market(s))
Huh, so they might do that in some places. What I meant is that I’m not familiar with them doing things like operating comparable stores in the same area. I guess I recall QFC vs. Fred Meyer from when I lived in Portland, and QFCs were small while Fred Meyers is set up like Target - large selection of non grocery items, and huge stores. In Colorado they have City Markets (small) and King Soopers (large) but City Market is up in small towns in the mountains and Western Slope, none in Denver, and King Soopers is all over Denver, none afaik in the smaller cities.
I used to live in Denver and it was King Soopers there. Where I live now there aren’t any Kroger stores but there is an Albertsons on every other block and I felt like IMO King Soopers was better so I wasn’t concerned about it. But WA state is absolutely right when the 2 are actually in competition with each other, it’s a bad move to allow it. I felt that way when Albertsons and Safeway merged because they were basically the only stores in town. They ended up being required to sell the Safeway stores here, they weren’t allowed to acquire them.
There are several QFCs and Fred Meyers near each other in Washington that are also near a Safeway or Albertson. This would absolutely result in the closure of a lot of stores.
I am not from that region, so all I can think of when I hear the name Fred Meyer is Jello Biafra mentioning it and someone yelling out, “FRED MEYER!” during the spoken word Night of the Living Rednecks track on The Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death album.
I would love to know why that guy was so excited about Fred Meyer.
I isn’t as big as it used to be, but was actually a pretty big grocery chain in its heyday. I suspect that in the case of the song, it was a recognizable name and probably flowed off the tongue somewhat.
It wasn’t a song, it was a spoken word bit. It was a very weird moment. All I can think is it was someone who worked there and was like “yeah! He mentioned the place where I stock the vegetables!”
Oh I just caught that someone (in the audience) is who yelled Fred Meyer. That’s pretty hilarious. I can’t think that it actually meant anything unless there was one nearby and that was some code to their friends to meet there.
Fry’s, in AZ, which surprised me.