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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

The last time this happened (Albertsons/Safeway), many of my local Albertsons locations were spun out to another company to appease regulators. That company failed almost immediately and Albertsons bought those locations back.

In my area the chain grocers are now Albertsons and Kroger. That’s it.

The regional chain is Stater Bros.

I don’t know if Southern California is an anomaly or not though.

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I was guessing that you were in Oregon or Washington because something similar happened here: a local chain (Haggen) tried to take over a bunch of stores and ended up in bankruptcy.

Trying to take over 5X times as many stores as you were running before is a huge operational challenge. Haggen also alleged bad information from Albertson's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggen

Nope. California, but yes it was Haggen. Thanks for reminding me of the name, I had forgotten it! I remember going there once and being gobsmacked at how expensive the place was. Like they were trying to charge Whole Foods prices for a regular grocery store.

> Trying to take over 5X times as many stores as you were running before is a huge operational challenge.

It reminded me of Frontier (tiny little telco) buying up a huge chunk of Verizon's wireline business in 2009. They still run it, but it's been rough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications#Purcha...

The firm that owned Haggen paid for most of those stores by selling off most of the real estate and sticking the stores with rental payments. As I recall they expanded into CA, AZ, and NV before failing.

I don't have a good timeline in my head but I remember they did a push to make the stores nicer, adding things like a wine bar. And then suddenly they were heading downhill. They had good produce, but I think some of that was turnover. Once the customers moved stores that went away.

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