Albertsons owns the Safeway grocery chain, and Kroger owns Fred Meyer stores. On Tuesday, the companies jointly announced which Alaska stores would be sold off when the country’s two biggest grocers merge.
The Albertson’s owned Alaska stores, which go under the Carrs, Safeway, or Eagle names are located in Anchorage, Girdwood, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks, North Pole and Juneau. None of Kroger’s 11 Fred Meyer stores in Alaska are proposed for divestiture.
For Fairbanks, where two Safeway stores are down or across the street from Fred Meyer stores, it means they will go on with business as usual under the new name of C&S.
That’s OK with Paul Denton, Manager of University Safeway in Fairbanks.
“So, really, for Fairbanks, nothing will change other than who owns the three Safeway stores. Because we're still gonna be open, and all three of us will just switch over to C&S. So, we will still be in competition with Fred Meyer's, we'll just be owned by a different company,” Denton said.
When the deal was first announced in fall of 2022, the companies said that Albertsons would close many of the superfluous stores, like where a Safeway is near a Fred Meyer. But to try to secure antitrust approval of the merger, Kroger and Albertsons worked with C&S Wholesale Grocers (C&S), which today operates just 23 supermarkets and a single retail pharmacy, and announced last fall the chain will buy several retail hundred stores, including the ones in Alaska.
A promise made in the proposed merger is that no grocery store employees will lose their jobs.
“No, they're not closing any stores. Nobody's losing a job. Everything stays in place, ‘cause that was the first condition,” Denton said.
Many Safeway and Carrs employees in Alaska are members of United Food and Commercial Worker's Union Local 1496, which initially opposed the merger fearing it would eliminate ve competition for workers, threatening wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Congressmember Mary Peltola and the rest of Alaska's congressional delegation has questioned the merger.
The Federal Trade Commission sued to stop the merger in February, saying the proposed deal will eliminate competition between Kroger and Albertsons, leading to higher prices for groceries for millions of Americans. Their complaint says the loss of competition could also lead to lower quality products and reduce the number of grocery stores.
If the deal is allowed, Kroger would buy Albertsons for $24.6 billion, and the new company would be as big as Walmart and Amazon, with nearly 5,000 stores across the US. Kroger would also have a huge database of national consumer behavior data, which some analysts are calling the real prize because it would generate billions in revenue in new retail companies.
The FTC is analyzing the store list the companies released this week. On the website challenging the merger, it describes the divestiture as “a hodgepodge of unconnected stores, banners, brands, and other assets that Kroger’s antitrust lawyers have cobbled together,” adding that C&S will face significant obstacles stitching together the stores into a functioning business—let alone a successful competitor for the combined Kroger- Albertsons mega-company.
