[Phillip Beall]

All,

I am going to periodically post news stories that I think might interest people. I will launch that effort with the public link to the Wall Street Journal article Kroger to Buy Albertsons in $24.6 Billion Deal That Would Create New Grocery Giant. Why that one? Because the Paris Kroger store is old and tired and the topic of local conversation.

Even though it got a bit of a facelift a year or so ago, our local Kroger is no longer really competitive against the bigger stores. Two points illustrate that fact.  1) Does anyone here exclusively grocery shop at Kroger?  I suspect the answer is 100% no.  I could be wrong, so please post if you do not shop at Brookshire’s, Piggly Wiggly or Walmart, but get your groceries entirely from Kroger.  2) Read on and see how competitive Kroger is from a market-size perspective.

From the looks of our local store you would likely never guess that Kroger is the #1 grocer in the United States. Who is #2? From the article above it is Albertson’s. These percentages are for “grocery stores”.  Do we have an Albertson’s in Paris and I overlooked it? Uh, no. For some reason Paris can’t even keep Long John Silvers and KFC stores open…but I digress.  If the US Department of Justice doesn’t put the kibosh on the deal then Kroger and Albertson’s would combined have 13% of the domestic grocery market.  Recall my comment above about the local Kroger not being competitive with the big stores – By comparison how much does Walmart have right now?  22%.  Wow.  The combined Kroger/Albertson’s would be 13% and Walmart is already 22%.  That alone tells me that competition is out of whack somehow…  One man’s opinion.

I found the WSJ article to be quite informative. Kathy and I are voracious news readers.  We subscribe to several news sources and our subscription with the WSJ  includes the ability to invite people to read articles that we find interesting via free links. Please enjoy this article and expect more posts from me in the future.

Best Regards,

Phillip

• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Phillip Beall. Reason: Edited for clarity

[T. Wayne Moore]

Phillip,

I think people shop where they are most comfortable. I think Walmart took a hit in sales for a time when they rearranged the isles moving products around. That being said, we shop at Kroger and Walmart depending on what we need.

[Phillip Beall]

T. Wayne,

Yeah, it drives Kathy and I a little crazy that we oftentimes have to go to Walmart, Brookshire’s AND Kroger to get everything on our grocery list. Kroger is really tired looking and the comment was recently made to me that one of our Club members thought it might actually close. I hope not so I wanted to make sure our members knew that Kroger is both a big dog in the industry and that they are making a run at the #2 grocery operator.

As an aside, I am also thinking that I might just make up a “News” forum section. If I do I’ll move this to there and start posting other news of possible interest to that new location.

Take care,

Phillip

[Phillip Beall]

All,

I just did some digging and moderators can only move items within their forum topic. In this case “General Ragchew”. Or at least that was all that I could find. So, I am going to lock this thread and ask that anyone making posts to the subject please move to the new forum “News”.

Much thanks,

Phillip

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