this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
485 points (99.2% liked)

News

23611 readers
4471 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FlyingSquid 91 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Kroger owns so many other grocery chains that I kind of assumed Albertson's was already one.

[–] joekar1990 21 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] zeppo 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] tyrant 31 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Soggy 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

There's also central market (now Town and Country Market(s))

[–] zeppo 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] nbafantest 2 points 11 months ago

Some Safeways do sell Kroger brand things, so it's actually very confusing

[–] stoly 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] FlyingSquid 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] stoly 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] FlyingSquid 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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!"

[–] stoly 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] oDDmON 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fry’s, in AZ, which surprised me.

[–] nbafantest 2 points 11 months ago

All krogers stores are set up basically the same. When I moved from Phoenix and frys to Los Angeles and Ralph's, the stores I used were exactly the same.