DC region braces for closure of Shoppers Food stores

[retailisking]

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/03/20/d-c-region-braces-for-closure-of-shoppers-stores.html

[mixedday]

It's hard to keep track of the ownership(s) but Acme (Philly area) was once under SuperValu ownership, that owns Shoppers.

I was reviewing wikipedia and hopefully it is accurate:

For Acme:
In 2006, Albertsons' supermarket holdings were bought by Cerberus Capital Management and SuperValu and divided amongst the two companies, with Acme going to SuperValu. In 2013 Cerberus, which was operating the Albertsons stores it owned under the name Albertsons LLC, agreed to purchase Acme from SuperValu.

In 2015, Albertsons merges with Safeway. So Acme has familial links to Safeway, which is a competitor to SuperValu in the DC market.

Was Safeway not interested in these stores or would it have too much overlap in DC?

[Scrabbleship]

It's hard to keep track of the ownership(s) but Acme (Philly area) was once under SuperValu ownership, that owns Shoppers.

I was reviewing wikipedia and hopefully it is accurate:

For Acme:
In 2006, Albertsons' supermarket holdings were bought by Cerberus Capital Management and SuperValu and divided amongst the two companies, with Acme going to SuperValu. In 2013 Cerberus, which was operating the Albertsons stores it owned under the name Albertsons LLC, agreed to purchase Acme from SuperValu.

In 2015, Albertsons merges with Safeway. So Acme has familial links to Safeway, which is a competitor to SuperValu in the DC market.

Was Safeway not interested in these stores or would it have too much overlap in DC?

It would have too much overlap in the suburbs. The fun thing is once you go beyond Giant and Safeway (and Shoppers) the "competition" in the suburbs varies wildly based on who is and isn't present. Some are stronger on the Virginia side (Harris Teeter, Wegmans), some are stronger on the Maryland side (Weis, what remains of Food Lion, ShopRite's small presence).

The best fate for these is for ShopRite to recruit some co-op owners to expand further into Maryland and into Virginia. It gives them a presence and the fact that Shoppers is UFCW makes any sort of purchase and shutdown problematic and ShopRite would at least be kosher in the eyes of UFCW. After how botched the winding down of SuperFresh's Maryland operations were, it seems like the easiest outcome.

[retailisking]

Shoppers is shutting down their pharmacy operation, with CVS and Walgreens splitting the files. This likely precludes selling any Shoppers units to a supermarket operator that has a pharmacy program, but it could have a beneficial side-effect.
https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/retailers/pharmacy-shutdown-changes-outlook-shoppers-food-sale