[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. (Link fix note – This one will load up, you just need to click the X to view the article.):

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 3 years, 4 months ago by Phillip Beall. Reason: To provide clarification on how to access the article

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