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BOISE, Idaho — Safeway Inc. and Albertsons LLC said last month that they would jointly sell 168 supermarkets to four buyers, pending Federal Trade Commission approval.
Safeway Inc. and Albertsons LLC said last month that they would jointly sell 168 supermarkets to four buyers, pending Federal Trade Commission approval.
The FTC ordered the stores sold as part of the proposed buyout of Safeway, the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain, by New York private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP. Cerberus plans to merge Safeway with its other grocery store assets, which include Albertsons.
Haggen Inc. of Bellingham, Wash., is buying 146 Vons, Pavilions, Albertsons and Safeway stores in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. If OK’d by the FTC, the acquisitions will boost Haggen’s market share by 800%, and its workforce will grow from 2,000 to 10,000.
Other prospective buyers are Associated Wholesale Grocers Inc. of Kansas City, Kan., which is buying 12 stores in Texas with Minyard Food Stores Inc. of Carrollton, Texas; Associated Food Stores Inc. of Salt Lake City, a buyer of eight stores in Montana and Wyoming; and Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu Inc., buyer of two stores in Washington.
It’s a bold move for Haggen, which operates upscale Haggen Food & Pharmacy stores in Washington and Oregon. Sixteen of its 18 stores have pharmacies, but it will have 106 pharmacies by midyear if the FTC approves the deal. Eighty-three of the stores Haggen is buying are in California.
The company was founded 82 years ago in Bellingham by Ben Haggen, Dorothy Haggen and Dorothy’s brother Doug Clark. Dorothy’s sons Don and Rick later ran the company and served as cochairmen. The brothers sold a controlling stake in 2011 to private equity firm The Comvest Group. Don Haggen passed away later that year. In 1989 Haggen became the first grocery store to house a Starbucks coffee shop. Ex-Starbucks chief Jim Donald (a former Safeway executive) was Haggen’s chief executive officer from 2009 to 2011.
