Wait…What Store Am I In?

Here we go again.

I spent 30 years in the grocery industry, starting in SoCal with Lucky Stores. Lucky was bought in 1988 by American Stores, which in turn sold in 1999 to Albertsons. After a disastrous name change (not my idea), I moved to Boise and spent seven years running advertising for the entire company. It was sold in 2006 to Supervalu, a Minnesota-based wholesale group, which split it into three parts.

The day we were pulled into a meeting room and informed about the coming strategic review is a vivid memory for me. Virtually every person in that room (the entire marketing department) was gone within two years. That’s when I got out. Those who didn’t leave then found themselves in Minnesota without a job along with several hundred others when Supervalu sold off the pieces.

One of the parts (the “old” Albertsons spinoff) later came back from the dead, bought back some of the divested stores, and ultimately bought Safeway (still with me?).

Today the “new” Albertsons announced it is launching a “strategic review.” In other words, the whole thing is up for sale, altogether or in pieces. Every employee is now on notice that their jobs are up for grabs, and all bets are off.

The grocery industry is full of these stories, starting with A&P (which is no longer around); the list of defunct banners is legion. One company has some strong growth, buys another, crashes and burns, sells everything, and the cycle repeats. It’s as if no one remembers that the last ten times this happened it didn’t end well except for a few of the execs with lots of stock options and golden parachutes. Everyone else gets hosed.

If you’re connected with this mess, I wish you the best. It will be a long, painful journey with an as-yet unknown outcome, except that lots of people will have their lives turned upside-down.