Well, let us talk about a mega merger in the works because sometime in the near future, your favorite grocery store might be undergoing some big changes. You've likely seen the headlines here. A proposed merger between the giant grocery chains, Kroger and Albertsons. Well, in the northwest Kroger owns Fred Meyer and QFC and Albertson's owns Safeway. Those companies are trying to sell off nearly 600 of their stores nationwide in order to get federal approval to merge. It is all because of antitrust laws. Basically, the laws are in place to keep one company from getting too big and then driving up the prices. So Albertsons and Kroger agreed to their merge back in October 2022. It is a deal worth $24.6 billion and crucially, it would give them about 13% of the American grocery market. The company said they need to merge in order to better compete against the likes of Costco Amazon and Walmart, which by the way is the biggest seller of groceries in the country and holds a 22% share of the US grocery market. But in February of this year, the federal government said, hold on a minute. A merger between Kroker and Albertson's would create a huge company and the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC filed a lawsuit to stop it by the way, that lawsuit was filed in Oregon. So all of this is going to play out right here. And Suzanne Stevens, editor of our news partner, the Portland Business Journal has been watching it all play out when you bring two Behemoths like that together, they are going to be antitrust concerns. The thinking is that uh the merger of two Behemoths like that means less competition in the market. That will mean higher prices, which are not good for consumers, not great for employees often and not great for suppliers and other kind of stakeholders around uh those companies. So that's why the Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved and put a hold and try and filed a lawsuit to block the merger. So what do you do in response? Well, the companies are now offering up 186 Safeway, QFC and Albertsons stores across Oregon and Washington. We've got the full list on kgw.com. You can see if your store is on there. They would all be sold to a company that is based in New Hampshire called CNS Wholesale Grocers. If you've never heard of it, you're not the only one CNS Wholesale Grocers is a much smaller company. And if this deal is approved would more than triple the size of its grocery portfolio right now, they actually don't have any brick and mortar stores on the west coast taking on all of these new brands, um and managing them, the logistics of managing those that the ramping up that that company is going to have to do on the management side, the hiring, it's going to have to do the expertise. It's going to need, need to manage what you know, is going to be also a huge grocery rebrand across the country is another, you know, issue to be concerned about. That's, that's not easy to do to ramp up that quickly. We've seen it uh as you know, covering business, we look at expansions of companies all the time. Slow and steady is often the way to make it happen. This is, this will not be slow and steady when it comes to CNS Warehouse in the South and Midwest. You might be familiar with Piggly Wiggly, their chain of grocery stores that are actually owned by CNS, although the majority of them are independently operated franchises. So does that mean that your local Safeway might eventually become a piggly wiggly uh bottom line too soon to tell the sale offer includes the branding for QFC and CNS has indicated in California and other states that it intends to keep the Albertson's name on those stores. As for the Kroger Albertsons merger of the Elephant in the Room, a hearing is set for next month in Federal Court in Portland, we'll be sure to keep you posted as this process develops.
