Chains Expanding Far From Their Home Turf

This is the place for general and miscellaneous posts on topics which might extend past the boundaries of any specific region.

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Terry K
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Post by Terry K »

This brings up an interesting off-shoot of this thread (please feel free to split it as needed)

We all know of Farmer Jack buying those Safeways in SLC, but what is the most bizarre move of a chain out of its home region y'all have ever seen? Also, didn't FJ attempt an expansion into Virginia and the DC market? (I swore they bought a few Safeways in VA)

Albertsons' expansion to Florida seems bizarre since it was the only Albertsons namesake operation outside of the west until the ill-advised Tennessee expansion occurred. Of course, as I recall, more or less all of the Albertsons' expansions of the late 90s have been sold off or closed. (I'm not including ASC in that)

Jewel also comes to mind expanding to Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona and Texas. Of course some of that comes from the forced rebrand from Skaggs/Alpha Beta.

Or perhaps Raley's expansion to New Mexico via the purchase of those Lucky/Albertsons spinoffs too.

Of course, its worth noting that Food 4 Less started in Kansas, and Burkle
moved it to California in the 80s. (The Kansas Stores have since been divested to Associated Wholesale Grocers)
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Dave
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Post by Dave »

In Richmond and probably other parts of Virginia, the entry of Farmer Jack wasn't an expansion but a rebranding of former A&P and Pantry Pride stores (A&P bought the Richmond area Pantry Prides and ran them under that banner, just to confuse Steve Landry). Before they pulled out, A&P rebranded as Super Fresh and Farmer Jack in the area before they pulled the plug on their operation.
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Post by Steve Landry »

lol

:)
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Post by TheStranger »

You could say that Safeway buying Sanitary in the mid-1930s (to give them the Washington DC presence) is the first and most classic example of extraterritorial expansion...though I do wonder if they started up stores in NYC on their own, or also via acquisition.
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Post by jamcool »

Or Fry's moving into AZ in the early 60s..their home base was way up in the Bay Area
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Post by Groceteria »

Safeway entered New York via the acquisition of Daniel Reeves stores in 1941. Most of their early geographic expansion was through acquisition.
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Post by TheStranger »

Groceteria wrote:Safeway entered New York via the acquisition of Daniel Reeves stores in 1941. Most of their early geographic expansion was through acquisition.
Of the divisions created in the first few years of Safeway, I think the only one not created by acquisition or from the original Seelig/Skaggs merger was Canada (in 1929)...
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Post by krogerclerk »

A&P in Southern California and Seattle, far from its base primarily east of the Mississippi. The New Orleans operation is now distant from its NYC-Philly-DC concentration as is Farmer Jack in Detroit, though the two divisions were until recent times contigious to other A&P operations.

Kroger had Market Basket in Southern California until the early 80's.

Fazio's was also in Southern California in the early 70's, distant from its Notheast Ohio base.

Grand Union had operations in South Florida and Puerto Rico, away from its Mid-Atlantic base. Mergin with Colonial Stores gave some connectivity from Virginia to Northern Florida. Houston area Weingarten's also became part of Grand Union.

Albertson's entry into Florida was quite distant from its nearest stores in Texas at the time. By the early 2000's, stores were as close as Pensacola, Fl and Southern Mississippi.

Fox Supermarkets in Southern California came into the Food Fair empire in the 1960's.

Lucky had acquired Kash 'n Karry in Florida , Big Bear in Seattle and Eagle Food Centers in Central Illinois and nearby parts of Iowa and Indiana.

The aquisition of Steiden Stores in Louisville,KY in the 1940's by Winn&Lovett, was the genesis of the Louisville division of Winn-Dixie, and was always somewhat separated from the more southerly operations of WD.

Food Lion expanded into Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana in the early 90's skipping Western Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas by doing so.

Schnuck's skipped a lot of less populated hinterlands between Memphis and St. Louis by acquiring Seesel's from Albertson's in 2001.
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Post by rich »

The moves of Grand Union & Food Fair into Florida were natural extensions of going where their shoppers retired.

Winn-Dixie's Nashville stores (supplied out of Louisville) were their attempt at bridging their empty territory.

Fisher Foods (parent of Fazio) also owned Dominick's in Chicago--far from Cleveland.

Allied had an odd collection of separated markets--Detroit, Cleveland (briefly with Foodtown), St. Louis (Bettendorf-Rapp), and OKlahoma/Kansas (Humpty & Ideal). Their K-Mart stores also turned up in places removed from their main territory.

Colonial's Albers stores in Cincinnati, Columbus and nearby cities were far from the rest of the chain.

Acme, of course, had Alpha Beta in California.

Eagle had some stores in Wisconsin before the Lucky acquisition.
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Post by rich »

Other geographic oddities:

Kroger in the Twin Cities (a very small, ground up operation that began in the early 60s and lasted until the early 80s; not sure of the supply base) and their shortlived and rather small DC operation (originally the Foodtown chain, plus stores they added).

Loblaw (Buffalo) bought Better Markets in the LA area in the mid-60s and operated them until the mid-70s. I think that chain was based in the 'burbs South or West of LA, although Loblaw eventually expanded it to Glendora and one or two other places in the San Gabriel Valley. It never had more than 15-25 stores. Shortly after Loblaw (Canada) bought out the minority interest in National Tea (which had absorbed Loblaw-U S around 1970), they began selling unproductive assets like the Youngstown/Pittsburgh division. Somewhere in there, the LA stores were sold, although I've never found out who bought them.
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Texas leaps of faith......

Post by wnetmacman »

It should be pointed out that many of the eastern chains that have jumped geographic regions to go to Dallas/Ft. Worth have failed.....in some cases miserably.

Food Lion opened almost 100 stores in 1991 in the region from D/FW to Shreveport. Then came the Dateline story...which couldn't have hit them harder. The stores had barely been open 2 months, and business dropped to zero....overnight. By 1997 they were all gone. Some are still grocery stores, but most are not.

Winn Dixie probably held on the longest (mid 70s-2002) with the Buddies acquisition. Buddies was a neat store. You could walk through the frozen food section and see lawnmowers immediately adjacent. They had a huge hardware section. When W-D bought the stores, they remodeled them to their standard floorplan. While it worked for them for some time, they never had the sales that W-D wanted out of them. Marketplace replacements didn't do so well as Kroger or Albertsons. The closest that 2 stores in the company ever got was Natchitoches, LA and Nacogdoches, TX, from the New Orleans and D/FW areas. Over 100 miles of separation, not really counting the division HQ distances. There was a small swath of people who didn't know (or care) who WD was. It was a major part of their downfall.
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Post by runchadrun »

rich wrote:Loblaw (Buffalo) bought Better Markets in the LA area in the mid-60s and operated them until the mid-70s.
Loblaw bought Better Foods, Inc, a 10-store chain, in November 1965. I couldn't find any other information about this chain in the Times archive.

I did find separate 1977 auction notices for locations at 130 S. Central, Glendale, and 16100 S. Lakewood, Bellflower, so I wonder if they just liquidated the chain.
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Post by krogerclerk »

Jewel acquired Buttrey in the upper Rockies and operated the chain from at least the 60's until the mid-90's, when it was spun off by then parent American Stores. The chain was reunited with Jewel under Albertson's in 1999.

Hannaford aquired a small eastern Carolina chain and began building Hannaford stores in North Carolina and Virginia in the early 90's, the divesture was forced after Food Lion's parent, Delhaize took over Hannaford.

Also, didn't Colonial acquire an Indianapolis chain before acquiring Albers?
It was close to the same time frame IIRC.

We could also count European chains acquisitions as moves far from home turf. Ahold started with BiLo, then First National(I think First National and Pick'n Pay had merged by then, also a gap), Giant-PA, Tops, then Stop'n Shop and Giant-Md around the same time, finally Bruno's.

Delhaize started with Food Lion, pickin up Kash'n Karry and Hannaford in the 90s.

Promode owned Red Food and Houchens, selling Red Food to Ahold, which merged the chain into BiLo which had a small due to the sparsely populated Blue Ridge Montains between Greenville, SC and Chattanooga.

Sainsbury owned Shaw's and Giant-MD(preferred stock only I think), before selling Giant to Ahold and then Shaw's to Albertson's.

Safeway once had operations in the UK, Germany, Australia, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait(liscenced in the last two), in addition to its Canadian stores and its interest in Mexican chain, Casa Ley. Safeway is the only American chain to have had an international presence beyond Canada and Mexico.
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Post by Groceteria »

Dave wrote:In Richmond and probably other parts of Virginia, the entry of Farmer Jack wasn't an expansion but a rebranding of former A&P and Pantry Pride stores
They did this in Raleigh NC as well, in 1996, shortly before leaving the region entirely.
rich wrote:Allied had an odd collection of separated markets--Detroit, Cleveland (briefly with Foodtown), St. Louis (Bettendorf-Rapp), and OKlahoma/Kansas (Humpty & Ideal). Their K-Mart stores also turned up in places removed from their main territory.
Interestingly, in 1975, some of Allied's Kmart stores in NC were briefly (six months or less) rebranded under the Wrigley name they used in Detroit. Not sure if this happened anywhere else, but in NC, it seemed to be a last-ditch effort before they were sold off to other operators.
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Post by tesg »

I was always amazed by some of the moves Albertson's (former) Omaha division made. When I moved to North Dakota in 1986, they had a single store in Grand Forks, and a single store in Sioux Falls, SD, and that was pretty much it outside of Omaha.

Those two stores eventually closed because of their isolation.
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