Former Alpha Beta Riverside, CA

[Allan]

I have a few questions about a former Alpha Beta location on 8616 California Ave. in Riverside, Ca. The building is now occupied by a Maxi Foods store but what I was wondering is what was it before a Maxi Foods, I know that American Stores bought Alpha Beta and then They were bought by Albertson's but I am not sure what the Alpha Beta became after it was bought and the Alpha Beta co. ceased to exist. Any help would be appriciated. The Alpha Beta store number is 38.

[luckysaver]

American Stores sold their Alpha Beta division as part of their merger with Lucky between 1988-1990, together with several Lucky, Star Markets, and other minor assets. Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies acquired AB and merged it with his subsidiary Food4Less Holdings Inc (Food4Less conventional, Food4Less Warehouse, Falley's, Boy's, Viva). AB continued to operate most stores with a new look from 1990 to 1995 under Food4Less. After that AB ceased operations as Burkle merged AB with Ralphs Grocery Co (Ralphs, Cala Bell, Crawford, Hughes, PriceRite). Ralphs still maintains AB as a subsidiary (Alpha Beta Company) that holds the AB trademark and runs their La Habra Bakery operations for Kroger Manufacturing.

luckysaver

[Groceteria]

For clarification, American Stores was required to divest most Alpha Beta stores in 1990, all of them Southern California locations, as a result of its 1988 acquisition of Lucky Stores. Burkle's entity bought the majority of these stores, but some were sold to other operators, and American was allowed to retain some stores, which were folded into Lucky.

Most of the Northern California Alpha Beta stores were retained by American and were placed under the Lucky banner in 1988, as Alpha Beta had a much smaller market share up north, so there was less of an anti-trust issue there.

There are pages on both chains within this site:
http://groceteria.com/lucky/
http://groceteria.com/alphabeta/

That said, I have no idea about this specific location.

[runchadrun]

According to the liquor license records the liquor license was transferred from the Alpha Beta on California St to a Food 4 Less at 3900 Chicago Ave on 12/1/1994. Those stores are 7 miles away but in the wild and wooly world of getting a liquor license it was probably more profitiable to shut down a smaller store with a license and transfer it to the larger F4L store since by then they were all owned by Yucaipa. (I once interviewed someone for a job who at one time worked as a liquor license broker. Only a limited number of new licenses are issued every year but licenses can be brokered and it's a rather profitable business. So if you have one to spare, hang onto it.)

Maxi Foods LLC has held the liquor license for the California St location since 8/20/1998. I have no idea what the store was in the intervening years.