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bfrog

Nothing good is going to come from this, what amounts to grocery store monopoly.

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The real cartel is in the grocery suppliers. Grocery stores all get their food from the suppliers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_Food_Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core-Mark

These are the people all the farms sell to.

funny enough PFG just acquired Core-Mark

Er, wow! Is there any competition beyond those two?

Monopoly? I thought so too, until I found out that Walmart is the largest grocer. This is a merger of #2 and #3 (at least in the West - Safeway (Albertsons) isn't even #3 nationwide).

Safeway is under the Albertsons umbrella already. https://www.safeway.com/about-us.html

True. I said Safeway because that's the brand they use where I live.

Here in FL there is a Publix on every corner.

If this merger goes through it will result in a grocery store chain that is more than 3 times the size of Publix (in store count).

An oligopoly is not much better.

> Walmart is the largest grocer.

I rarely shop at Walmart, for a number of reasons, but on a couple occasions I've picked up some milk at Walmart, because I needed some and wasn't near my other grocery stores. Never again though. The last time was ridiculous: Walmart marked up every brand of milk to absurd prices much higher than other grocery stores, except for their "store brand" milk, which wasn't cheap either. I didn't even bother getting a full gallon, just the smallest I could find and got the hell out. I couldn't imagine shopping there every week.

I do grocery shopping for the family and for reasons I have to shop at Kroger, Walmart, Target, and Aldi. Walmart far and away has the lowest prices against a consistent basket of goods. Kroger will only beat it on a loss leader. And it’s not just ten or fifteen cents: Regular purchases are dollars cheaper at Walmart.

Maybe they make it up in milk? I can't speak about their other grocery prices, but the milk was ridic.

The effects are local, though. The existence of Walmarts somewhere doesn't affect people living in Seattle, for instance, since there are no Walmarts within the city. We have 16 Kroger-owned stores (QFC and Fred Meyer), 15 Albertsons-owned stores (Safeway), and no other "normal" grocer chains (there's Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, etc.)

They're going to create a lot of shareholder value.

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