Hints and tips:
...Despite the brutal economics, private equity has minted fortunes in the grocery business. KKR’s controversial 1986 buyout of Safeway eventually netted that firm $7bn in deal profits....
...In 2014, the portfolio of grocers, named Albertsons, acquired Safeway for $9.7bn, a deal it financed with nearly $8bn debt....
...The Boise, Idaho-based group, which includes supermarket chain Safeway, received a lukewarm reception to its initial public offering in June 2020....
...The group took its biggest swing in 2015 when Albertsons swallowed supermarket chain Safeway and its 1,325 stores for nearly $10bn....
...In its deliberations three years ago, the CMA cited a forecast that the discounters Aldi and Lidl would have 14 per cent of the UK grocery market by 2023....
...Eventually the group acquired the rest of Albertsons as well as the national chain Safeway....
...With private equity cresting a wave of cheap money, the blockbuster grocery buyout was back. First, TDR Capital and the billionaire Issa brothers bought Asda for £6.8bn in 2020....
...“It was part of the hypermarket revolution,” said Simon Laffin, who was finance director at Safeway in the late 1990s....
...And 30 years ago, the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its chronicle of the horrors inflicted on terminated workers at Safeway, a grocery chain....
...San Francisco-based Instacart currently uses more than 500,000 gig workers to fulfil online orders at well-known grocery chains such as Safeway and Walmart....
...Instacart, which derives most of its revenue from grocery shopping at larger chains such as Walmart and Safeway, also had an 8 per cent share of sales from smaller stores....
...The San Francisco-based company currently uses more than 500,000 gig workers to fulfil online orders at grocery chains such as Safeway and Walmart....
...“What I like is if you go to [the grocery chain] Draeger’s or Safeway, if you get USDA Prime, that shit’s delicious....
...Albertsons, which owns chains including Safeway, operates in one of the few sectors that benefits from the coronavirus pandemic....
...But a 2003 proposal to acquire Safeway, which would have given Asda more scale and exposure to the south of England, was rejected by competition regulators....
...It bought Safeway for about $9bn in 2014. The group carries net debt of $6.7bn....
...Asda’s share of the UK grocery market is now about 14.5 per cent, down from a peak of almost 18 per cent in 2013....
...The group, which includes the Safeway supermarket chain, will sell 50m shares at $16 each when the stock lists on Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the sale....
...Beyond Meat is present in several US chains including Kroger and Safeway in the US....
...The company also distributes packaged products through retailers Whole Foods and Safeway, among others....
...Grocery retailers are also fighting tough competition from low-cost supermarkets Aldi and Lidl....
...the aggressive expansion of German discounters Aldi and Lidl — whose combined UK market share is now around 15 per cent — has altered the UK food retail landscape since Wm Morrison announced a bid for Safeway...
...It also said it was making progress on the revamp of many of its stores, and on increasing its focus on the sale of groceries and chilled products....
...Consolidation in the grocery industry has become a focus for many executives in the sector after Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017....
...When Morrison acquired Safeway in spring 2004, the last big consolidation in the sector, it was compelled to sell 53 of Safeway’s 479 stores — a process that took until the second half of 2005....
International Edition