Albertsons Companies history

New stores were opened in neighboring towns to the west: Nampa, Caldwell, and Emmett, before Pearl Harbour in late 1941.

In 1945, Albertsons Corporation was formed with six state-of-the-art supermarkets and sales approaching $3 million.

By 1947, the chain had six stores operating in Idaho and had established a complete poultry processing operation.

The first Tom Thumb store opens in August 1948 at 6909 Preston Road in Dallas.

In 1949 the Dutch Girl ice cream plant opened in Boise, and Albertson's adopted the Dutch Girl as its early trademark.

In 1951, Albertsons opened its largest store, a whopping 60,000 square feet of retail space.

In 1957 the company built its first frozen foods distribution house, which served its southern Idaho and eastern Oregon stores.

The company also went public in 1959 and with that capital began to expand its markets aggressively.

Offers stock to the public to fund expansion; operating 62 stores in four states by 1960

In 1961 Albertson's expanded into Wyoming by acquiring three grocery stores in Casper, and the following year Albertson's opened its one-hundredth store.

By 1963, Albertsons was celebrating the opening of its 100th store, in Seattle, Washington.

In 1964 operations expanded into California with the purchase of 14 supermarkets belonging to Los Angeles-based Greater All American Markets.

In 1965, another California operation, Samrau & Sons (with their "Pay Less" grocery store, though Albertsons continued to operate under this name for several years) was acquired.

Randalls had been a Houston store since 1966 and was a Houston market leader for years until exterior competition from Kroger, Albertsons, and H-E-B combined with interior mismanagement from Safeway reduced its store count to a fraction of what it had been.

In 1967 the company purchased eight Colorado supermarkets from Fury's Inc., a Lubbock, Texas concern.

In 1969, Albertsons partnered with Skaggs Drug Centers, owned by The Skaggs Companies, Inc., to create the first combination food/drug stores, first in Texas.

In 1970, however, the company pioneered a unique and exceptionally profitable concept in supermarket design.

Albertsons recognized the need for company-owned support units and in 1972 purchased a wholesale company in Boise.

In 1973, Albertsons opened its first distribution center in Brea, California.

Another purchase in 1974 was Monte Mart, an early discount store/grocery store with four stores.

In 1975, sales topped the $1 billion mark for the first time.

It was during 1976 that the corporation slowly began to phase out its conventional markets.

Despite Albertson's objections that the suit was baseless, the settlement, reached in 1977, required Albertson's to divest of Mountain States and placed a five-year ban on any further grocery acquisitions in southern Idaho or eastern Oregon.

Albertsons bought Fazio's Shopping Bag in 1978 from Fisher Foods, adding 46 stores in Southern California.

In 1979 Albertson's took the "bigger is better" concept to the drawing boards again and introduced its first warehouse stores.

In 1981, Albertsons entered the states of Nebraska and South Dakota.

In 1982, a 371,000-square foot full-line facility opened in Denver, Colorado.

In 1983 these units accounted for only one-third of the chain's 423 stores but were the source of 65 percent of its profits.

Jewel-Osco was the flagship of Jewel Companies, which Skaggs/ASC had bought it in 1984.

Vons also included Pavilions, a more upscale format developed by The Vons Companies in 1986, though had become more or less indistinguishable from Vons by the time Albertsons bought Safeway.

In 1987, a 230,000 square foot expansion is added to the building.

Lucky had been purchased by 1988 by American Stores, which had locations in both Southern and Northern California, known for its reliable everyday low prices, with many stores having pharmacies inside (branded as Lucky Sav-on) and being open 24 hours.

In March 1989, Albertsons opened its 500th store, in Temecula, California.

The expansion of Albertson's distribution network, combined with new computerized inventory and checkout scanners, enabled the chain to begin to handle its own distribution in 1990.

Many of the stores had been opened as Skaggs Albertsons originally (later turning into "Skaggs Alpha Beta" under American Stores ownership) but by 1991 had been rebranded as Jewel-Osco.

In 1992, Albertsons bought the stores American Stores (formerly Skaggs Drugs Cos.) had in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida.

Additionally, a store in Bellmead, Texas closed that year after having only been opened in 1993.

The company continued building its distribution system, with a new, one-million-square-foot center in Plant City, Florida--a facility dedicated to reviving its struggling 74-unit Florida operation--opening in early 1994.

By mid-1996, with the opening of a center in Houston, Albertson's had a total of 12 distribution centers.

In 1997, it purchased three stores from Randalls, in College Station, Round Rock, and Pasadena.

In 1998, the company continued to push into new markets with new acquisitions.

Star Market of the Jewel Cos. alumni had been integrated into Shaw's in 1999 with many of its stores rebranded, but still had stores with that name.

Around the time of the completion of the merger, King resigned his executive positions to "pursue other opportunities," with Michael initially assuming his responsibilities; in March 2000 Peter L. Lynch, who had been a senior executive at American Stores, was named the new president and COO.

"closing division offices." pr newswire, 13 march 2002.

Another new development, launched in the fall of 2003, was a store-within-a-store initiative designed to make the company's stores more of a one-stop shopping destination.

All told, these moves were aimed at paring annual operating costs by $750 million by the end of 2004.

Albertsons' declining fortunes were somewhat obfuscated by the Shaw's purchase (which increased its revenue, store count, and employee count), but by 2005 it was clear that Johnston's initiatives had failed.

On June 6, 2006, only one week after Albertsons LLC was created, the company announced its intent to close 100 Albertsons stores by August 2006, including all but two Super Saver stores.

On June 12, 2007, Albertson's LLC agreed to acquire all Raley's locations in New Mexico.

2008 also brought the sale of Albertsons' lone South Dakota and Nebraska stores to Nash Finch.

In August 2009, the distribution center and division office closed and the 26 remaining stores moved to the Southwest division.

While "Jewel-Osco" functionally replaced the regular Jewel name in common parlance, up until 2010, the stores had almost completely different operations with separate merchandising, employees, and budgets, just under one roof.

The Oklahoma stores were sold to Associated Wholesale Grocers associates while the Austin stores were sold to H-E-B. With the closures, only four stores south of the Dallas–Fort Worth area existed in Texas, all of which were closed or sold by December 2011.

On February 23, 2013, AB Acquisition announced it would split operations of the newly combined company into eight divisions: Northwestern, Intermountain, Southern California, Southern, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Shaw's, and Southwestern, and in March 2013, the deal was officially closed.

On March 6, 2014, Cerberus (parent company of Albertsons) announced it would purchase Safeway for $9.4 billion in a deal expected to close in the 4th quarter of the year.

The first to be branded as such opened in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in January 2015.

In late 2016, it was announced that Andronico's in the San Francisco area would be acquired as well.

When the first store reopened in February 2017 under the ownership of the Northern California division, it was still bannered as Andronico's due to an issue in obtaining local permits but the other stores were able to reopen as Safeway Community Markets.

On August 8, 2018, Rite Aid announced that the plan had failed to please shareholders and the proposed acquisition would be canceled.

Sankaran became CEO in April 2019.

In October 2020, Albertsons submitted a winning bid for the Kings Food Markets/Balducci's chain.