Company type | Retailers' cooperative |
---|---|
Industry | Wholesale Distributor |
Founded | 1940 |
Headquarters | 1850 West 2100 South Salt Lake City, Utah [1] United States |
Key people | David Rice CEO & President [2] |
Brands | Macey's, Associated Fresh Market, Dan's Fresh Market, Dick's Fresh Market, Lin's Fresh Market (Utah) |
Revenue | US$1.6 billion (2007) |
Number of employees | 1,400 |
Website | afstores.com |
Associated Food Stores is an American retailers cooperative that supplies nearly 450 independently owned retail supermarkets throughout Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, and Wyoming.
The headquarters for Associated Foods is located at 1850 W 2100 South in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. [1] The company's president and CEO is David Rice. He replaced Bob Obray following Bob's passing in August 2022. [3] [4] It reported over US$1.6 billion (equivalent to $2.351 billion in 2023) in sales during fiscal year 2007 and is currently the fifty-sixth largest grocery retailer in the country by volume [5] with 23% of its total sales coming from its corporate stores.
Associated Food Stores was founded in 1940 by Donald P. Lloyd, president of the Utah Retail Grocers Association along with 34 Utah retailers. Concerned with the effect that large corporate stores would have on small independent retailers, he felt the only way these small businesses could survive is if they united and faced the competition as one, therefore increasing their collective buying power. He convinced 34 stores to donate $300 (equivalent to $6,524 in 2023) to help build an independent and "associated" warehouse. [2]
In 1999, Associated Food Stores purchased Utah grocery store chain Macey's. In August 2017, Macey's broke with 70-year tradition by deciding to open some of their stores on Sundays. [6]
In 2009, Associated Food Stores purchased 34 Albertsons stores in Utah from Supervalu Inc. [7] The stores were renamed Associated Fresh Market (more commonly known as just "Fresh Market"). As of June 2017, however, only 17 of the originally purchased locations were still under the Fresh Market banner, the rest having been either closed or sold. [8]
In 2017, two Fresh Market locations in Murray and Holladay were re-branded as Macey's. [9] [10]
As of 2021, three Macey's locations have closed: the Logan (400 North), Clinton, and the Midvale/Sandy locations.
In 2022, a former Fresh Market in American Fork became a Macey's.
As well as supplying independent grocers, Associated Food Stores also owns several corporate stores under five different names, operating a total of 41 locations.
Popular stores owned and/or supplied by Associated Food Stores:
Associated Food Stores was a primary distributor of the popular store brand Western Family owned by Western Family Foods before being replaced by Food Club and other Topco brands. This also includes Better Buy, Shurfine , Shursavings, and Marketchoice brands. [15]
Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs were the names of a pair of chain pharmacies that operated in the United States. Osco Drug was founded by the Skaggs family. Alpha Beta grocery store was purchased by American Stores in 1961. Skaggs Drug Centers bought American Stores in 1979 and assumed the American Stores name. Sav-on Drugs was a California-based pharmacy chain that was acquired by Osco's parent company in 1980. Both Osco and Sav-on stores eventually came under the ownership of American Stores, then Albertsons, and finally SuperValu before the stores were sold off.
WinCo Foods, Inc. is a privately held, majority employee-owned American supermarket chain based in Boise, Idaho, with retail stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington. It was founded in 1967 as a no-frills warehouse-style store with low prices. The stores feature extensive bulk food sections.
Acme Markets Inc. is a supermarket chain operating 161 stores throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, the Hudson Valley of New York, and Pennsylvania and, as of 1998, is a subsidiary of Albertsons, and part of its presence in the Northeast. It is headquartered in East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania, near Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb.
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, delicatessen, floral and pharmacy, as well as Starbucks coffee shops and fuel centers. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons after being acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the Western United States, with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.
SuperValu, Inc., was an American wholesaler and retailer of grocery products. The company, formerly headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, had been in business since 1926. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Natural Foods (UNFI).
Fred Meyer is an American chain of hypermarket superstores founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, United States, by Fred G. Meyer. The stores operate in the northwest U.S., with locations in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. The company was acquired by Kroger in 1998, though the stores are still branded Fred Meyer. The chain was one of the first in the United States to promote one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, bank, clothing, jewelry, home decor, home improvement, garden, electronics, restaurant, shoes, sporting goods, and toys. The Fred Meyer division is headquartered in Portland.
Smith's Food and Drug, or simply Smith's, is an American regional supermarket chain that was founded by Lorenzo Smith in 1911 in Brigham City, Utah. Headquartered in Salt Lake City with stores in Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, Smith's became a subsidiary of Kroger in 1998.
Raley's Supermarkets is an independent, family-owned American grocery and retail technology company headquartered in West Sacramento, California. Raley's was founded in 1935 by Thomas P. Raley in Placerville, California.
A warehouse store or warehouse supermarket is a food and grocery retailer that operates stores geared toward offering deeper discounted prices than a traditional supermarket. These stores offer a no-frills experience and warehouse shelving stocked well with merchandise intended to move at higher volumes. Unlike warehouse clubs, warehouse stores do not require a membership or membership fees. Warehouse stores can also offer a selection of merchandise sold in bulk. Typically, warehouse stores are laid out in a logical format; this leads customers in a certain way around the store to the checkout. For example, as one enters the store they are directed down an aisle of discounted products. From there the layout could then lead to the fresh produce department, followed by the deli and bakery departments at the back of the store. Often, certain customer service niceties, like the bagging of groceries, are not done by store employees; this helps reduce overall cost. Many warehouse stores are operated by traditional grocery chains both as a way to attract lower income, value conscious consumers and to maximize their buying power in order to lower costs at their mainstream stores.
Lucky Stores are a pair of American supermarket chains plus a defunct historical chain. The original chain was founded in San Leandro, California and operated from 1935 until 1999. The Lucky brand was revived circa 2007 and is now operated as two distinct chains: Albertsons operates Lucky in Utah and Save Mart Supermarkets operates Lucky California in Northern California.
Super Saver Foods was an American price-impact grocery franchise. It was owned by Albertsons LLC. It was a no-frills grocery store where the customers bagged their own groceries at the checkout.
American Stores Company was an American public corporation and a holding company which ran chains of supermarkets and drugstores in the United States from 1917 through 1998. The company was incorporated in 1917 when The Acme Tea Company merged with four small Philadelphia-area grocery stores (Childs, George Dunlap, Bell Company, and A House That Quality Built) to form American Stores. In the following eight decades, the company would expand to 1,575 food and drugstores in 38 states with $20 billion in annual sales in 1998.
Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. is an American discount closeout retailer consisting exclusively of supermarket locations that offer discounted, overstocked, and closeout products from name-brand and private-label suppliers. The company has stores in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Delaware.
Buttrey Food & Drug was a chain of grocery stores founded in Havre, Montana, and formerly headquartered in Great Falls, Montana. The company was founded in 1896 as a chain of department stores branded Buttrey Department Store. The company opened grocery stores in 1935 and sold off its department store division following a 1966 acquisition by The Jewel Companies, Inc. Jewel was sold to American Stores in 1984, and later Buttrey was sold off as a separate company in 1990. The company was sold to its main competitor, Boise, Idaho–based Albertsons, in January 1998 and the Buttrey name was retired. At that time, Buttrey was operating 43 stores in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota with a revenue of US$391.4 million.
Grand Central was a chain of discount department stores based in Salt Lake City, Utah. At its peak, the chain operated over 30 stores in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming. It was acquired by Portland, Oregon-based retailer Fred Meyer in 1984, which rebranded most of the Grand Central locations to Fred Meyer.
Ridley's Family Markets is a family-owned chain of grocery stores based in Jerome, Idaho, United States, with locations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.
The Save Mart Companies is an American grocery store operator founded and headquartered in Modesto, California. It owns and operates stores under the Save Mart, Lucky, and FoodMaxx brands. The stores are located in northern and central California and northern Nevada. The company is owned by the Jim Pattison Group.
Harmons Grocery Company, doing business as Harmons Neighborhood Grocer, is an upscale supermarket chain located within the state of Utah, United States, with 20 stores throughout the Wasatch Front and in the St. George area.