Skaggs Companies

Last updated
The Skaggs Companies, Inc.
Industry Retail
Successor American Stores
Founded1915
Defunct1979
Headquarters
Area served
United States
ProductsFood, Prescriptions, Liquor
Subsidiaries Skaggs Drug Centers
Payless Drugs
Osco Drug

Skaggs Companies was the predecessor to many famous United States retailing chains, including Safeway, Albertsons, Osco Drug, and Longs Drugs. The company owned several drugstore chains, but all of them were sold. Skaggs Cos. became American Stores in 1979.

Contents

History

Safeway

The first company was based in American Falls, Idaho, where in 1915 Samuel M. Skaggs founded a grocery store and operated it as Skaggs' Cash Store, which was sold to his son Marion Barton Skaggs. It took the name "Cash Store" as it operated on only a cash basis. With the assistance of his five brothers: Pepper Oscar Skaggs, Aron Sylvester Skaggs, Loronzo L. Skaggs, Samuel Olnie Skaggs, Levi Justin Skaggs, Marion Skaggs grew the chain, operated as two separate businesses, Skaggs Cash Stores (Pepper Oscar Skaggs) and Skaggs United Stores (M. B. Skaggs), to 191 stores by 1920.

In 1921, Marion Barton Skaggs moved to Portland, Oregon, purchased a home in the Alameda neighborhood and established four groceries in town, in part by buying the Freeman grocer and the Java Coffee Company. [1] [2] [3]

By 1926 it had grown to 673 stores, when it merged with Sam Seelig Company (in a deal orchestrated by Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch to form Safeway). Safeway later acquired Pay and Take It Stores from Loronzo L. Skaggs in 1928. [4] Safeway is considered the main successor to Skaggs, and despite the Skaggs Companies later being bought by Albertsons, Safeway was also acquired by Albertsons, thus bringing the Skaggs history full-circle.

Payless Drugs

In 1932 L.J. Skaggs opened Payless Drug Stores in Tacoma, Washington, which soon expanded across the western United States. Some stores were sold to his brother Samuel "L.S." Olnie Skaggs (then an executive at Safeway) along with some colleagues. L.J. Skaggs retained California Pay Less Stores, which became part of Thrifty PayLess, and which are now owned by Rite Aid. The remaining Pay-Less stores were renamed Skaggs Drug Stores in 1948, Skaggs Drug Centers in 1965. In 1969 Albertsons supermarkets and Skaggs Drugs partnered to create combination food and drug stores, a partnership that dissolved in 1977, with assets divided.

Payless of Tacoma would exist in Pierce, Thurston and Kitsap counties as a separate company from Payless/House of Values which was formed in 1973 after Seattle based Gov Mart/Bazzar and House of Values were merged. To separate the two companies (and confusion), the stores remained under the House of Values name before being rebranded as Value Giant. Once Payless of Tacoma declared bankruptcy in 1991, the company was merged with the existing Payless stores from the other company and the Value Giant name was removed for the existing stores.

Early photos of a Payless Drug Store under the ownership of L.J. Skaggs are currently on display at the Albany Regional Museum in Albany, Oregon. The downtown location at 2nd and Broadalbin Streets was later relocated to Santiam Highway during the 1960s.

Osco Drug

Osco Drug traces its history back to 1915 by S.M. Skaggs in American Falls, Idaho as a cash and carry store. His son Lorenzo L. Skaggs, who had been involved in the predecessor to Safeway, founded the Pay-Less chain in 1937 in Rochester, Minnesota. In 1942, these chains merged with others and formed the Owners Service Company, shortened to Osco. In 1961, The Jewel Companies, Inc. acquired Osco Drug Stores. In 1984, American Stores bought Jewel, which had owned Osco Drug since 1961. American Stores was purchased in 1999 by Albertsons. In 2006, Albertsons was broken up and many standalone Osco stores were purchased by CVS Pharmacy. The Osco name remains in place as the drug store component of Jewel-Osco and Shaw's-Osco stores.

Skaggs Drug Centers and American Stores

A former Skaggs Drug Centers store in Missoula, Montana (2006) Osco Drug.JPG
A former Skaggs Drug Centers store in Missoula, Montana (2006)

American Stores, which owned Acme Markets and Alpha Beta, was acquired in 1979 by Skaggs Drug Centers, which adopted the American Stores Company name, and relocated the company headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah.

American Stores was by far the larger organization, with 758 supermarkets, 139 drugstores, 53 restaurants, and 9 general merchandise stores in nine states when compared to the 241 Skaggs stores. Although the resulting entity bore the American Stores Company name, it was controlled by Skaggs management headed by Leonard S. Skaggs Jr. more familiarly known as Sam Skaggs. Stores in several markets having both an Alpha Beta supermarket and a Skaggs Drug Center drugstore presence were combined (or expanded) to combination food and drug stores and re-branded Skaggs-Alpha Beta.

To consolidate the names of some of its subsidiaries under one title with nationwide recognition, American Stores renamed some of its Skaggs Alpha Beta stores to Jewel-Osco in mid-September 1991. American replaced the Skaggs-Alpha Beta name with that of Jewel-Osco on all 76 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas. One year later, Albertsons would buy 74 Jewel-Osco stores (some only months before named Skaggs-Alpha Beta) in Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas from American Stores. American Stores and its subsidiaries would be acquired by Albertsons in 1999.

Skaggs Foundation

Paid for lock to be named in their honor on the Caen flight, Devizes LJSKaggsFOUNDationP1010161.JPG
Paid for lock to be named in their honor on the Caen flight, Devizes

L.J. Skaggs along with his wife Mary Skaggs founded the Skaggs Foundation.

See also

Related Research Articles

Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho.

Jewel (supermarket) American supermarket chain

Jewel-Osco is a supermarket chain in the Greater Chicago area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. Jewel-Osco currently has 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest Indiana. Jewel-Osco and Jewel are currently wholly owned subsidiaries of Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons. The company originally started as a door-to-door coffee delivery service before it expanded into delivering non-perishable groceries and later into grocery stores, and supermarkets. Prior to its 1984 acquisition by American Stores, Jewel evolved into a large multi-state holding company that operated several supermarket chains and other non-food retail chain stores located from coast to coast and had operated under several different brand names.

Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs

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.

Ralphs American major supermarket chain

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Acme Markets American supermarket chain

Acme Markets Inc. is a supermarket chain operating 164 stores throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania and, as of 1999, 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. American supermarket chain

Safeway is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and feature 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 west with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, with its parent company, Albertsons, headquartered in Boise, Idaho.

SuperValu, Inc. is an American wholesaler and retailer of grocery products. The company, headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has been in business since 1926. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of UNFI.

Shaws and Star Market Supermarket chains in New England, United States

Shaw's and Star Market are two American grocery store chains under united management based in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, employing about 30,000 associates in 154 total stores. 133 stores are operated under the Shaw's banner in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont; while Star Market operates 21 stores in Massachusetts, most of which are in or near Boston. Until 2010, Shaw's operated stores in all six New England states, and as of 2017 Shaw's remained the only supermarket chain with stores in five of the six, after it sold its Connecticut operations. The chain's largest competitors are Hannaford, Market Basket, Price Chopper, Roche Bros., Wegmans, and Stop & Shop. Star Market is a companion store to Shaw's; Shaw's having purchased the competing chain in 1999.

Alpha Beta supermarket chain

Alpha Beta was a chain of supermarkets in the United States. Stores under this brand existed between 1917 and 1995. Former Alpha Beta stores have all been purchased by other grocery chains and rebranded.

Vons supermarket chain

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Longs Drugs is an American chain with approximately 70 drugstores throughout the state of Hawaii and formerly in the Continental US.

Lucky Stores American supermarket chain founded in Alameda County, California in 1935. Lucky is currently operated by Save Mart in Northern California.

Lucky Stores is an American supermarket chain founded in San Leandro, California, in 1935. Lucky is currently operated by Save Mart Supermarkets in Northern California.

The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho, came to have an important impact on merchandising across much of the United States. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name was prominent on hundreds of stores throughout the West and Midwest.

Pay Less, PayLess or Payless may refer to:

Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. was a pharmacy holding company that owned the Thrifty Drugs and PayLess Drug Stores chains in the western United States. The combined company was formed in April 1994 when Los Angeles-based TCH Corporation, the parent company of Thrifty Corporation and Thrifty Drug Stores, Inc., acquired the Kmart subsidiary PayLess Drug Stores Northwest, Inc. At the time of the merger, TCH Corporation was renamed Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. and Thrifty operated 495 stores, PayLess operated 543 stores.

American Stores

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 1999. 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.

Dominick's was a Chicago-area grocery store chain and subsidiary of Safeway Inc.. Dominick's distribution center was located in Northlake, Illinois, while its management offices were located in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Star Market was a New England chain of supermarkets based in Greater Boston. It was owned by the Mugar family and started in 1915. The company was sold to The Jewel Companies, Inc. in 1964 and later to Investcorp, which in turn sold the chain to Shaw's Supermarkets. As stores were remodeled, many adopted the Shaw's name, leaving only a handful of Star Market stores operating by the late 2000s. In 2008, Shaw's began to revive the name, a trend which was expedited after the parent company of both chains was sold to Cerberus Capital Management. Today, both Shaw's and Star Market are administered as a single division.

Buttrey Food & Drug American grocery chain

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 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 44 stores in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota with a revenue of $391.4 million.

References

  1. Anderson, Heather (2015). Portland : a food biography. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 174. ISBN   1-4422-2738-9. OCLC   881824352.
  2. "City Gets Chain Stores". Sunday Oregonian. 17 July 1921.
  3. Skagg's Safeway, MLK & Broadway, 1929
  4. Safeway Annual Report 1928, p2