American Stores

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American Stores was the name of a United States chain of supermarkets. It was formed in 1917 when Acme Markets merged with four other Philadelphia area grocery chains into American Stores. American Stores would grow to 1,700 stores in 40 states with $15 billion in sales.

[edit] History

[edit] 1960s-1980s

In 1961, the company acquired California's Alpha Beta stores. The company itself was acquired in 1979 by Skaggs Drug Centers, which took the American Stores name, and the company located its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company expanded further by acquiring in 1984 the Jewel supermarket chain, which had owned Osco since 1961. It consolidated its hold in California by buying Lucky Stores in 1988, also in California, and then divested Alpha Beta, Buttrey Food & Drug, and Star Markets. A period of consolidation and debt reduction began after the Lucky acquisition with sell-offs occurring into the 1990s. Its total holding of stores drops from 1,848 in 1990 to 1,695 in 1996.

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.

[edit] Albertsons

In 1992, Albertsons purchased 74 Jewel-Osco combination stores in Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas from American Stores, including all 53 Jewel-Osco stores in Texas. Albertson's would increase its store count in the Dallas-Fort Worth area by adding 41 Jewel-Osco stores to its 19 stores already in operation. These were also stores that only months before were rebranded from Skaggs Alpha Beta to Jewel-Osco.

Six years later, the company ceased to exist when American Stores was acquired by Albertsons. All of their former divisions except for Lucky still exist (Albertsons rebranded Lucky because both chains had had stores in the same region, then Supervalu revived the name in 2006). However, Albertsons has preserved the Acme, Jewel, Osco and Sav-on namesakes. Freestanding Sav-on or Osco stores will be converted into CVS/pharmacy stores. However, Supervalu will retain the trademarks because the pharmacies in their grocery stores are either branded Sav-on Pharmacy and Osco Pharmacy.