Over the last year, prices for groceries are up 13%. Meanwhile, the price of food at restaurants has increased more slowly at 8.5%. Why? Restaurants are a highly-competitive industry. The grocery industry, on the other hand, has been consolidating. The total number of grocery stores in the United States "
Well first, thank you for this exhaustive investigation. I hope the current administration will continue to challenge this monopolistic activity. This is one of those areas of our economy that needs comprehensive and modern legislation backed by well funded agencies and knowledgeable staff. I think that most of the political awareness of us all is spent on the current nonsense. Yes the current nonsense is serious but it takes all the oxygen out of the room. For the media it is just not “sexy”. I despair, but please keep unearthing these less sexy stories that are nevertheless of profound impact.
if Biden is a friend of labor here's a chance to prove it. i worked for albertsons some time ago, long enough to secure a small monthly pension....i wonder if that will go away? old jos albertson believed in paying his help a living wage. when i worked for them they were self-insured and employees didn't pay any premiums for health insurance. then they brought in a former GE guy with his six-sigma shit. to get the stock price up they started taking away benefits to improve the bottom line......then eventually the sale to Cerberus, that three headed dog has hollowed out the rest and now just a carcass remains.
"Surrounded by food but food insecure." Such depressing imagery conjured up by looking past Kroger's profits to the pay of its workforce. What makes this all the more disheartening is that it's not like people can necessarily simply boycott Kroger either. There's a good chance a Kroger or Albertsons store is in the only nearby option in some places. This sadly feels like a microcosm of what is going on across industries across America.
We’ve really come a long way from the break up of AT&T. This is bad for business and bad for consumers. This whole industry should be broken up rather than consolidated.
One more bit of malfeasence to add. Cerberus (a capital management firm) owns the top 5 medications for high blood pressure and heart disease. Now look at the sodium content of some of their house brands (the cheapest ones) and think about it. Get em coming and going eh?
Oh my God.. don’t get me started on these corporate grocery games! Great exposé here.
I just can’t believe Kroger’s ‘good’ intentions for lowering prices. This basically admits they have control over them, are responsible, and that they have latitude to change that. That this merger is the answer to lower costs and help eliminate food deserts. Well, I call bullshit. It’s going to take a literal act of Congress to pry corporations from their ill gotten over-inflated profits from which principals will siphon whatever they can while they can. And we’ve known since 2019 Kroger doesn’t share well, it’s workers chronically underpaid and left fairly defenseless during the start of the Covid pandemic, overworked and exhausted as those with kids shut from school turned in their aprons and fled for home. Kroger gave them “raises” at the start and then took them away earlier this year when Covid seemed manageable. These are just some of the results at the lowest tiers of behemoth grocery stores. It’s come to the point that anything corporate related is poisoned-by lack of oversight & character, and can’t be trusted to serve anyone but themselves & shareholders even though their entire being depends on the buying public.
On Saturday, I went to a huge Cineplex to see the new Spielberg movie—past the once-excellent smaller theater that was swallowed up by a realtor, past my old favorite discount clothing store now closed by private equity, to one of the surviving branches of a larger grocery chain now controlled by private equity. Not far away, someone just bought an apartment overlooking Central Park for $350 million. If you see the old West Side Story movie, you get a picture of what the neighborhood used to look like. What a lot of middle class people can't see is that we're being leap-frogged over by people who don't have the slightest concern for the average food budget or the wages needed to attain it. I'd rather not fund their lifestyle.
In nature, when deer or moose grow sick, wolves prey upon them and they are killed and consumed. This can help preserve the rest of the deer or moose population if the ones culled are suffering from contagious diseases which might infect the rest of the flock.
We humans, however, have imagined that we have risen above such barbaric behavior. We rightfully value the life of other humans and spend a great deal of time and energy seeking to restore to health those who have diseases or conditions that threaten their lives.
It's been claimed that "corporations are people," but they don't behave as if they were ethical or moral entities. They behave as if they were guided by the "survival of the fittest" principles of the most savage animals. As "people" far too many hold themselves to absolutely NO moral or ethical standard except profit gained "by hook or by crook."
It would be, especially in the case of private equity firms, far more accurate to say, "private equity firms are vicious, rabid predators," claiming to be improving the health of struggling corporations, but in reality, constantly looking for the next victim they can kill and consume.
When such vicious animals threaten our communities, they are trapped, hunted down and killed in order to protect the people and animals of that area. Why do we allow private equity firms to act as if they were the most vicious, predatory animals in existence, to damage, kill, and consume other corporations but fail to also see them as dangerous, evil predators?
Why do we leave them unscathed?
In nature, this would be the equivalent of allowing a vicious animal predator to move about our neighborhoods and prey upon our pets, our children, our weaker adults and our older folks without any attempt to stop them because some of us were afraid of them, and others of us admired what amazingly large, powerful animals they had become.
It's far beyond time we take these predators down by whatever means necessary, because when we think about it carefully we realize what kind of "people" they are: psychopathic serial killers.
Kroger had to be goaded to treat employees well during the pandemic. Kroger has a union that basically sucks, too. My youngest son worked there. He was off sick, unpaid.
When he got his pay check with reduced hours he received 3 bucks. The union took the rest.
This really resonates with me as a lifetime ago, I was working in marketing at a grocery-focused startup and we were acting as agency of record for Safeway/Albertsons. Even back then I was amazed as the scale of about a dozen regional grocery chains they owned. When I saw this Kroger news when it came out I was flabbergasted at it's impact to the scale of stores and worried in my own mind about the ongoing employee and customer impact of prices and acting as something that I'd argue does constitute a monopoly only trying to drive more money into the hands of shareholders.
Thanks for highlighting this, along with all of the previous work you've done to help highlight the terrible ways grocery employees are treated by their leadership.
Well first, thank you for this exhaustive investigation. I hope the current administration will continue to challenge this monopolistic activity. This is one of those areas of our economy that needs comprehensive and modern legislation backed by well funded agencies and knowledgeable staff. I think that most of the political awareness of us all is spent on the current nonsense. Yes the current nonsense is serious but it takes all the oxygen out of the room. For the media it is just not “sexy”. I despair, but please keep unearthing these less sexy stories that are nevertheless of profound impact.
This merger should not be allowed. It really doesn't get more complicated than that.
if Biden is a friend of labor here's a chance to prove it. i worked for albertsons some time ago, long enough to secure a small monthly pension....i wonder if that will go away? old jos albertson believed in paying his help a living wage. when i worked for them they were self-insured and employees didn't pay any premiums for health insurance. then they brought in a former GE guy with his six-sigma shit. to get the stock price up they started taking away benefits to improve the bottom line......then eventually the sale to Cerberus, that three headed dog has hollowed out the rest and now just a carcass remains.
Somehow FOOD, life essentials, and PRIVATE EQUITY don't seem to mix. Imagine.
"Surrounded by food but food insecure." Such depressing imagery conjured up by looking past Kroger's profits to the pay of its workforce. What makes this all the more disheartening is that it's not like people can necessarily simply boycott Kroger either. There's a good chance a Kroger or Albertsons store is in the only nearby option in some places. This sadly feels like a microcosm of what is going on across industries across America.
We’ve really come a long way from the break up of AT&T. This is bad for business and bad for consumers. This whole industry should be broken up rather than consolidated.
One more bit of malfeasence to add. Cerberus (a capital management firm) owns the top 5 medications for high blood pressure and heart disease. Now look at the sodium content of some of their house brands (the cheapest ones) and think about it. Get em coming and going eh?
Time to change the law on monopolies. There’s too much wriggle room for lobbyists and corrupt politicians.
Oh my God.. don’t get me started on these corporate grocery games! Great exposé here.
I just can’t believe Kroger’s ‘good’ intentions for lowering prices. This basically admits they have control over them, are responsible, and that they have latitude to change that. That this merger is the answer to lower costs and help eliminate food deserts. Well, I call bullshit. It’s going to take a literal act of Congress to pry corporations from their ill gotten over-inflated profits from which principals will siphon whatever they can while they can. And we’ve known since 2019 Kroger doesn’t share well, it’s workers chronically underpaid and left fairly defenseless during the start of the Covid pandemic, overworked and exhausted as those with kids shut from school turned in their aprons and fled for home. Kroger gave them “raises” at the start and then took them away earlier this year when Covid seemed manageable. These are just some of the results at the lowest tiers of behemoth grocery stores. It’s come to the point that anything corporate related is poisoned-by lack of oversight & character, and can’t be trusted to serve anyone but themselves & shareholders even though their entire being depends on the buying public.
Perhaps some day we can have a party that represents the middle and working classes.
Until we do, people like Trump will always be a danger.
Hello, Antitrust Department? Anybody there?!?
On Saturday, I went to a huge Cineplex to see the new Spielberg movie—past the once-excellent smaller theater that was swallowed up by a realtor, past my old favorite discount clothing store now closed by private equity, to one of the surviving branches of a larger grocery chain now controlled by private equity. Not far away, someone just bought an apartment overlooking Central Park for $350 million. If you see the old West Side Story movie, you get a picture of what the neighborhood used to look like. What a lot of middle class people can't see is that we're being leap-frogged over by people who don't have the slightest concern for the average food budget or the wages needed to attain it. I'd rather not fund their lifestyle.
The decline you describe has been visible to me every time I have visited a Kroger’s store.
In nature, when deer or moose grow sick, wolves prey upon them and they are killed and consumed. This can help preserve the rest of the deer or moose population if the ones culled are suffering from contagious diseases which might infect the rest of the flock.
We humans, however, have imagined that we have risen above such barbaric behavior. We rightfully value the life of other humans and spend a great deal of time and energy seeking to restore to health those who have diseases or conditions that threaten their lives.
It's been claimed that "corporations are people," but they don't behave as if they were ethical or moral entities. They behave as if they were guided by the "survival of the fittest" principles of the most savage animals. As "people" far too many hold themselves to absolutely NO moral or ethical standard except profit gained "by hook or by crook."
It would be, especially in the case of private equity firms, far more accurate to say, "private equity firms are vicious, rabid predators," claiming to be improving the health of struggling corporations, but in reality, constantly looking for the next victim they can kill and consume.
When such vicious animals threaten our communities, they are trapped, hunted down and killed in order to protect the people and animals of that area. Why do we allow private equity firms to act as if they were the most vicious, predatory animals in existence, to damage, kill, and consume other corporations but fail to also see them as dangerous, evil predators?
Why do we leave them unscathed?
In nature, this would be the equivalent of allowing a vicious animal predator to move about our neighborhoods and prey upon our pets, our children, our weaker adults and our older folks without any attempt to stop them because some of us were afraid of them, and others of us admired what amazingly large, powerful animals they had become.
It's far beyond time we take these predators down by whatever means necessary, because when we think about it carefully we realize what kind of "people" they are: psychopathic serial killers.
Kroger had to be goaded to treat employees well during the pandemic. Kroger has a union that basically sucks, too. My youngest son worked there. He was off sick, unpaid.
When he got his pay check with reduced hours he received 3 bucks. The union took the rest.
This really resonates with me as a lifetime ago, I was working in marketing at a grocery-focused startup and we were acting as agency of record for Safeway/Albertsons. Even back then I was amazed as the scale of about a dozen regional grocery chains they owned. When I saw this Kroger news when it came out I was flabbergasted at it's impact to the scale of stores and worried in my own mind about the ongoing employee and customer impact of prices and acting as something that I'd argue does constitute a monopoly only trying to drive more money into the hands of shareholders.
Thanks for highlighting this, along with all of the previous work you've done to help highlight the terrible ways grocery employees are treated by their leadership.