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Albertsons will announce a plan Wednesday to lower prices for thousands of goods at its 222 Southern California supermarkets. The initiative is aimed at regaining budget-minded customers lost to discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. It also comes at a time when Southern California supermarkets, including grocery giants Ralphs and Vons, are moving to compete more fiercely on prices. The chains "are trying to get people back in the stores," said Simeon Gutman, a New York-based analyst at Canaccord Adams, a financial firm with headquarters in Vancouver.

Can't recall the last vanity I've done but I thought this was funny/interesting enough to post one now.

Until now I never understood how Michael Medved could believe in Bigfoot. But seeing is believing. http://www.getdisco.com/getdiscoMain.html Click on the 2nd video on this site to see the irrefutable evidence.

Albertson's selects underperforming outlets in Bay Area - The decision by the owners of Albertsons supermarkets to close 37 underperforming Northern California stores creates another wave of anxiety for the chain's workers, who have been buffeted by fierce competition and wholesale changes in the grocery industry. Some of the workers in stores to be shut will be reassigned if they exercise seniority rights to replace employees at other stores. Others will be laid off. The stores will close by early August. "It's tense at every store, with people concerned about their positions," said Glenda Villalta, 52, a 13-year checker at...

Northern California's food fight is coming to a store near you. It's already hit Mary Thomatos, a loyal Albertsons customer until the chain closed its J Street store near her east Sacramento home last summer. Now the future of the other 25 Albertsons in the Sacramento region is in doubt after their parent company was sold last month. With Ralphs Supermarkets closing eight area stores soon, the grocery landscape is shifting so rapidly that by summer many consumers may no longer recognize their neighborhood store. Such change, those in the industry say, is something most of us should get used...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's largest retailer Tesco has sent an in-house team to the United States to consider a bid for Albertsons (ABS), the American grocery chain with 2,500 stores, the Business paper reported. Earlier this month, Albertsons said it had hired investments bankers to explore its options and would consider putting itself up for sale, with a price tag of $7.6 billion, as it grapples with intense competition from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). Tesco, which reports half-year results this week, has yet to find a vehicle to enter the lucrative U.S. market and is using the team to identify takeover...

Minneapolis-based Target Corp.'s decision this fall to stop allowing Salvation Army bell ringers at its stores has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Lake County Salvation Army. Capt. Diana Williams said she lost three locations with Target's decision, and touched off a search prior to the start of the kettle drive to find replacement sites at other stores. She looked at corporations the Salvation Army already knew would allow bell ringers, and contacted the local stores. The result - seven new sites for a net gain of four. Salvation Army now operates 27 bell-ringer locations in...

<p>Whatever the merits of the legal case California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is pursuing against the grocery stores involved in an ongoing labor dispute, his behavior has suggested that he is a partisan actor rather than a fair-minded advocate of justice. That's not good for the appearance of impartiality that is the foundation of California's legal system.</p>

Grocery Union Threatens Pickets Across U.S., Canada Tue Dec 16, 7:55 PM ET By Sue Zeidler LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Union leaders on Tuesday called for pickets of Safeway stores across North America in support of 70,000 Southern California grocery workers who have been out of work for two months in a contract dispute with Safeway and two other leading chains. Over the next few weeks, the United Food and Commercial Workers union said it would ask consumers not to shop at Safeway stores. Protests could also broaden to include acts of civil disobedience by supporting religious groups, a union...

Markets to close stores on Thanksgiving due to labor dispute ALEX VEIGA Associated Press LOS ANGELES - Doors will be closed Thanksgiving Day at nearly 860 Southern California supermarkets because of the labor dispute between three supermarket operators and some 70,000 striking or locked-out grocery clerks.The chains' stores - Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions and Ralphs - traditionally have opened for business for at least a few hours on Thanksgiving Day. They decided last week, however, not to open during the holiday. The stores will reopen Friday. (snip) The union turned up the pressure on the chains Monday by extending its picket...

Teamsters Join Calif. Supermarket Strike By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writer EL MONTE, Calif. - The Teamsters union said Monday its members will stop delivering groceries to three Southern California supermarket chains where grocery clerks have been on strike or been locked out for more than a month. The move effectively shuts off supplies to Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons stores during the critical Thanksgiving shopping week. The action, taken after the striking clerks moved to expand their picket lines to regional distribution centers, was called a "silver bullet" by Jim Santangelo, president of Teamsters Joint Council 42 in El Monte....

At 1:30 AM KFI radio announced, during their newscast, that Jesse Jackson was going to make an appearance at an Albertson's store in Fullerton. There are two Albertson's in Fullerton, one at Orangethorpe and Euclid and the other on Malvern Ave. west of Bastanchury. The news story did not specify which store Jackson was going to appear at. Nor did they give a time. I will post more information when I become aware of it.

<p>Negotiators for supermarket chains will meet with representatives of grocery clerks today in talks arranged by federal mediators in an attempt to avert a possible strike that could begin as early as Saturday.</p> <p>More than 70,000 supermarket workers across Southern California have been voting this week on whether to authorize a strike against Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons and Vons' Pavilion[s] markets. The results of that voting will be announced this morning. Union leaders and company negotiators will then begin talks this afternoon at offices of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. It will be the first meeting between the sides since a labor contract covering the workers expired Monday.</p>

I thought I would tell a very interesting story that helps prove that liberals are endlessy clueless and endlessly downtrodden and depressed. I work for a certain grocery chain. Yesterday we had a store meeting which was called. We watched an hour's worth of Ed Foreman. Ed is a motivational speaker. Here are his credentials. Read them then I'll go on with the story. FOREMAN, Edgar Franklin, a Representative from Texas and New Mexico; Born in Portales, Roosevelt County, N.Mex., December 22, 1933; Attended the public schools of Portales and Eastern New Mexico University at Portales, 1952-1953; B.S., New Mexico...

<p>IRVINE – A mentally disturbed man wielding a samurai-style sword killed two workers and slashed three other people at an Albertsons before police shot and killed him Sunday.</p> <p>Shoppers and workers screamed as they fled the bloody supermarket rampage wrought by Joseph Parker, 30, a bag clerk tormented by what friends and family described as a history of schizophrenia-induced demons.</p>