Acme Markets

Acme Markets intends to build a 1.4-million-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex near Reading, worrying leaders of the union that represents the company's warehouse workers in Philadelphia. Acme, operated by American Stores Inc., has two warehouses in Philadelphia that together employ about 750 in about 1.1 million square feet, according to Jim Brennan, president of the warehouse workers' union, Teamsters Local 169. The local, fearing that Acme plans to move those operations out of the city, will hold an informational meeting this morning at its headquarters.

Acme Markets' corporate parent, Supervalu Inc., completed Thursday the sale of five grocery chains, including Malvern-based Acme, to a group of private-equity firms and real estate investors. The sale price was $100 million and the assumption of $3.2 billion in debt. Operations for Acme, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market stores and related in-store pharmacies were to transfer at 3:01 a.m. Friday to AB Acquisition L.L.C., an affiliate of an investor consortium, former Chrysler owner Cerberus Capital Management L.P. Investors include Philadelphia-based Lubert-Adler Partners, as well as Kimco Realty Corp., Klaff Realty L.P., and Schottenstein Real Estate Group.

The parent company of Acme Markets, the region's largest grocery chain, yesterday named Dan Sanders Acme's new president. Sanders, the former chief executive officer of Texas-based United Supermarkets, will join Acme immediately and replaces Judith Spires, who resigned earlier this month. Supervalu Inc., the Minnesota company that owns Acme, appointed Sanders less than three weeks after Spires announced her resignation effective March 13. Acme operates 124 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, and it has more than 16,000 employees.

For those Phoenixville shoppers who forget what it is their local Acme specializes in, a sign on the building soon will tell them that food can be bought there. The borough's Zoning Hearing Board Wednesday night approved an application by Acme Markets Inc. to install two signs on the front of its new store on Starr Street. The signs, which will read "Food and Drugs" and "Pharmacy," will be placed on either side of the trademark oval Acme sign already at the center of the store's brick facade.

An application for the rezoning of an Acme parcel in Maple Glen could mean a reprisal of a 3-year-old zoning controversy over an adjacent piece of land. The property owned by Acme Markets and bordered by Welsh Road, Norristown Road and Limekiln Pike is zoned for mobile homes. The owners have applied for a commercial zoning so they may build a 58,000-square-foot supermarket on the 17 acres. On the adjacent property, at Welsh Road and Butler Pike, Sal Paone Builders had planned to build a 33-home subdivision on the 29.79 acres - until until Acme announced its plans.

Acme Markets, whose struggling corporate parent rattled shareholders by losing $202 million in its last quarter, was rebuffed this week by local unionized clerks, who rejected an offer to eliminate up to 300 positions through buyouts. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 sent Malvern-based Acme a letter Thursday informing the grocer that Philadelphia-area members had voted "no" to the cash-saving maneuver Wednesday night, president Wendell Young IV said. About 100 of their South Jersey counterparts who belong to another UFCW local accepted similar voluntary buyouts and left their jobs just after Christmas.

The parent company of Acme Markets, the area's largest grocery chain, yesterday pulled the stores off the market, saying the price offered was too low. American Stores Co., of Salt Lake City, said it had been offered almost $1 billion for the chain's 270 stores. But that fell short of the value Wall Street analysts had put on Acme: $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion. American Stores, the nation's largest supermarket owner, cited other factors in its decision to pull Acme off the market.

Two former buyers for Acme Markets Inc. were charged yesterday with accepting a total of more than $2.5 million in illegal payments and kickbacks from vendors who sold products or performed services for the supermarket chain. H. William Johns, 52, of Gibbsboro, the former director of packaging, equipment and supplies procurement, was charged in a federal indictment with accepting nearly $2 million in illegal payments from five Acme suppliers between 1979 and 1985. Dale C. Jacob, 45, of Voorhees,another former buyer, was charged with accepting more than $580,000 in kickbacks from five suppliers between January 1980 and May 1985.

If you live in the region, chances are this woman has fed you. She's Judith A. Spires, president of Acme Markets Inc., and on March 12, the checkout-girl-turned-bigwig will receive the Paradigm Award, an annual tribute to a female chief executive in the region. Spires, 55, has spent 30 years in the grocery business. The Cherry Hill native and daughter of an Acme truck driver was 16 when she took a part-time job at Acme to earn money for college. She oversees 16,000 Acme employees in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

Acme Markets' corporate parent, Supervalu Inc., completed the sale Thursday of five grocery chains, including Malvern-based Acme, to a group of private-equity firms and real estate investors. The price was $100 million and the assumption of $3.2 billion in debt. Operations of Acme, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market stores and related in-store pharmacies were to transfer at 3:01 a.m. Friday to AB Acquisition L.L.C., an affiliate of an investor consortium, former Chrysler Corp.

"I hear they are going to try to operationally run the stores, rather than sell them to a competitor like Kroger or Safeway. That remains to be seen. " - Analyst Michael Keara, Morningstar Inc., on the future of Acme markets, sold by Supervalu Inc. to a group of private-equity firms. "Let's not sit around and wait to be told what to do. Let's build a business. " - Chet Kanojia, founder and CEO, Aereo Inc., a new Internet-based TV service that is moving in to major markets, including Philadelphia, despite uncertainty over accordance with broadcast copyright law. "The key is not to make it a different product, but how do you make it simpler?"

When bankrupt Hostess Brands Inc. declared it would end its bakery business and potentially incinerate thousands of jobs with a liquidation move, I had the sense I had seen this movie already. Just two days before Friday's announcement, which set off Twinkie nostalgia while torching a nationwide strike by Hostess' unionized bakers, I had written a small blurb about another company that had faced precarious talks in Chapter 11 bankruptcy with its unions: The final three Super Fresh stores in the South Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia are being shut down by corporate parent Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., according to the union representing 155 clerks who will lose their jobs.

IN THE REGION VWR buys U.K. lab supplier VWR International L.L.C. , of Radnor, acquired Lab3 Ltd. , a scientific laboratory supplies distributor in Bristol, United Kingdom. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. It's the third acquisition for VWR in 2012, with previous purchases of a lab-supplies distributor in the Czech Republic and a German distributor of clean-room products. The privately held VWR had 2011 net sales of $4.1 billion. - Mike Armstrong   Layoffs by Acme parent Acme Markets owner Supervalu Inc. said it would lay off 700 people at its Shaw's and Star Market supermarkets across New England by Nov. 3 in a cost-cutting move coinciding with ongoing efforts to find a buyer for the debt-addled corporation.

Like many others with property held hostage on New Jersey's storm-ravaged barrier islands, Acme Markets operations honcho Dan Croce had to wait until Friday before gaining access to stores that had been inaccessible on Long Beach Island and in Sea Isle City. When he finally made his way to the supermarkets - with an escort, in the case of badly destroyed LBI - what Croce saw could be described only with a single word: Humbling . Both 20,000-square-foot Acmes had been sacked by floodwaters.

Acme Markets owner Supervalu Inc. on Friday said it would lay off 700 people at its Shaw's and Star Market supermarkets across New England by Nov. 3 in a cost-cutting move coinciding with ongoing efforts to find a buyer for the debt-addled corporation. Hundreds of store-level workers have been laid off over the past two years at the Acme division as well. In recent months, Supervalu has been pursuing buyers interested in pieces or all of the Minnesota-based corporation, which owns grocery chains across the country as well as a wholesale food distribution business.

Acme Markets worked Wednesday to reopen and restore power to 13 stores that had remained shut down at the start of the day, owing to effects of Hurricane Sandy. By evening, only six remained closed, most of them in Shore towns, a spokesman said. Twenty-three other supermarkets were operating on generator power, said Steve Sylven, a spokesman for Acme's corporate parent, Supervalu Inc. The closed stores were in New Britain, Morrisville, Willingboro, Beach Haven, Sea Isle, and Brigantine.

Plans to close three more Acme supermarkets in the region were greeted grimly Thursday by a top union official representing clerks employed by the embattled chain, whose corporate parent announced the cost-cutting moves a day earlier. Underperforming stores in Sharon Hill, Morrisville, and Glassboro are among 60 to be closed in the months ahead by Supervalu Inc. of Minnesota. The move follows the firing of Supervalu's previous chief executive a few weeks ago and parallels ongoing efforts by the debt-saddled corporation to find a buyer for its retail chains and wholesale-distribution business.