Acme Markets

Acme Markets Inc., the Philadelphia area's dominant supermarket chain, will be acquired by Albertson's Inc. in an $11.7 billion deal to buy Acme's parent, American Stores Co. If approved by shareholders and regulators, the sale would make Albertson's, of Boise, Idaho, the nation's largest supermarket and drugstore operator. The proposed merger is part of a wave of retail consolidation and is likely to spur other national pairings, industry analysts said. Albertson's said it would not change the name of the 177-store Acme chain, which has operated in Philadelphia for more than 100 years and is known locally as "The Ack-a-me.

Acme Markets Inc. may have stopped the decline in market share that has plagued the region's largest grocery-store chain for more than a decade, an executive at its parent company said yesterday. Peter Lynch, president and chief operating officer of Albertson's Inc., said that, as Acme stores have been renovated and expanded, the group's share of the supermarket pie in the Philadelphia area increased in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 31. Lynch ran the Acme division in the late 1990s, when it was owned by American Stores Inc. Albertson's bought American Stores in 1999.

Robert W. McCahan, 71, of Radnor, a retired executive of Acme Markets and a community volunteer, died of a lung infection Monday at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Mr. McCahan retired as executive vice president of Acme Markets in 1982 after 28 years of service. He started with the chain in 1954 as a trainee in Philadelphia and in 1965 was made assistant vice president and then vice president of the company's Baltimore operations. He returned to the area in 1974 as corporate vice president and in 1981 was named executive vice president of administration and treasurer.

Acme Markets corporate parent Supervalu Inc. on Tuesday announced it would cut 800 jobs across the country by the end of its fiscal year, on February 25, as part of ongoing cost-reduction efforts. The Minneapolis-based supermarket retail operator and wholesaler said that, "in general," store-level associates such as cashiers, clerks and department managers - employees in direct contact with customers - would not be affected by the move. A small number of positions targeted for elimination are within the Acme Markets division, whose regional administrative offices are in Malvern.

Acme Markets, the Philadelphia-based food store chain, remained at the top of the supermarket heap for the second year in a row, according to a survey by Food Trade News, a publication that follows the industry. The survey, which covered 45 counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, ranked the top 20 supermarkets, which controlled 77.2 percent of the market and had estimated retail food sales in 1985 of $11.3 billion. Acme Markets' 214 stores had sales of $2.682 billion, for a regional market share of 23.66 percent, according to the magazine, which is published in Ardmore.

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.

Acme Markets president Dan Sanders is leaving the Malvern, Pa.-based division of Supervalu Inc. as part of a series of corporate reassignments at three of the company's supermarket divisions. Sanders, who is becoming president of Albertsons Southern California, will be replaced by Keith Wyche of Supervalu's Cub Foods chain, the company announced Monday. In leading Cub Foods since 2010, Wyche has overseen a 67-store chain with locations in Minnesota and Illinois. Sanders is replacing Sue Klug, who is leaving Albertsons and the Minneapolis-based corporation this month.

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.

It was a side of Bob Martucci that his wife, Kim, had never seen in all their years of marriage. A towering man reduced to tears. "He's not pulling it together," Kim Martucci said of her husband, a 34-year Acme Markets Inc. veteran. He had been fired from his South Jersey produce-manager job after taking a pair of $9 reading glasses off a rack at the market and using them to beat an inventory deadline the day before President Obama's inauguration. "It's concerning me," Kim Martucci said, her voice dissolving into tears.