Acme Markets

Long-standing complaints against the Media Shopping Center and its seven stores are expected to be the main issue at a Zoning Hearing Board meeting in the municipal building at 7:30 p.m. Monday. Township Solicitor Frank Daly said the owner, Cedar Grove Associates, and its tenants, including Acme Markets, have asked for the hearing to appeal citations issued to them in March for alleged code violations. Residents living behind the shopping center, particularly in the area of Mulberry Lane and Surrey Road in the Bowling Green development, have complained about noise, odors, and unsightly conditions at the rear of the stores.

Acme supermarkets in Morrisville, Sharon Hill, and Glassboro, N.J., are to be shut down by December as part of a broader cost-cutting move in which corporate parent Supervalu Inc. will close 60 stores across the nation, the Minnesota-based company said Wednesday. A fourth Acme in Stevensville, Md., is also among those being shuttered as an "underperforming or nonstrategic" store, as are 22 Save-A-Lot locations. The announcement comes as Supervalu tests the market for potential buyers of some or all of the retail- and wholesale-grocery corporation, which consists of Malvern-based Acme Markets, Chicago's Jewel-Osco supermarket chain, a food distribution segment, and other retail grocery chains.

Acme Markets Inc., whose hangarlike grocery stores are known familiarly to the region's shoppers as "The Ack-a-me," is up for sale. While the 275-store chain is profitable, Acme's parent, American Stores Co., of Salt Lake City, said yesterday that it wanted to sell the chain to pay off debt and concentrate on running stores in other regions of the country. Acme, which has its headquarters in Malvern and has 25,000 employees, had sales last year of $3.3 billion and profits of $97.1 million, according to American Stores, the nation's largest supermarket operator.

The future of thousands of Acme Markets workers was on the minds of union leaders Thursday after corporate parent Supervalu Inc. shook up shareholders with plans to "explore strategic alternatives" — corporate parlance for measures that often include courting buyers for the company. The $36 billion corporation, which has been struggling beneath the weight of $6.3 billion in debt, also said it would suspend its quarterly dividend to shareholders and cut $250 million in costs over the next year and a half, beyond the $75 million it hopes to slash by the end of February.

Acme Markets told workers this week that it will close five unprofitable Philadelphia-area stores by the end of February, three in South Jersey and two in Pennsylvania - locations that union officials said had been hurt by Wegmans and other competing chains. The decisions "were made only after careful evaluation and were guided by what is best for Acme's long-term growth and success as a whole," parent company Supervalu Inc. said in a statement. The sites are in Limerick, Wayne, Cinnaminson, Millville, and Moorestown.

"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?"

Union officials yesterday accused Acme Markets of refusing to compromise as a midnight contract deadline approached, but they urged 4,500 area supermarket employees to report to work today and stay on the job until a membership meeting Wednesday at the Spectrum. The announcement by the United Food and Commercial Workers, made yesterday afternoon in front of an Acme store in King of Prussia, temporarily averted a threatened work stoppage today at 41 stores across Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The parent company of Malvern-based Acme Markets said yesterday management was considering the sale of the region's biggest grocery chain. "While the chain is performing extremely well, the company believes the sale of Acme Markets would be in the long-term interests of American Stores and its shareholders," said J. L. Scott, chief executive officer of American Stores of Salt Lake City, Utah, which owns the Acme chain. Acme is Philadelphia's sixth-largest employer, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal's "Book of Business Lists.

Persuading Acme Markets to agree to move its corporate headquarters to Great Valley Corporate Center in Malvern was no easy task. Jill Felix, regional partner with Rouse & Associates, developers of the 650-acre corporate park, worked with Acme for a year before the supermarket chain signed an agreement of sale for an 8.63-acre tract at the intersection of Swedesford Road and Valley Stream Parkway. Acme's quest for a new corporate headquarters began about two years ago, when it became obvious that its shrinking administrative staff filled only half of the 11-story building it owns at 15th and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia, said Walter P. Rubel, counsel for Acme Markets.

Workers for Acme Markets Inc. poured into the Spectrum last night to reject a controversial contract, paving the way for a potential July 10 work stoppage at 41 Southeastern Pennsylvania stores. Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 turned down management's take-it-or-leave-it offer in a 1,607-87 vote. If Acme implements the rejected terms when the 4,500 workers' current contract expires July 10, union officials have pledged that members would not report to work.