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Many of us are old enough to recall a grocery chain that ceased to exist roughly 30 years ago- Alpha Beta. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane….
Stores under this brand existed between 1917 and 1995. Former Alpha Beta stores have all been purchased by other grocery chains and rebranded. Before Alpha Beta became the actual name, it was the name of a marketing concept used in grocery stores founded by Albert and Hugh Gerrard, which involved organizing the stores in alphabetical order. The Gerrards applied this idea to their flagship grocery store, Triangle Grocerteria, in 1915. Then in 1917, they opened the first Alpha Beta store in Pomona, California. The chain remained independent for half a century.
The company was bought by American Stores in 1961. Skaggs Drug Centers bought American Stores in 1979 and assumed the American Stores name. Combined food and drug stores in Alpha Beta territory were re-branded as Skaggs Alpha Beta. In 1984, American Stores bought The Jewel Companies, Inc., which had owned Osco Drug since 1961. In 1984, all 34 Alpha Beta stores in Arizona were sold to ABCO Foods, and the stores continued operating under the Alpha Beta name. In Tucson, Alpha Beta-branded stores changed to ABCO-branded stores around 1989.
Some Alpha Beta stores carried more than the customary supermarket merchandise. For example, in 1980, in Cupertino, which is in the middle of Silicon Valley, the Alpha Beta store sold Bohsei color TVs for under $200, Atari 400 and 800 computers, and other non-traditional goods.
In September 1991, Skaggs-Alpha Beta re-branded its 76 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas as Jewel-Osco, in an attempt to unify some of its subsidiaries under one nationally recognized name. Months later, Albertsons acquired some of the stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
Most remaining Alpha Beta stores in the United States were taken over by the Lucky brand, which in turn became Albertsons, then Lucky again. Most stores in Southern California were renamed to Ralphs after Yucaipa, owner of Alpha Beta, bought the Ralphs grocery chain.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Alan Hamel became the television spokesman for the Alpha Beta grocery stores in California. Although the chain used various slogans such as “You Can’t Lose” and “The Savings Don’t Stop”, every commercial featuring Hamel ended with him saying to the audience, “Tell a friend.”
In 1994, Yucaipa Companies, then owner of the Alpha Beta chain in southern California, purchased Ralphs Grocery Company and renamed itself after Ralphs. All existing Alpha Beta stores in the state were rebranded as Ralphs or Food 4 Less, and the Alpha Beta name ceased to exist by September 1995.
Everything else is just history….
