PHOTO OF JOE ALBERTSON

Joe ran a tight ship when he was alive. He strived to give customers good service & build clean-attractive stores. Joe has been gone for a while. Today Albertsons is owned today by the Mormon Church! I find it odd that the Church allows booze, smokes and condoms to be sold in their grocery stores.
Anyway...The stores Manager called me and sounded quite defeated on the phone. He had the tone that said "Yeah I agree, but I'm stuck with a bunch of idiots and there is not much I can do about it. This will be my final blog on Albertsons and my beyond horrible experience there....But I will leave you with Joes story which is pretty darn amazing.


Joseph A. Albertson, 86, Creator Of 651-Store Supermarket Chain


By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: January 22, 1993
Joseph A. Albertson, who took a chance on an Idaho grocery store more than half a century ago and parlayed it into one of the nation's largest supermarket chains, died Wednesday night at his home in Boise. He was 86.
The company he created, Albertson's Inc., based in Boise, said only that he had died after a long illness.
Albertson's now operates 651 stores in 19 Southern and Western states and has 70,000 employees. With annual sales of more than $10 billion, it ranks as the sixth-largest food and drug retailer in the country.
Mr. Albertson's own wealth kept pace with the growth of his company. Last fall Forbes magazine estimated that he was the 80th-richest American, with a net worth of $930 million. Started as a Clerk
Mr. Albertson, a native of Yukon, Okla., grew up in Caldwell, Idaho, and started his career as a clerk at a Safeway store there in 1927. He moved up the ranks until he was overseeing 16 Safeway outlets.
Then, in 1939, he pooled $4,000 of his own money with $7,500 borrowed from his wife's aunt and, along with two partners, bought a grocery store in Boise.
That was the start of Albertson's. The company earned $10,000 in its first year and promptly branched out to two other Idaho towns.
Buying out his partners after World War II, Mr. Albertson proceeded to build the company into an empire. A stickler for quality, value and service, he helped introduce America to the concept of a complete one-stop, self-service supermarket. By the 1960's, Albertson's had grown into the country's 25th-largest food retailer, familiar to shoppers in Southern California, the Pacific Northwest and Mountain States. Gave to Many Causes
Mr. Albertson gave up the chairmanship of the company in 1976 but remained active as a director and major shareholder until his death.
As a young man, Mr. Albertson studied business for two years at the private College of Idaho. The college, a principal beneficiary of the many millions of dollars that he gave over the years to various causes, has since been renamed Albertson College of Idaho.
In 1930, Mr. Albertson married a college classmate, Kathryn McCurry, who survives him. A 41-acre park in Boise, donated by them, bears her name. Also surviving are a daughter, Barbara Jean Newman of Boise; a grandson, and three great-grandchildren.