The announcement that Albertsons, the grocery chain that often feels like the local market in a town I may have wanted to leave years ago, is buying Rite Aid seems very normal. It's a new or revisited normal, but a baseline nonetheless.
Ever since CVS decided to drop all cigarettes and other tobacco goods while adding a host of food products, many of them organic, I've been waiting and watching to see where this whole "wellness" movement in the broader mainstream might go. Mind you, the combo of food and wellness goods is not new. It used to be called a Health Foods store, or, by some, a whole foods grocery, until that name got taken, trademarked and turned into something similar but not, well, fully formed.
So now it's possible to get pain relievers, power bars, powder puffs, prescriptions, peas and carrots, soup, oh, and sushi in a huge, brightly lit, multi-level retail emporium.
The Rite Aid in the town near where I live in California has often had a great collection of vegetable starts (small plants for home gardens) and flowering plants out front that made me think of a country store when I drove by. I've usually stopped there only as a last resort or to get a hanging plant for my deck. It's always felt like a part of the community but not integral to it. This is unlike CVS, which seems to want to be the center, the great crossroads of wherever they are.
So when the Safeway/Von's/Albertsons conglomerate — the largest privately held company of its kind and second only to Kroger's for size in the category — does something like this, it's a big deal.
Now, this sleepy little grocery brand that's part of a huge company marries a sleepy little pharmacy brand, and the result seems to be something more solid, friendly and homey than the other brands. This feels retro in a pleasant way. Maybe born of intense strategics, this actually feels like a merchant just trying to stay in business, while Walmart and Amazon attempt to swallow the world.
This feels like a general store: not perfect but familiar and friendly and where we need to go if we want to get what we need, if not everything we want. And someone who isn't a delivery person hoping for a tip might smile and say hello.
