Kroger said last year that it will cut 60 store locations over the next 18 months, a move that will shrink the chain’s footprint even as it keeps buying elsewhere. The company said the stores are being reduced because of slow sales.
The planned Kroger Store Closures are aimed mainly at Fred Meyer, Fry’s Food and Drug, Harris Teeter, Foods Co, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Mariano’s, Pick ‘n Save and QFC, the banners that make up much of the company’s retail reach. Kroger’s mix of stores stretches across Cincinnati and beyond, and the reduction is meant to remove locations that are not pulling their weight.
The timing is what makes the move stand out. Kroger recently bought Giant Eagle in a $1.65 billion deal that adds 197 supermarkets and 11 standalone pharmacies, a fresh expansion that sits awkwardly beside a separate plan to shrink the store base by 60. The company is effectively opening one door while closing others, and that makes the cuts harder to read as a simple retreat.
Jason Potter said on the March earnings call that “the East Coast would be hit the hardest,” a remark that gives the closure plan a geographic edge. But Kroger has not published a store-by-store list, so the public still does not know which locations will go first or how the 60 closures will be divided among the banners named in the plan.
The broader supermarket business is moving the same way. Grocery Outlet said in March that it would close 36 stores, including six in New Jersey, while Albertsons has been trimming its own footprint and Safeway has closed three locations tied to expiring leases. Walgreens has also been cutting back, after announcing in 2024 that it would close roughly 1,200 underperforming stores over three years.
That wave matters because store closures can leave some communities with little to no access to affordable, healthy or fresh food. Kroger’s plan is not the biggest in the market, but it is large enough to reshape parts of the chain and, in some places, the grocery map around it. The unanswered question is not whether the cuts are coming. It is which neighborhoods will lose their store first.
