Groceteria.com

Does anyone know the history of Lucky's brief existence in New Mexico?
Were they former Skaggs Alpha Beta/Jewel Osco locations or an expansion? I was under the impression that Albertson's acquired all the Florida and Southwestern Skaggs AB/Jewel Osco locations in the mid 90s.

After the Albertson's merger, the NM stores were sold to Raley's who oddly acquired the stores so far from their home base. I was surprised they survived in Albuquerque as long as they did.

During what time frame was this? Having lived in NM for the first sixteen years of my life (1978-1995), I was never aware of a Lucky store being in Albuquerque or Santa Fe (although I lived in Los Alamos, so I could have just missed it.) As far as I can recall, the Skaggs Alpha Beta locations all became Jewel Oscos in the early 90s, but I'm not aware of any that turned into Lucky stores. Out around where I lived, the two main chains were Smith's and Furrs Grocery (a now defuct chain.) Safeway pulled out of New Mexico in the mid Eighties, and there were a few scattered Albertsons locations as well.

Lucky's was only in Albuquerque very briefly. I did not know of Lucky's presence until the stores were sold to Raley's as a result of the merger of Lucky's parent company, American Stores, with Albertson's in 1998. I'm pretty sure that the stores were formerly bannered Skaggs Alpha Beta, but have not been able to find any details or the exact timeframe that the stores became Lucky's, but since it was brief, I would hazard a guess that it was later than 1995.

New Mexico was branded Jewel-Osco from the early 90's to about 1998. They had Lucky branding for a very brief period, either less than a year or like 15 months, prior to rebranding to Albertsons rapidly in late Summer 1999. When the rebranding of the food stores took place, the few Oscos in New Mexico were rebranded to Sav-On. This was not long after the Oscos in the Reno, NV Market were rebranded to Sav-On.

The only Lucky Stores in New Mexico that got sold off were two in Las Cruces to Raleys, and one in Santa Fe to Smiths. The remainder of the stores sold off to Raleys in New Mexico were original Albertsons Stores.

And, now that Raley's has left New Mexico through a buyout by Albertson's, many of the divested stores are back to being Albertson's. A few, however, were relocated during Raley's ownership into former Furr's locations. Some of the Furr's locations were also former Safeway stores. I moved to Albuquerque about a month before the shift of Lucky/Sav-on to Albertson's and Albertson's to Raley's.

I first heard of Lucky in New Mexico when I picked up one of the promotion brochures for a certain savings award event and it mentioned Lucky in Northern California, Southern California, and New Mexico. This was around 1996-1997, prior to the Albertsons merger when it looked like ASC would never be taken over by Albertsons. This was also mentioned on Lucky's 1997 website.

I also read somewhere that the NMX stores also had Bank of America mini-branches, just like Southern California. (Northern Cal had both BOFA and Wells Fargo). NMX stores were definitely part of the Lucky Stores Inc subsidiary, not separated like Jewel-Osco (Jewel-Osco Inc, Jewel-Osco Southwest Inc, and Jewel Osco of Florida Inc). This was also Lucky's first introduction of Savon pharmacies (operating as Lucky-Savon combo stores) outside Cal/Nevada. I'm not sure if there were existing standalone Savon Drug stores in New Mexico and if ASC had drugstores there, most likely they were Osco because at the same time, there were Jewel-Osco stores (Jewel-Osco Southwest Inc).

luckysaver

The stand-alone drug stores were operating as Sav-On Drugs when I moved to Albuquerque in 1999. The last two stores closed after the CVS purchase as CVS decided for the second time that they would not open in Albuquerque. As an aside, in the last month, CVS has been working to repurchase Eckerd leases that they didn't want at the time of their purchase of Eckerd.