After Kroger, the parent company of Fred Meyer and QFC, and Albertsons, which owns Safeway, revealed the 62 Oregon stores they would sell off to a competitor under their proposed merger, observers noticed there wasn’t a single Fred Meyer store on the list.

That comes as no surprise. Kroger previously said it wouldn’t part with any Fred Meyer stores across its Northwest footprint, even as it sells hundreds of other supermarkets to New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers in its $24.6 billion bid to buy Albertsons, Kroger’s next largest rival.

The sale is meant to satisfy antitrust regulators tasked with ensuring the merger won’t create a monopoly in the grocery business. That’s an even greater concern in markets like Oregon, where Kroger and Albertsons have significant overlap.

Regulators aren’t convinced. The Federal Trade Commission and several states, including Oregon, have sued to block the merger, and a trial is set to begin next month.

In Clatsop County, the combined grocery retailer would sell Safeway stores in Astoria and Seaside and keep the Fred Meyer in Warrenton.

Retail analysts say there are several reasons why Kroger would keep its Fred Meyer stores.

Kevin Boeh, an affiliate professor who studies mergers and acquisitions at the University of Washington, said the floor space Fred Meyer devotes to general merchandise like home goods and clothing makes its operations fundamentally different from QFC, Safeway and Albertsons.

Fred Meyers are “broad line retailers that sell more than just food,” Boeh said. “Frankly, their competitors are Walmart, Costco and Amazon.”

Kroger is leaning into general merchandise stores nationwide because, Boeh said, those kinds of stores will help it compete against such rivals.

“They think the best way to compete with Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target is to have a broader line of offerings,” he said. “That’s why they’re not getting rid of Fred Meyer.”

Since Kroger announced its plans to acquire Albertsons in October 2022, the supermarket giant has argued the deal would not only allow it to chase after Walmart and Amazon sales, but also allow it to stay competitive with the industry’s heavyweights on operation efficiencies, technology and gathering customer data.

Bobby Gibbs, a partner at global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said traditional grocery retailers are under pressure from industry giants like Walmart and Amazon that generate a large share of their profits from data monetization and advertising.

Big retailers operate advertising networks that rely on the vast amount of data that retailers gather on their customers, like purchase history and browsing information, to deliver highly targeted ads.

“Walmart and Amazon have the biggest retail media networks,” he said. “The profit margins from retail media networks are larger than the margins from selling product. … So they draw revenue from that, but it’s also at much higher revenue.”