Last Name. Share this page. Follow Ballotpedia. Click here to follow election results! Ralphs Grocery Company operated primarily in Southern California and was founded in The company was a top donor of the ballot measure committee Yes on The measure appeared on the ballot on November 8, These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
What's on my ballot? Elections in How to vote How to run for office Ballot measures. Nevertheless, Ralphs was influential in the industry; the company was among the first to introduce checkout stations with laser price scanners. After about a decade under Federated, Ralphs had fresh life breathed into it with the arrival of a new and energetic CEO, a man who had been devoted to work within the grocery industry since his childhood.
Byron Allumbaugh was appointed CEO of Ralphs in , after having spent two decades working in almost every behind-the-scenes department of the company. Allumbaugh began his career in the food retail industry at the age of 12, when he went to work during World War II at his local grocer's meat department.
From then on, Allumbaugh spent most of his time working in produce stores, and by college age had dropped out of school to devote himself to the industry full time. Allumbaugh joined Ralphs in , already a seasoned, knowledgeable executive, and when the company began looking around for a new CEO in the late s, Allumbaugh was the natural choice.
He was universally liked by the company, and he aided sales by personally spending a certain amount of time each week on the floor, hearing customer complaints and preferences, and generally getting a sense of what was and was not working.
As much as Allumbaugh was appreciated by his employees, however, the CEO's ambitions differed from those of his company's parent in a fundamental sense; he wanted no less than the statewide, and, eventually, national expansion of Ralphs Grocery. In the middle of the s parent company Federated became vulnerable to a growing number of competitors taking advantage of the new corporate trend of mergers and consolidations.
A specific threat came from a Canadian company, Campeau Corporation, which during the s had set its sights on acquiring its powerful rival from the south. In the midst of this ordeal, in order to stave off the mounting debt the company had accrued from fighting Campeau's takeover, Federated put some of its more lucrative companies up for sale, among them Ralphs Grocery. It was at this time that Ralphs faced the most challenging threat to not only the company's success, but its very existence.
When the chain was put on the market, several of Ralphs competitors, such as the California-based Lucky and American Stores, came forward with offers.
Therefore, when Campeau finally prevailed in its takeover of Federated, Ralphs was to be only partly owned by the Canadian corporation and was able to maintain a significant amount of independence via the Allumbaugh shares. Had Allumbaugh failed to buoy his fellow officers to fight for the company, Ralphs in all likelihood would have wound up either a wholly owned subsidiary of Campeau, which eventually filed for bankruptcy, or a nameless addition to the operations of one of its competitors.
Ralphs Grocery came out of its struggles in the late s with its name and management intact, but the battle had cost the company dearly in terms of financial sacrifice. Allumbaugh, who had seen his company grow five times over during his year tenure, was determined to bring Ralphs out of the red, and proceeded to shut down or relocate some of the chain's less lucrative sites. Despite the company's setback, however, Allumbaugh and his team had set a stable groundwork for Ralphs, of a sort which would ensure the company's survival during just such a difficult time.
The company had kept up with or been ahead of technological trends in the field, and had maintained a good reputation for fine produce and low prices. Most of the stores were cost-efficient, particularly in their use of automated systems, and were well prepared to make a financial comeback in the early s. Campeau's takeover had slowed the company's goal of expanding beyond its Southern California center and had forced Ralphs to focus on strengthening its existing stores.
With wise managerial guidance, Ralphs in the early part of the s slowly began to make a comeback despite its own recent misfortunes and California's overall flat economy.
The renewed growth of the company was noticed by one of Ralphs' greatly visible cohorts, the highly successful company FoodLess, located in Northern California.
At the time, FoodLess was larger and more profitable than Ralphs and was owned and funded by the huge Yucaipa Companies, which operated several chain companies around the country. In , only a few years after Ralphs' flirtation with disaster, FoodLess approached the company with a friendly merger proposition. The idea was the brainchild of Yucaipa's charismatic and eccentric leader Ronald Burkle.
Burkle was known not only in the grocery industry, but throughout the industry of Hollywood as well, as a man devoted to high-profile parties and collecting famous mansions; certainly somewhat of an aberration in the staid field of food retail.
Expansion accelerated. As Los Angeles grew, other attractive Ralphs stores were opened in modern, elaborate buildings featuring clerk service and home delivery. With expansion came innovations in merchandising.
More stores meant sizeable savings through increased volume buying. And true to its tradition, Ralphs passed these savings on to the customer in the form of higher standards and lower prices.
By , Ralphs had 10 stores — and another wild idea. By then, American families were driving their own automobiles. The company abandoned home delivery and instituted a cash-and-carry policy, self service and ample free parking. The same year saw another innovation. With bread prices rising, Ralphs opened its own bakery to service its stores and keep prices down for its customers.
By the s, Ralphs supermarkets featured self-service in a number of departments including produce, delicatessen and dairy. Ralphs was an early convert to computer technology and in , made headlines with the introduction of an electronic store billing system at its new grocery warehouse in Glendale. In , the company pioneered another breakthrough as the first supermarket chain west of the Mississippi River to equip its stores with laser scanning checkout systems. The new electronic checkstand scanners resulted in faster, more accurate pricing and more efficient customer service.
By , all Ralphs stores had been converted to the scanning system. In , Ralphs became one of the first grocery companies in the nation to offer cost-conscious consumers an alternative to name-brand products and price. Until , Ralphs was one of the few large companies that remained entirely family-owned.
Early that year, Ralphs was acquired by Federated Department Stores of Cincinnati, Ohio, and became an independent operating subsidiary of that corporation. DeBartolo Corporation as majority owner. Ralphs Grocery Co. Operating as a separate subsidiary of Fred Meyer, Inc.
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