Popular grocery store announces closure of underperforming stores across 2 states

A major New England chain of grocery stores announced this week it would be closing a number of locations due to underperforming sales.

Shaws, one of the largest grocers in the Northeastern United States, announced on Wednesday it would be closing two stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire amid slumping sales.

The first is at 7 Railroad Ave. in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the second is at 20 Fort Eddy Road in Concord, New Hampshire.

“Like all retailers, we’re constantly evaluating the performance of our stores,” Shaw’s said in a statement. “Closing a location is always a tough decision, but we’re focused on continuing to provide the products and services our customers value most.”

The company said they we be offering relocation to other locations for all employees of the effected stores and no layoffs would be happening.

According to Shaw’s website, there are 54 locations in Massachusetts and 25 in New Hampshire.

The parent company of Shaws, Albertsons Companies, also owns Star Market, which has 21 locations in Massachusetts. In December, a planed merger between Albertsons and Kroger was blocked by a federal court. It would have been the largest merger of two supermarkets in U.S. history.

Judge Marshall Ferguson in Seattle issued a permanent injunction barring the merger in Washington after concluding it would lessen competition in the state and violate Washington’s consumer-protection laws.

Kroger and Albertsons said that following the ruling, they are disappointed in the decisions and are reviewing their options. The companies could appeal, although the deal could fall apart in the time it would take for those cases to be considered.

The companies said a merger would help them better compete with big retailers like Walmart, Costco and Amazon.

But the Federal Trade Commission sued earlier this year, asking Nelson to block the $24.6 billion deal until an in-house administrative judge at the FTC could consider the merger. Attorneys general from Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Wyoming and the District of Columbia joined the FTC’s lawsuit.

Nelson agreed to pause the merger, saying that the FTC had shown it was likely to prevail in the administrative hearing.

“Any harms defendants experience as a result of the injunction do not overcome the strong public interest in the enforcement of antitrust law, especially given the difficulty in disentangling a premature merger,” she wrote in her opinion.