Albertsons shut the doors Saturday on two Texas grocery stores, one in Fort Worth, one in Euless, putting 138 workers out of a job and adding to a growing trail of closures that stretches across multiple states and brands. The shutdowns are the latest fallout from a company still trying to right itself after regulators killed its $24.6 billion merger with Kroger.
The Fort Worth store, at 6700 West Freeway, and the Euless location, at 1155 North Main Street, served their last customers Saturday as the company continued trimming its footprint. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification reviewed by WFAA confirmed the 138 layoffs and stated that affected employees would be offered "opportunities for continued employment at other company locations."
The WARN notice also said the company planned "to place as many associates as possible." Whether that promise holds remains an open question. The filing did not specify which job categories or departments were being cut, and Albertsons itself did not issue a direct public statement about the closures beyond the legally required notice.
The two Texas closures fit a pattern that has accelerated since federal regulators blocked the proposed Albertsons-Kroger deal on antitrust grounds. Albertsons and Kroger had been eyeing the partial buyout since 2024, but regulators feared the over $24 billion deal would reduce competition and raise prices for shoppers.
Since the merger collapsed, Albertsons has shuttered at least 20 stores in 2025 alone. The company framed the cuts as a move to reduce costs. But for the workers and communities left behind, the corporate language about "efficiency" and "long-term health" rings hollow when the grocery store down the street goes dark.
The closures have not been limited to the Albertsons brand. Vons, another chain under the Albertsons umbrella, shuttered stores in California in March. Safeway, also owned by Albertsons, closed a North Carolina location earlier in 2026, as KCPQ reported. The New York Post reported that recent closures include Vons stores in Escondido and Redlands, an Albertsons near Riverside, a Safeway in Alameda, two Tarrant County stores in North Texas, and a Safeway in Washington, D.C., together affecting hundreds of workers.
Industry insiders have described the Boise-based company as nursing a "merger hangover," according to the Post's reporting. That phrase captures something real: a company that bet big on consolidation, lost the bet, and is now shedding stores and employees to make the math work.
Albertsons is hardly alone. Multiple grocery chains are closing stores across the country in 2026, a trend that has left communities scrambling for alternatives and workers looking for new jobs in a tight retail labor market.
The failed merger did not spare Kroger either. The Washington Examiner reported that Kroger plans to close 60 stores, roughly 5 percent of its supermarket locations, within 18 months. The company said the closures would save money, streamline operations, and provide what it called "a modest long-term financial benefit."
A Kroger spokesperson told a local Fox outlet that the move was "part of a larger company-wide decision to run more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business." Kroger also said it was "committed to reinvesting these savings back into the customer experience." For shoppers in neighborhoods losing their local store, that reinvestment is hard to see.
In Euless, the nearest Kroger sits at 1060 North Main Street, just down the road from the now-closed Albertsons. In Fort Worth, an Aldi store stands about a mile away at 700 Alta Mere Drive. Customers will have options. But fewer stores mean longer drives, thinner competition, and less leverage for consumers on price.
The broader grocery sector is contracting. Amazon recently closed 70 grocery stores as part of a major strategy shift, signaling that even the biggest players in retail are pulling back from brick-and-mortar food sales.
Even as Albertsons shrinks its physical presence, the company has been loudly touting its investment in technology. In January 2025, former CEO Vivek Sankaran launched four new digital platforms and spoke about the company's direction in terms that sounded more like a Silicon Valley pitch than a grocery chain update.
"These platforms are designed to drive increased sales, more deeply engage our most loyal customers, increase customer lifetime value, and generate digital space and robust data for the Albertsons Media collective."
Sankaran's successor, CEO Susan Morris, doubled down on the tech-forward approach. In January 2026, Albertsons announced it would lean further into artificial intelligence to enhance operations.
Morris framed the shift in sweeping terms:
"We're not just adopting AI, we're working to scale it across the enterprise to fundamentally change how we operate and how customers experience Albertsons."
There is nothing wrong with a company investing in technology. But the contrast is hard to miss. Albertsons is spending on AI and digital platforms while closing stores and laying off the workers who stock shelves, run registers, and serve customers face to face. The New York Post noted that competitive pressure from Walmart and weak investor confidence are also driving the closures, alongside the push toward automation and digital sales growth.
The workers in Fort Worth and Euless are not going to be retrained as AI engineers. They are grocery employees, many of them likely hourly, who showed up, did the work, and now have to find new jobs because corporate strategy shifted beneath them.
Store closures like these ripple outward. A neighborhood that loses its grocery store does not just lose a place to buy milk. It loses a commercial anchor, foot traffic for nearby businesses, and, for older or lower-income residents who cannot easily drive across town, reliable access to fresh food.
The WARN notice's promise to offer affected workers positions at other Albertsons locations sounds reasonable on paper. But "other company locations" may not be close. They may not offer the same hours. And for 138 people, the promise is conditional: the company said it planned to place "as many associates as possible." That hedge leaves room for plenty of workers to end up with nothing.
We reported earlier on the planned Texas closures when the WARN notice first surfaced, and the outcome Saturday matched the grim forecast. The pattern has repeated in other markets, too.
In Southern California, Albertsons closed a Vons store in Escondido, laying off 65 workers in yet another cut under the same cost-reduction playbook. Across the country, communities that once took a local grocery store for granted are learning that corporate restructuring does not ask permission before it changes the map.
The antitrust case against the Albertsons-Kroger merger was built on the argument that combining the two chains would hurt consumers by reducing competition. Federal regulators and courts blocked the deal to protect shoppers.
Now both companies are closing stores by the dozen. Kroger is dropping 60 locations. Albertsons has shuttered more than 20 in a single year and shows no sign of stopping. The competitive landscape regulators said they were protecting is shrinking anyway, not through merger, but through retreat.
Whether the merger would have been better or worse for consumers is a debate that will never be settled. What is settled is the outcome: two weakened grocery chains, each cutting stores and jobs independently, each telling investors and the public that the pain is temporary and the strategy is sound.
For the 138 workers in Fort Worth and Euless who lost their jobs Saturday, the strategy is someone else's problem. The consequences are theirs.