THRIFTY TO BUY CONSUMERS CHOICE

BURLINGTON, Wash. -- Thrifty Foods here has agreed to purchase Consumers Choice, Bellingham, Wash., for an undisclosed sum.

> The acquisition, which is expected to be completed Oct. 1, would boost Thrifty to 24 stores with annual sales of more than $300 million.

McCown De Leeuw & Co., a private venture-banking firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., acquired Thrifty Foods in a leveraged buyout in March. Thrifty operated 12 stores at the time.

Thrifty purchased two stores in Olympia, Wash., from Storman's Foods in April and four eastern Washington stores in June from Buttrey Food & Drug Stores Co., Great Falls, Mont.

Kirk Wilson, president and chief executive officer of Thrifty, said the company's intention was to double its size in five years. "But we have had to move more quickly because of the current opportunities in the marketplace," he said. "Now we plan to go through a digestive stage."

Thrifty Foods will look at future acquisitions throughout the state, Wilson told SN, in order to cluster stores and fill in its existing operating area. Except for the four former Buttrey stores in eastern Washington, most of Thrifty's stores are in the western portion of the state.

Wilson said acquisitions in Oregon "would not be out of the question."

Wilson said Thrifty plans to merge Consumers' senior management and store management into its organization. Thrifty and Consumers Choice are both members of Associated Grocers, a $1.2 billion cooperative wholesaler based in Seattle with an estimated 40% share of the state's grocery market.

Thrifty Foods was interested in Consumers Choice, Wilson said, because of similarities between Consumers' three large-format Cost Cutter stores and its own Food Pavilion format. Consumers' six stores include three units of between 49,000 and 74,000 square feet called Cost Cutter Stores, two 15,000- to 20,000-square-foot units using the Red Apple banner and a limited-assortment store called Cost Cutter Ltd.

Wilson said Thrifty plans to convert the three larger stores to its Food Pavilion super-warehouse format and the two medium-sized stores to its conventional format. Cost Cutter may not fit into Thrifty's long-term plans.