]
The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho

Idaho

Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

, came to have an important impact on merchandising

Merchandising

Merchandising is the methods, practices, and operations used to promote and sustain certain categories of commercial activity. In the broadest sense, merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer...

 across much of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name became prominent on hundreds of store fronts throughout the West. But as that name now fades from the commercial scene, it is important to show how a number of widely-known commercial chains owe their origin to this one, entrepreneurial family.

If one examines the origins of a wide range of grocery and drug store enterprises across the West and Midwest, the Skaggs names is likely to arise. The father was a relatively poor Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 minister, but he and six of his sons, with varying degrees of collaboration, introduced in the early decades of the 20th century, two very important changes in merchandising: the low-margin, cash-and-carry approach to business and the process of rapidly growing a multitude of common outlets, now called chain store

Chain store

Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...

s. Their entrepreneurial zeal became a major retailing force resulting in large, well-known retail chains that carried not only the Skaggs name itself, but names like Safeway

Safeway Inc.

Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...

, Osco

Osco Drug

Osco Drug is a chain of pharmacy stores which today operate as in-store pharmacies under SuperValu Pharmacies. Osco Pharmacy is found in Jewel-Osco, Albertsons, Shaw's and Star Market, while Sav-on Pharmacy is found in Acme and Albertsons. Since 2006, Osco is a wholly owned subsidiary of...

, PayLess, Albertsons, Longs Drug Stores, Katz's and others.

Biography

It was around 1887 when Samuel M. Skaggs, with his wife Nancy (E. Long) and two of his brothers and their families, moved from Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

 to Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

.[2,8] There Sam tried farming, managed a store and post office in Cato, Missouri. Sometime between 1888 and 1900 he entered the Baptist Ministry and by 1900 settles in Newton County, Missouri. At the time of their move from Tennessee, Sam and Nancy have five children and in Missouri they were to have ten more. Of the first eleven children, nine were still alive in 1900.[2] Of these there were six sons who came to be known by their initials:

Pepper Oscar Skaggs, born January 7, 1881, became O.P.

Aron Sylvester Skaggs, born January 14, 1886, became S.A.

Marion Barton Skaggs

Marion Barton Skaggs

Marion Barton Skaggs was an American businessman and leading member of the Skaggs Family of retailers who expanded the predecessor of Safeway into a major supermarket chain....

, born April 5, 1888, became M.B.

Loronzo L. Skaggs, born May 5, 1891, became L.L.

Samuel Olnie Skaggs, born November 14, 1895, became L.S.

Levi Justin Skaggs, born May 4, 1899, became L.J.

Sometime between 1908 and 1910, Samuel Skaggs brought his family from Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

 to Idaho

Idaho

Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

. As a minister of a small group in a very small frontier

Frontier

A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...

 town, American Falls, Idaho

American Falls, Idaho

American Falls is a city in and the county seat of Power County, Idaho, United States. The population was 4,111 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Pocatello, Idaho Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...

, he needed additional support for his large family. So, he decided to open a grocery store, but to favorably compete with the few that were already operating, he decided to change their business model from one of credit accounts, which were tailored to the sporadic and seasonal income of farmers, to a cash-only basis. Attracting customers to this simpler arrangement would make sense only if he could sell for much less than his competitors. While the margin would be lower, he would nevertheless avoid the substantial risk of non-payment of accounts. To drive down the wholesale price of the groceries he needed, he would buy them in larger lots than his competitors. In those days large lots were defined by some fraction of a railroad carload and because American Falls was a stop on the Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....

, this afforded Sam Skaggs an opportunity to buy and sell for less. Perhaps more important to his expansion-oriented sons than to Sam, the savings of large-lot buying would only increase as more stores came on line.

To portray the evolution and impact of this kind of merchandising as practiced by the Skaggs family and to try to track the extensive creation of stores and their ownership transfers, a nearly 100-year chronology

Chronology

Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...

 is used. In it lies the genesis and design of much of the modern merchandising . The Skaggs family anticipated what customers wanted and so the Skaggs brothers and their merchandising model comprise an important thread in the fabric of the present commercial world. This chronology begins with Sam Skaggs moving his growing family west:

Timeline of events in the history of the Skaggs family

• 1907 S.M. Skaggs leaves Missouri and moves west with his family in search of a better climate. They settle in American Falls, Idaho before 1910 where he is located as of that year's census.
• 1914 In a totally separate commercial effort Sam Seelig founds a chain of four stores in California called Sam Seelig Grocers. According to Safeway web site, this chain grew to over 322 stores by 1926. In 1925 he renamed them Safeway.
• 1915 In April, S. M. opens the Skaggs Cash Store "with his own hands, on rented property, on borrowed money." [1] The store was about 18x32 feet. It was located in the original town of American Falls, adjacent to the Union Pacific railroad tracks, and he apparently bought large lots from the rail cars and sold them to the public. That store became Skaggs Store No. 1 and is now beneath the American Falls Reservoir.[3] When the town was relocated between 1923 and 1925, that store was situated at the corner of Ft. Hall and Idaho Street, now housing the Senior Center.[4] Unusual for the time, the Rev. Skaggs had a cash only, no credit policy, which all his sons later adopted. (See [5], [6], and adjacent newspaper ads.)
• 1916 S.M. sells this store to his third son, M.B. (then 29 and a well driller), for $1,088, and moves to eastern Oregon. [7] Though M.B. didn't at first contemplate having multiple stores, he saw his principle of economical buying and quantity distribution going only so far with a single store. The following year M.B., with the help of some of his brothers, starts expanding; opening stores in Blackfoot
  Blackfoot, Idaho
  Blackfoot is a city in Bingham County, Idaho, United States. The population was 10,419 at the 2000 census. The city is the county seat of Bingham County. Blackfoot is self-designated the "Potato Capital of the World", because it claims to have the largest potato industry in the world...
  
  , Rupert
  Rupert, Idaho
  Rupert is the county seat and largest city of Minidoka County, Idaho, United States. It is part of the Burley, Idaho Micropolitan Statistical Area...
  
   and Burley, Idaho
  Burley, Idaho
  Burley is a city in Cassia and Minidoka counties in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Idaho. The population was 10,345 at the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of Cassia County....
  
  . This process continues elsewhere to form a grocery store chain that reached 428 stores by 1926. [9] In the meantime O.P. also starts Skaggs Cash Stores in Idaho Falls, Elko NV, and elsewhere, including California. He numbers his stores with even numbers and they have orange fronts while M.B. uses odd numbers and uses blue fronts. L.J. goes to work for O.P. in Ogden.

• 1917 Five small grocery chains in the Philadelphia area combine to form American Stores Company. This group would be acquired by a Skaggs enterprise in 1978. [10]
• 1918 L.S. returns from military duty and reenters the grocery business with his brothers.

• 1919 The brothers form a partnership called Skaggs United Stores. In Ogden, Utah
  Ogden, Utah
  Ogden is a city in Weber County, Utah, United States. Ogden serves as the county seat of Weber County. The population was 82,825 according to the 2010 Census. The city served as a major railway hub through much of its history, and still handles a great deal of freight rail traffic which makes it a...
  
   L.J. meets and marries Mary Dee, daughter of a Mormon
  Mormon
  The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
  
   convert from Holland. [11] They work together to open a chain of Pay’n Takit Stores. These would eventually (1928) become part of Safeway.

• 1926 About this time O.P. sells some of his grocery chain to his brothers bringing the total Skaggs United Stores to 428 stores in ten states. This included some of O.P.’s Skaggs Cash Stores in California. (Probably does not include O.P.’s drug stores or all of his California food stores. See below.) This year Charles Merrill
  Charles E. Merrill
  Charles Edward Merrill was an American philanthropist, stockbroker and co-founder, with Edmund C. Lynch of Merrill Lynch & Company .-Early years:...
  
  , a co-founder of the Merrill Lynch
  Merrill Lynch
  Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
  
   investment firm in 1914, engineered the merger of Skaggs United Stores and Safeway
  Safeway Inc.
  Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...
  
  . M.B. became President of the new company and the stores were initially called Skaggs Safeway. They reverted to just Safeway after about 18 months. Merrill temporarily withdrew from the financial industry in 1930 to help oversee the expansion of the Safeway enterprise. M.B. remained the head until 1934. Also, by this time, one C.J. Call purchased a chain of California food stores from O.P.

• 1928 Mainly through acquiring grocery chains in California
  California
  California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
  
  , Washington, DC, and Kansas City
  Kansas City, Missouri
  Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
  
  , Safeway expands to 2020 stores, 855 of which are combination stores with meat markets.[12] Sales in 1929 were $203 million. Part of the expansion involved Safeway acquiring the Pay’n Takit stores of L.J. that ranged from the mountain states into California, Arizona, and Texas. For many years they were called Safeway Pay’n Takit.

• 1930 L.S. is intermountain director for Safeway, residing in Salt Lake City.
• 1931 Safeway stores in the U.S. and Canada now number 3527. This would be the largest number of Safeway stores. [13]
• 1932 L.J. Skaggs opens his first self-service drug store, PayLess Drug
  Thrifty PayLess
  Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. was a pharmacy holding company that owned the Thrifty Drugs and PayLess Drug Stores chains in the western United States....
  
  , in Tacoma, Washington
  Tacoma, Washington
  Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
  
  . The PayLess chain grew throughout the West, but L.J. would sell most of his interests to his brothers and associates. By 1965 three companies would result: one in Washington and Oregon, a 4-store chain in Tacoma, Washington, and one company he would retain in California. [14] L.J.’s California stores, headquartered in Oakland, California
  Oakland, California
  Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
  
  , would be sold to the Washington-Oregon chain in 1980 and then to Rite-Aid sometime around 2000.
• 1933 The Skaggs brothers' cash only policy helps them weather the depression.
• 1934 M.B. retires as head of Safeway. Allen Rosenberg
  Allen Rosenberg
  -Biography:He graduated from the Boston Latin School in 1926, Harvard University in 1930 and Harvard Law School in 1936. Shortly thereafter, he found work with the U.S. government's Railroad Retirement Board and the Senate Civil Liberties Committee as an attorney and investigator...
  
   opens Arizona
  Arizona
  Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
  
  ’s first self-service drug store called Thrifty Payless Drugs selling it eight years later (1942) to the L.L. Skaggs chain.
• 1936 The Reverend Samuel M. Skaggs dies on 30 October.
• 1937 L.L. Skaggs and Harold Finch found Pay-Less Drug in Rochester, Minnesota
  Rochester, Minnesota
  Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on both banks of the Zumbro River, The city has a population of 106,769 according to the 2010 United States Census, making it Minnesota's third-largest city and the largest outside of the...
  
  . It was the Midwest’s first self-service drug store. With the opening of a second store in Mason City, Iowa the following year, the name was changed to Self-Service Drug, Inc. It would later (1942) become Osco Drug
  Osco Drug
  Osco Drug is a chain of pharmacy stores which today operate as in-store pharmacies under SuperValu Pharmacies. Osco Pharmacy is found in Jewel-Osco, Albertsons, Shaw's and Star Market, while Sav-on Pharmacy is found in Acme and Albertsons. Since 2006, Osco is a wholly owned subsidiary of...
  
  , which would grow to approximately 600 stores in 19 states by 2003. [15]
• 1938 Joe Albertson
  Joe Albertson
  Joseph Albert "Joe" Albertson was the founder of the Albertsons chain of grocery stores and a notable philanthropist....
  
  , a district manager for Safeway, enters into partnership with L.S. Skaggs and the latter’s accountant, Tom Cuthbert, and opens first store in Boise, Idaho
  Boise, Idaho
  Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
  
  . M.B.’s son-in-law, with his brother, form Longs Drugs
  Longs Drugs
  Longs Drugs is an American chain of over 40 drug stores throughout the State of Hawaii. Before being acquired by CVS Caremark in 2008, it was a chain of over 500 stores, located primarily on the West Coast of the United States...
  
   that today has 450 stores in six western states. Coincidently, the brothers, Joe and Tom, had the same last name as that of M.B.’s mother, Nancy E. Long.
• 1939 L.S. resigns from Safeway to enter the drugstore business. Two associates from Safeway join him and they buy four Pay Less stores from his brother L.J. They were located in Salt Lake
  Salt Lake City, Utah
  Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
  
  , Ogden
  Ogden, Utah
  Ogden is a city in Weber County, Utah, United States. Ogden serves as the county seat of Weber County. The population was 82,825 according to the 2010 Census. The city served as a major railway hub through much of its history, and still handles a great deal of freight rail traffic which makes it a...
  
  , Boise
  Boise, Idaho
  Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
  
  , and Great Falls. O.P. sells some stores in Nebraska
  Nebraska
  Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
  
   to George W. Martin
  George W. Martin
  George Washington Martin, Jr. was a prominent lawyer, jurist, and member of the Democratic Party in Kings County, Brooklyn, New York. As a lawyer he defended many criminals at trial, and then later as a judge presided over a number of trials involving underworld figures associated with the Murder...
  
  , whose family operated them until selling them in 1964. In 1959 Martin started a new set of stores in Nebraska called Skagway and several are operating today in Omaha
  Omaha, Nebraska
  Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
  
   and Grand Island
  Grand Island, Nebraska
  Grand Island is a city in and the county seat of Hall County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 48,520 at the 2010 census.Grand Island is home to the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center which is the sole agency responsible for training law enforcement officers throughout the state,...
  
  . [16]
• 1942 L.L. Skaggs forms a partnership with H.B. Finch, Paul Stratton and George Hilden and call it the Owners Service Company, hence Osco. The headquarters was then moved from Waterloo, Iowa
  Waterloo, Iowa
  Waterloo is a city in and the county seat of Black Hawk County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census the population decreased by 0.5% to 68,406. Waterloo is part of the Waterloo – Cedar Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is the more populous of the two...
  
   to the Merchandise Mart
  Merchandise Mart
  When opened in 1930, the Merchandise Mart or the Merch Mart, located in the Near North Side, Chicago, Illinois, was the largest building in the world with of floor space. Previously owned by the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating vendors...
  
   in Chicago, Illinois. By 1961 they had 31 stores in six states.
• 1945 C.J. Call (see 1926), with Ira Brown, open the first Sav-on Drug Store in San Bernardino, California
  San Bernardino, California
  San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
  
  . Sav-on Drugs would be acquired by Jewel Companies. who would, in turn be bought by American Stores
  American Stores
  American Stores Company was an American public corporation and a holding company which ran chains of supermarkets and drugstores in the United States from 1917 through 1999...
  
  , headed by L.S.’s son.
• 1948 Some PayLess Drug Stores change their name to Skaggs Drug Stores.
• 1949 L.S. dies at age 54 and his son, L.S. Skaggs Jr. (“Sam”), takes over his father's role at age 26. At that point there were 11 drug stores with $9.5M sales. L.S. Jr.’s expansion drive was remarkable for by 1978 he had grown that number to 202 stores and 39 super-centers in 21 states with over $1B sales. [8]
• 1950 The M.B. and Estella Skaggs Foundation builds a community hospital just north of Branson, Missouri
  Branson, Missouri
  Branson is a city in Taney County in the U.S. state of Missouri. It was named after Reuben Branson, postmaster and operator of a general store in the area in the 1880s....
  
  . (See picture.) [17]

]

• 1951 Albertson’s opens first combination food and drug store…a 60,000 sq.ft. superstore. [18]
• 1955 Safeway control passes to Robert Magowan, Charles Merrill
  Charles E. Merrill
  Charles Edward Merrill was an American philanthropist, stockbroker and co-founder, with Edmund C. Lynch of Merrill Lynch & Company .-Early years:...
  
  ’s son-in-law, who continued Safeway expansion to become the second largest grocery chain in the U.S. But by the 1970s it was in financial difficulty and losing market share. [19]
• 1956 General Electric
  General Electric
  General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
  
   sues a group of Western retailers for selling its products at below recommended price. Skaggs Companies counter-sues and wins, overturning so-called “fair trade” laws in Utah and other states that prohibited discounting. [20]
• 1961 Jewel Companies acquires the L.L. Skaggs-founded Osco Drug chain.
• 1962 Using the name of the island on which it had been located early in World War II, a Navy radio receiving station in north San Francisco Bay
  San Francisco Bay
  San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
  
   officially adds Skaggs Island to its name. The island had been named for M.B. when he financially helped the struggling Sonoma Land Co. during the depression of the 1930s. The Navy station was decommissioned in 1993.
• 1965 Skaggs Drug Stores incorporates as Skaggs Drug Centers and over the next few years acquires drug chains called Josco, Harts, Cook’s in the South and West, and Katz, which had stores in the Midwest and also owned the non-California operations of L.J. Skaggs’s old PayLess chain. [20]
• 1969 Albertson’s and Skaggs partner to create Skaggs-Albertsons combination stores and over the next few years opened 58 such stores in Oklahoma and the Southeast.
• 1970 L.J. dies. They had set up a large foundation which his wife, Mary, continued to lead. Total grants have exceeded $32M. Queen Elizabeth II
  Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
  Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
  
   named Mary an honorary commander of the Order of the British Empire
  Order of the British Empire
  The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
  
   in 1999 for her philanthropic work in England
  England
  England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
  
  . [11]
• 1977 Because managing their 1969 venture became difficult and for other financial and legal reasons, Albertson’s and Skaggs separate amicably…both taking equal shares. [18, 20]
• 1978 L.S. Jr., 55, initiates the Skaggs Drug Centers acquisition of American Stores, completing it by the spring of 1979. He keeps the latter name and relocates headquarters to Salt Lake City
  Salt Lake City, Utah
  Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
  
  . American had 785 food stores and 139 drug stores to 241 Skaggs stores. Alpha Beta
  Alpha Beta
  Alpha Beta was a chain of supermarkets. Former Alpha Beta stores have all been purchased by other grocery chains and rebranded.-History:Before Alpha Beta was the name a of store, it was the name of a marketing concept used in grocery stores founded by Albert and Hugh Gerrard; it referred to...
  
   and Acme food stores were part of American Stores. [1, 21]
• 1980 Peter Magowan
  Peter Magowan
  Peter A. Magowan is the former managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants Major League Baseball franchise.-Early life and career:...
  
   takes over Safeway and through several efficiency moves, makes Safeway the most profitable grocery chain in the country if not the largest. L.J. sells his PayLess Drug Stores
  Thrifty PayLess
  Thrifty PayLess Holdings, Inc. was a pharmacy holding company that owned the Thrifty Drugs and PayLess Drug Stores chains in the western United States....
  
   of Oakland, California to the Washington-Oregon PayLess stores formed in 1932. Jewel Co. buys Sav-On Drugs of Southern California.
• 1984 In an unfriendly takeover, American Stores acquires Jewel Companies (for $1.1B). One aim was to become the first coast-to-coast drug store chain. Curiously, this purchase added Sav-On Drugs, which Jewel had bought in 1980 and which had its beginning with the partnership of O.P. Skaggs, and also returned the Osco drug chain, which L.L Skaggs had started, to the Skaggs fold. The Skaggs Drug Centers were also converted to Osco Drug Stores. [20, 21] According to an Associated Press
  Associated Press
  The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
  
   wire story by Jennifer Brandlon on 11 Dec. 1984, L.S. Jr. is a private person, a wizard at acquisition
  Mergers and acquisitions
  Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
  
  , has great enthusiasm for his work, has a management style that pays great attention to detail, and is bare bones…parsimoniously allowing no company cars or credit cards. American has 102,000 employees and after first 9 mo., over $8B revenue. American Stores later grows to 1700 stores in 40 states with $15 billion in sales.
• 1986 To avoid a hostile takeover by Herbert Haft
  Herbert Haft
  Herbert H. Haft was a Washington, D.C. based businessman who was famous first for the development of discount stores in the drug store, bookstore, and auto part businesses, and later as a corporate raider...
  
   and family, Safeway
  Safeway Inc.
  Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...
  
   agrees to acquisition by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. for $5.3B, taking the company private in the second largest leverage buyout in history. [19] To pay off incurred debt, nearly half of its 2200 stores were sold, including those in England and Australia. Peter Magowan, however, remained CEO until forced out in 1992, but continues as a director until 2005. Magowan, with supporting partners, later purchases the San Francisco Giants
  San Francisco Giants
  The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
  
  .
• 1988 After considerable positioning that moved the purchase price from $45 to $65 per share and opposition from California’s attorney general, American Stores acquires Lucky Stores of Dublin CA. [20] Lucky had started as Peninsula Stores (on the San Francisco Peninsula) in 1931 and had become one of California’s largest chains with operations in both Northern and Southern California. But L.S. Jr. reaches the mandatory retirement age of 65 and steps down as the CEO of American Stores…moving to Chairman. A period of consolidation and debt reduction begins with sell-offs occurring into the 1990s. Its total holding of stores drops from 1,848 in 1990 to 1,695 in 1996 but profits increased over that period nearly $100M. [20]
• 1990 Safeway again goes public and in late 1990 and resumes buying regional chains such as Randalls
  Randall's Food Markets
  Randall's Food Markets operates 112 supermarkets in the Houston, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth areas under the Randalls, Flagship Randalls, Tom Thumb, Flagship Tom Thumb, and Simon David banners. Randall's employs more than 10,000 associates and is the Texas division of Safeway Inc. The Texas...
  
   in Texas, Carrs
  Carrs
  Carrs-Safeway is a supermarket chain that is based in Anchorage, Alaska and is a subsidiary of Safeway Inc...
  
   in Alaska, Dominick's
  Dominick's
  Dominick's Finer Foods, Inc. is a grocery store chain and subsidiary of Safeway Inc. with locations mainly in the Chicago area, Illinois, USA. Dominick's distribution center is located in Northlake, while its management offices are located in Oak Brook....
  
   in Illinois, and Vons
  Vons
  Vons is a southern California and southern Nevada supermarket chain and a division of Safeway Inc. It is headquartered in Arcadia, California, and operates stores under the Vons and Pavilions banners.-Beginning:...
  
   in Southern California.
• 1992 Albertsons purchases 74 Jewel-Osco combination stores from American Stores.
• 1995 L.S. Skaggs Jr. relinquishes the Chairmanship of American Stores and within two years the company would purchase $550 million of his shares, leaving him with insufficient ownership to keep his seat on the board. Thus would end the Skaggs family's leadership in the commercial world.
• 1998 Albertsons acquires Seessels, Smittys, Buttrey, and some Bruno Stores. [18]
• 1999 Albertsons acquires American Stores for $12.7B to become the nation's biggest supermarket chain. [22] Prior to this time, Albertsons was the nation's fourth largest supermarket chain with 994 supermarkets in 25 states, while American Stores Company was the nation's second largest supermarket chain with 802 supermarkets and 773 stand-alone drug stores in 31 states. Lucky Stores change name to Albertsons. This merger was so large that the Federal Trade Commission (June 22, 1999) required its largest divestiture ever in forcing the sale of 144 of the combine’s supermarkets and sites and also imposed future growth restrictions in specified geographic regions. [23]
• 2003 Safeway has approximately 1700 stores across the U.S. and Canada which include 329 Vons stores in Southern California and Nevada, 132 Randall and Tom Thumb stores in Texas, 42 Genuardi’s in the Philadelphia area, and 21 Carr’s stores in Alaska. Albertsons operates over 2500 stores in 38 states.
• 2005 Albertsons, Inc. announces in September that it is considering putting the company up for sale; that the board is exploring strategic alternatives to increase shareholder value. Among the reasons given was increased pressure from Wal-Mart type supercenters. [24]
• 2006 On January 23, Albertsons made known that it had agreed to be sold for about $17.4B and broken into three parts. A Minnesota-based grocery chain Supervalu
  Supervalu (United States)
  SuperValu Inc. is a United States grocery retailer and distributor. The corporation, headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has been in business for over a century. It is the third-largest food retailing company in the United States , and ranks #51 on the Fortune 100 list.On June 2, 2006,...
  
   would buy 1,124 Albertsons stores and in-store pharmacies and with 2,656 stores will become the nation's second largest grocery chain after Kroger
  Kroger
  The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume and second-place general retailer...
  
  . CVS
  CVS Corporation
  CVS Pharmacy, or simply CVS, is the second largest pharmacy chain in the United States , with over 7,000 stores in 41 states and Puerto Rico...
  
  , the nation's largest drug store chain, will purchase about 700 stand-alone Sav-on and Osco drug stores for about $4B. The remaining set of about 655 Albertsons grocery stores will be purchased by a financial group led by New York-based Cerberus. The Albertsons name will continue. The sale was said to be due to increased competition from "large-box stores" such as Wal-Mart
  Wal-Mart
  Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
  
   and specialty stores such as Whole Foods Market
  Whole Foods Market
  Whole Foods Market is a foods supermarket chain based in Austin, Texas which emphasizes "natural and organic products." The company has been ranked among the most socially responsible businesses and placed third on the U.S...
  
  . [25]
• 2009 - Mary Skaggs dies in Santa Rosa, California on October 2, age 109 years and 8 months.

Skaggs Foundations

The Skaggs sons were frugal men and wanted to give their customers that same opportunity for frugality through low margins, compensated from a business perspective through wide replication of retail outlets. Also, in the spirit of their minister father or grandfather, they have shared and are still sharing their good fortune through a number of foundations. L.J.'s and M.B.'s foundations were mentioned in the chronology but the largest one is still personally managed by L.S. Jr. (Sam) and his wife Aline. Their ALSAM Foundation has given hundreds of million dollars to education and health research by way of scholarships, the establishment or funding of a wide number of university and research centers, and probably the nation's largest single parochial elementary and secondary complex, located in Salt Lake City. Called the Skaggs Catholic Center, which contains Juan Diego Catholic High School, St. John the Baptist Middle School, St. John the Baptist Elementary School and Guardian Angel Daycare. All four of these facilities are on the same 53 acres (214,483.6 m²) Skaggs Catholic Center.
http://www.skaggscatholiccenter.org
Skaggs Community Health Center in Branson, Missouri was named after M.B. and Estella Skaggs; M.B. was a Missouri native who owned a home and game preserve in eastern Taney County. [26]