The Great Albertsons Re-Numbering Kerfuffle

[pseudo3d]

The classical Albertsons numbering system (not so much now) used four-digit numbers in an XXYY format. The XX numbers represented the division number while the YY was a numbered sequence in how they opened. The Albertsons Florida Division was a good example of this. Store 4356 opened in 1983 after around 50 other stores in Florida (and some in Alabama), later stores (4388) opened in 1992, and it rolled over to 44xx in 1992 with the purchase of the Jewel-Osco stores and eventually 4498 (opened in 2003 as one of the last Florida stores to open).

The Texas stores are a bit more complicated. Like Florida they were a spin-off of Skaggs Albertsons but unlike Florida Skaggs continued to operate stores in the area.

Before the meltdown in 2002, three divisions operated in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio (technically so did Southwest, but the stores were in El Paso. This is irrelevant to the discussion at hand right now) and tax records exist for the Albertsons stores in Texas but they've all had their numbers changed before they closed. From what I can figure out 42xx was the numbering system for the whole Texas/Louisiana converted Skaggs systems before they got renumbered later.

I don't have Louisiana tax records so there's no way to check either way but Baton Rouge was originally 42xx based. 4223 was 11321 Florida (I believe this was the first Albertsons store in Louisiana due to the Skaggs Albertsons conversion; it closed in 2004 for conversion to Super Saver). 4224 was 7515 Perkins and 4227 was 9650 Airline Hwy.

San Antonio, another legacy Skaggs Albertsons market, also had the 42xx numbering. See here for an example, noting 5707 Bandera Road. Sometime in the early 1990s these were given new 40xx numbers, leaving the 42xx numbers for Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Austin area was entered in 1989 with the purchase of several Tom Thumb/Tom Thumb-Page stores from the Cullum Companies (pre-Randalls merger--there were some older, smaller Tom Thumb stores that remained in the area, but that's for another time). These were given the numbers of 40xx to reflect their position within the San Antonio Division (the San Antonio Division closed in 2002 but they remained with Albertsons LLC until the last stores were sold to H-E-B in 2007). However, one store at 1628 Ohlen Road closed after just one year before Albertsons bought a few Skaggs Alpha Beta stores in Austin. As a result, it kept its original 42xx numbering (4216).

When Albertsons entered Houston it used the 40xx numbering, considered part of the San Antonio stores. Around 1996, a new DC was built in Katy and everything around it switched to 27xx numbers. As a result, pre-1996 stores were renumbered irrelevant to their actual opening. 2701, for instance, was an acquired Jewel-Osco store (1992), 2723 was a Conroe store from 1989, and so on. Lake Jackson (604 Highway 332), a mid-1980s store, was originally numbered as #4225, similar to the Louisiana stores.

At some point 42xx was kept for numbering the Dallas-Fort Worth also while keeping 41xx as a second numbering system.

The end result is an endless mess of numbers that mean nothing. We know what stores existed and what numbers they closed as but that's about it.

There is a real possibility that some stores were renumbering twice, once to "new" San Antonio numbers (40xx) and again to the new Houston numbers (27xx). Numbers were definitely reused...#4205 would've been originally around Midland-Odessa where the stores first spawned but ended up getting used for 1900 N. Valley Mills Drive in Waco, a converted Jewel-Osco (1992) that closed in 2006 as part of the LLC closures.