In Seattle and across the state, the dramatic collapse of the Kroger-Albertsons merger early Wednesday morning was greeted by a curious mixture of relief, anxiety and even disappointment.

Many grocery shoppers welcomed the news that Albertsons, which owns Safeway and Haggen, had killed the $25 billion deal with Kroger, owner of QFC and Fred Meyer, less than a day after judges in Seattle and Portland ruled against the merger in separate antitrust cases.

“If it had gone through, prices would have gone up faster and higher,” said Cathy Geier on Wednesday as she stood outside the QFC in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, which had been among the dozens of Seattle-area Kroger locations that would have been sold off as part of the merger.

Higher prices, certainly, were one of the risks state and federal regulators had emphasized in opposing the merger.

Reaction was more mixed among workers at both stores. Many were glad to be done with the uncertainty that has clouded both companies since they announced the deal in October 2022.

It wasn’t until mid-July, for example, that Kroger and Albertson released the exact locations of the 579 stores, including 124 in Washington, that would be sold off to a relatively obscure New Hampshire-based company called C&S Wholesale Grocers.

With the deal dead, “I think people will be a lot calmer,” said a Ballard Safeway employee, of the angst that had gripped the store’s employees for months.

Others said those questions had simply been replaced with new ones about what Kroger and Albertsons will do after the death of a deal both claimed was necessary to compete in a grocery market dominated by nontraditional players like Walmart, Costco and Amazon.

Take the uncertainty over store closures.

In the months that followed the merger announcement, many workers and shoppers worried that the deal would invariably lead to closures. That concern was especially intense in and around Seattle, which has an unusually high concentration of Kroger and Albertsons locations, including many that compete directly with each other.

Closure fears were heightened after Kroger and Albertsons announced a plan to divest hundreds of stores to C&S Wholesale.

Federal and state regulators had argued that C&S’ relative lack of retail experience or systems made it likely that at least some of the divested stores would be sold or closed outright.

“The question was, would this have survived?” said Barbara Lovseth as she stood near the Wallingford QFC. If it was later closed, Lovseth said, “that would really have limited our choices here in the neighborhood.”

All but one Seattle-area QFC — the store in Seattle’s University Village — would have gone to C&S, which was also buying the QFC brand, or “banner.”

But some workers and others wonder whether killing the deal may also push Kroger and Albertsons to consider closing locations and trim staff.

During the trial, Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran testified that closing stores and exiting some markets would be more likely if the merger failed.

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That possibility was still on the minds of employees Wednesday at the Ballard Safeway.

For months, the corporate rhetoric from Albertsons has been “we’re going to close stores because we can’t afford” to keep them open without the merger, said a store employee, who also declined to be named to protect their job.

How likely that rhetoric turns into actual closures is complicated to predict, in part because Albertsons has sent mixed signals about its financial health. In previous statements, the grocery retailer said it was “confident in … its continued ability to compete … regardless of whether the merger is consummated.”

Albertsons has also given the appearance of ample cash. In 2023, the company shelled out a$4 billion dividend to investors.

In a feisty Wednesday morning news release, Albertsons promised to spend another $2 billion buying back its own shares. Sankaran boasted that Albertsons would “start this next chapter in strong financial condition” and Albertsons’ largest shareholder, Cerberus Capital, said it remained “confident in Albertsons’ strength as a standalone company.”

Still, experts like Jarrad Harford, chair of the finance and business economics department at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, think Albertsons really will be at a disadvantage without the merger.

“Going forward, we will likely see store closures and layoffs, particularly on the Albertsons side as it has struggled to compete in the increasingly scale-driven grocery market business,” Harford said in an email Wednesday.

More broadly, the merger’s demise effectively gives both Albertsons and Kroger far more latitude to shutter stores or make other cuts because they’re no longer worried about angering federal or state regulators, said Kevin Boeh, a mergers-and-acquisitions expert at the Foster School.

Until yesterday, any store closure by either company would have effectively needed state or federal approval, Boeh said. “As of today, it won’t have to.”

Slightly more optimistic is Neil Saunders, a managing director at data analysis company GlobalData and a long-time observer of retail trends.

Saunders thinks Albertsons and its investors are still eager to find a merger partner or buyer, and will need to invest more in their stores to make the company an attractive target.

Some of Albertsons’ locations “are not very good and desperately in need of investment,” Saunders said. “So rather than management whining about a deal that’s not gone ahead, perhaps they can focus on actually sharpening their internal business practices.”

In his ruling Tuesday, King County Superior Court Judge Marshall Ferguson himself acknowledged the concerns many Washingtonians have about the fate of their community grocery stores, but could offer little in the way of relief.

“I wish I could give them assurance about what will happen to those boards, but … that is not the role of this court,” said Ferguson. “The evidence that was presented during this trial was never about whether any specific store would thrive or fail after the merger or without the merger.”

For now, the future seems to grow even more uncertain for both Kroger and Albertsons, along with their employees and customers.

On Wednesday morning, the two companies traded pointed claims and counterclaims.

Albertsons accused Kroger of “self-serving conduct,” adding that its former corporate bestie scuppered the deal by “repeatedly refusing to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignoring regulators’ feedback, rejecting stronger divestiture buyers and failing to cooperate with Albertsons,” according to Albertsons’ news release.

Albertson has filed a lawsuit against Kroger seeking “billions of dollars in damages from Kroger to make Albertsons and its shareholders whole.”

In its own salty response, Kroger called Albertsons’ claims “baseless and without merit,” and accused Albertsons of “repeated intentional material breaches and interference throughout the merger process.”

The breakup and bickering didn’t surprise some of the people who worked for the companies.

At the QFC in Wallingford, one longtime employee said he had actually wanted the merger to go forward so that he could work for C&S instead of Kroger.

“When (the merger) first got announced, I was super excited,” said the employee, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

But over time, he said, Kroger’s corporate management sent so “many mixed messages” about the proposed deal that “most of us didn’t think it was going through.”

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