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While concern continues to rise about the cost of groceries, another major issue is quietly cropping up in your neighborhood: local grocery stores closing. During its June 2025 earnings call, Kroger announced that it would shutter 60 locations over the next 18 months, citing underperformance. The closures also affect other brands under the company umbrella, including Fred Meyer, Fry’s Food and Drug, Harris Teeter, Foods Co, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Mariano’s, Pick ‘n Save, and QFC.Many consumers struggling with higher food costs have turned to discount grocery stores for relief, but those are also winking out of sight in some areas. Aldi is another chain closing stores in 2026, with locations shuttering in Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, and Wisconsin. While the chain has plans to expand up to 3,200 locations by 2028, it needs to cut underperforming stores to reach that goal.Grocery Outlet also falls into the discount category — and it’s also closing stores. The chain announced in March 2026 that it would shutter 36 locations. CEO Jason Potter said that the chain stretched itself too thin with a rapid expansion plan. 24 locations included in the closure are on the east coast, translating into less discount grocery options for many consumers in need of them.Now, another grocery has announced new closures, some affecting locations that have been open for decades.Safeway shutters more storesSafeway’s most recent closure was Newport, Oregon, at 2220 N Coast Hwy, a location that served locals for 30 years. The store closed its doors in July. This closure follows the Hechinger Mall location in Washington, D.C., which was open for 40 years and shuttered on May 16. Before that, the Hayward Safeway on Jackson St. in California’s Bay Area closed in February 2026.“Like all retailers, we are constantly evaluating our store footprint and have to look at every angle of the business. This includes our real estate portfolio. We are coming to the end of our lease at this location, and have made the decision to reinvest our resources into other existing stores,” Safeway said in a statement in response to the Washington store closure.Related: Grocery giant rethinks supply chain plans as store closures mountThe closures are part of a strategic shift for Safeway’s parent company, Albertsons. 30 Albertsons locations closed in 2025, and another 12 are on the chopping block for 2026 so far.“We’re continually looking at our store base and making decisions on whether to keep the stores or can we turn them around, can we change the profitability or making the difficult decisions from time to time to exit those stores. And we’ve not seen a dramatic shift or increase in store profitability at this time. Again, it’s a pretty small number of our fleet,” CEO Susan Morris said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.More Retail:Coca-Cola quietly hints at reinventing previously failed flavorBath & Body Works quietly gains a competitive advantageDollar General brings back old pricesKroger attempted to buy Albertsons for $24.6 billion in October 2022, but the merger was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission in February 2024. Albertsons responded by suing Kroger, saying it didn’t do enough to secure regulatory approval, and Kroger countersued. The lawsuits are currently ongoing.How local grocery closures impact the consumerFor these companies, closing underperforming locations helps them stay on budget and make key moves in other areas. But for the consumers who have relied on the stores for decades, it creates a much larger problem.Each closure removes a full-service grocery option from that neighborhood, which matters most in areas without many alternatives nearby. Both the Washington, D.C. and the Oregon Safeway had operated for decades — long enough that residents built shopping habits, transportation routines, and in some cases, food-access dependence around them.Safeway store closures in 2026 (so far)231 W Jackson Street, Hayward, CA1601 Maryland Ave NE, Washington, D.C.2220 N Coast Highway, Newport, ORThis is also the fourth Bay Area Safeway to close in just over a year, following earlier shutdowns in San Francisco’s Fillmore district, Pinole, and Vallejo. When multiple stores in the same metro area close in succession, remaining stores absorb more shopper traffic (longer lines, thinner stock) and some pockets of the region end up genuinely underserved.While these closures may make life harder for many residents who relied on these stores, there is one bright spot in the story. All 76 employees at the Hayward store were transferred to nearby locations rather than laid off, consistent with the union’s collective bargaining agreement, and this pattern has held across most of Safeway’s other closures. Albertsons itself said it works “to place as many associates as possible in other stores.” So while shoppers will need to find a new local grocery, at least Safeway’s workers are being taken care of — something that feels rare in corporate America these days.Related: 87-year-old grocery giant closing more stores

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Publicly traded VC funds have been booming this year, amassing billions of dollars of pre-IPO equity as retail investors clamor for exposure to top startups before they go public. But that excitement is reversing, as SpaceX’s SPCX public debut and its wave of expiring share lockups flood the market with supply that scarcity had once made precious.Closed-end funds marketed to retail investors—including Robinhood Ventures, Fundrise, and ARK Invest—traded at huge multiples to net asset value earlier this year. Retail investors lacking direct access to companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI drove prices higher.Since SpaceX’s IPO, though, these public venture funds have fallen significantly off their record premiums. Investors say the trend underscores volatility in the nascent retail-oriented strategy, as well as concentration risk in just a handful of such funds.“A lot of them marketed a name like SpaceX in their portfolio, or others, and it was the first time that individuals really understood that they could participate in these,” says Mark Klein, CEO of Neostellar Capital, a publicly traded VC fund. “You had a fear of missing out by the retail investor, and they went and grabbed names, irrespective of underlying asset value, which is unfortunate.”In addition to Robinhood, Fundrise, and ARK, retail vehicles run by Powerlaw Capital and Neostellar have been on the rise. “Given the amount of money they have to deploy, they have to chase certain types of deals,” says Aman Verjee, general partner at secondaries firm Practical Venture Capital. “But when you are only focused on these top three or five [pre-IPO companies], and everyone else is, there’s not going to be a lot of value in these companies. You’re at best capturing just the beta in the late-stage private space, and it’s hard to get alpha.”Recent share price declines and NAV dips in these funds have stemmed largely from SpaceX’s IPO in June, Klein says.Robinhood Ventures Fund I, whose top two holdings are OpenAI and Databricks, closed Wednesday at $27 per share, declining 3.7% on the day for a 7.6% premium to its NAV of $25.03. Its stock was up 23.1% on the year, despite losing 20.7% in the last month. In May, before SpaceX’s IPO, Robinhood’s RVI was trading at a premium of about 90%.Still, retail fund managers are looking to capitalize on 2026’s momentum. Reuters reported that Robinhood is aiming to raise about $200 million for its second publicly traded venture fund, RVII, in an Aug. 13 IPO priced at $25 per share. Robinhood plans to use the proceeds to fund Y Combinator startups.Retail investors have generally been paying a steep premium for access to these hard-to-get names. The investment frenzy in these funds has mirrored the broader rise of the US VC secondaries market, where institutional buyers have chased the same pre-IPO names ahead of 2026’s expected mega-IPOs.The SEC has also made it easier for retail investors to access private markets. “A lot of [retail investors] got massively overvalued [equity], because the understanding of what the underlying was worth was not as clear as perhaps it is now,” Klein said.PitchBook’s Q2 2026 US VC Secondary Market Watch pegs the overall size of the US market at $121.7 billion. That said, secondaries investors are expecting a contraction in the market, especially once Anthropic and OpenAI IPO go public.“These funds are not insulated from this pattern that we’re seeing in the market right now,” says PitchBook senior research analyst Emily Zheng. “This is a very new product, and there is a lot of retail interest. But whether that pricing can be sustained for the long term is tough.”

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