By Randy Tucker
Enquirer staff writer

Seven stores from the nearly defunct Thriftway grocery chain have been sold to competitors in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, including a deal that closed Wednesday to sell six stores to market leader Kroger Co. and an agreement to sell one store to Erlanger-based Remke Markets.

Kroger, the Cincinnati-based market leader and the nation's largest supermarket operator, agreed to purchase the Thriftway stores from Florida-based Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. after weeks of haggling.

Financial terms of the deal were not released.

"We're planning to remodel and upgrade the stores over the next several months and will reopen the stores under the Kroger banner as those renovations are completed," said Kroger spokesman Gary Rhodes. "These stores will provide good growth opportunities for Kroger and added convenience for our customers."

The stores will become part of Kroger's Cincinnati division, which operates 103 stores in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Kroger hopes to retain many displaced workers, and the company already has begun interviewing former Thriftway employees, Rhodes said.

The stores that Kroger bought are in Norwood, Blue Ash, Goshen, Amelia, Monfort Heights and Florence. They were among eight Thriftway locations that Winn-Dixie closed last week, about two months after announcing it would shutter or sell all 21 Thriftway stores in the Greater Cincinnati market because of competitive pressures.

Remke President Eric Rabe said he reached agreement with Winn-Dixie last week to buy the 62,000-square-foot Thriftway store on Burlington Pike in Florence, which will be the chain's eighth store. It will reopen next week as Remke.

"We'll close the store early one evening next week, bring in about 125 workers to cut meat and put the produce up, then open the next morning at eight o'clock," Rabe said. "We think this part of Boone County is a tremendous growth area, and we've been working for a while to put a store in that area."

Remke will acquire most of the remaining Thriftway stock in the store and add some of its signature lines, including Boar's Head delicatessen meats and Busken bakery products, Rabe said. In addition to Kroger and Remke, Bigg's, the No. 2 grocer in the area, also is rumored to be interested in Thriftway stores.

The acquisitions are seen as defensive measures by the supermarket chains to shore up market share as Wal-Mart brings at least nine SuperCenters into the area over the next several years.

"The super centers are the real threat to traditional supermarkets, and supermarkets realize they have to expand to remain competitive," said Sheila McNeely, a food industry analyst who follows Kroger for Fitch Ratings in Chicago.

E-mail rtucker@enquirer.com