Shop Talk: Kroger Closing King Soopers Store in Centennial

Everyone has their go-to grocery store, the place where they run in when they know just what they need and where to find it. This store may not have the best selection or the best prices, but it's a reliable standby.

As a resident of the Northside before my particular neighborhood was dubbed LoHi, I spent a lot of time at the Safeway at 26th and Federal. I was there when one fellow used food stamps to buy ten packages of lube and one can of soup. I was there when management put up a monument to striking workers killed when a car crashed into the parking lot in the '90s. I was there when you'd find pig's feet, not guanciale, in the butcher section. And I was there when, in an odd nod to gentrification, the aisles were suddenly named after Denver streets. Why were the diapers on Colfax Avenue?

During COVID, I switched most of my shopping to the King Soopers near my mother's home in Centennial. Not the fancy one at Orchard and Holly, which a friend in that area says they call the Cherry Creek Soopers, even though Cherry Creek is miles away. There are just too many branded lifestyle options at that store, which make me feel guilty about my decided lack of lifestyle.

Instead, I rely on the King Soopers at 5050 East Arapahoe Road, where the workers are unfailingly friendly, the prices sometimes weirdly lower than at other stores, and an odd little cart in the back is stocked with special discounts on things I never knew I needed, but definitely do not qualify as lifestyle.

This is the King Soopers where employee Santino Burrola chased shoplifters out into the parking lot to video them taking off with pilfered detergent — and was fired by Kroger as thanks (even as an Arapahoe County deputy credited him with helping capture the culprits).

And this is the first King Soopers that will be eliminated in Colorado by Kroger, which said last month that due to “financial strategy and low profitability" (and the failed Albertson's merger), it would be closing up to sixty stores.

The store's last day is August 16, as announced on a sign outside the entrance. But inside, the workers were as unfailingly friendly as ever when I dashed in yesterday to grab that one thing I needed.

I'll miss them.