The grocery business in the U.S. is, and always has been, a fairly miserable one. In fact, from A&P to Grand Union, Dahl’s, etc., bankruptcy courts have been littered with the industry’s failures for decades.
Of course the reasoning is fairly simple…razor-thin operating margins that hover around 1-3% leave the entire industry completely incapable of absorbing even the slightest financial shock from things like increasing competition or food deflation.