Kroger

Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has put a Hollywood Hills home that she owns on the market at $829,000. The pop star marked her 55th birthday in November at an Atlanta concert with another Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Bob Dylan. She also starred in the fall in her first TV special since 1980 and cut the album "Taming the Tiger."

Anne Marie Sablock said she regularly drives past an Albertsons, a Whole Foods Market and several other supermarkets to shop at the Ralphs on Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. The Seal Beach mother of two teens is price sensitive and likes a broad selection of goods. She buys house brands and private label products. "I shop here because there is more choice and better prices," Sablock said as she dropped a box of Ralphs brand instant oatmeal into her cart last week.

Carol and Ed Vogel enjoyed a weeklong all-expenses-paid trip to a Newport Beach resort last month, and they're scheduled to return in a couple of weeks. The Nevada couple didn't need frequent-flier miles or credit card rewards to get free airfare and hotel stay as well as $1,000 in spending money. It was all because of Carol Vogel's ailing hips and an employer's frustration with the high cost of U.S. healthcare. Quiz: The week in business Her husband's employer, newspaper publisher Stephens Media, sends employees and their family members needing hip and knee replacements to a handful of hospitals across the country, including one in Orange County, that agreed to a low, fixed rate for surgery and scored well on quality of care.

Ralphs parent Kroger Co. said warehouse workers in Southern California ratified a new five-year contract. The agreement covers about 3,200 workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Cincinnati-based grocer said in a statement. The contract covers warehouse staff and truck drivers who deliver food and other goods to Kroger's Ralphs and Food 4 Less supermarkets in Southern California, a spokesman said.

Kroger Co., parent of the Ralphs and Food 4 Less chains, said fiscal first-quarter profit swelled 12% as discounting led to a sales boost in Southern California, its largest market. The Cincinnati-based grocer, the nation's largest, said net income climbed to $294.3 million, or 40 cents a share, from $262.8 million, or 35 cents, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had expected 34 cents a share. Sales rose 6.2% to $17.9 billion in the quarter ended May 21.

Albertson's Inc., the No. 2 U.S. grocer, tapped a former executive of No. 1 Kroger Co. as chief financial officer, filling a job open since May. Felecia Thornton, 37, had been group vice president of retail operations at Kroger until December, when she went to work as a consultant with a Los Angeles real estate firm. Thornton previously was group vice president of finance and administration for Ralphs Grocery Co., which Kroger bought in May 1999 as part of its Fred Meyer acquisition.

The board of directors of Kroger Co. on Friday approved a restructuring plan for the grocery retailer and rejected the competing takeover bids of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Dart Group Corp. The plan, announced late in the day at the company's headquarters in Cincinnati, would pay $40 in cash plus securities valued at $8 for each of its 78.6 million shares outstanding. Shareholders would retain stock in the company, the value of which was not immediately determined.

Grocery chain Kroger Co., operator of Ralphs, said its second-quarter profit rose 3.4% as a slowing economy prompted people to eat at home more often and try more store brands. The results sent its stock up more than 5%. Kroger has added to frequent-customer incentives for store discounts and cheaper gas at its own stations, along with offering more store-brand items and prepared meals for people trading down in price and cutting back on eating out. The company said sales were strong for its deli, bakery and prepared foods, and that store-label items accounted for a record 26% of its grocery sales.