Kings Food Markets

Kings Food Markets

File:Kings Food Markets logo.png Kings Food Markets logo
Type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	Summit, New Jersey, 1936
Headquarters	Parsippany, New Jersey, United States of America
Number of locations	24 stores (2010)
Area served	New Jersey, Connecticut
Key people	Rich Durante, President Judith Spires, CEO
Products	Grocery Bakery Deli Seafood Liquor Meat Produce
Revenue	$405.9 million USD (2005)
Owner	Angelo, Gordon & Co. and MTN Capital Partners
Website	www.kingsfoodmarkets.com

Kings Food Markets is an upscale food market chain headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, with stores in northern New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Founded in 1936, Kings was bought by UK retailer Marks & Spencer in 1988 and later sold to a US investor group consisting of Angelo, Gordon & Co. and MTN Capital Partners LLC in 2006.

Kings operates today in a competitive market in New Jersey alongside other chains such as ShopRite and Stop & Shop. Many features of today's mid-market stores have been offered at Kings for decades. The chain operates either in, or in close proximity to, affluent suburban towns, and its stores offer a mix of traditional and upmarket grocery items. Kings also offers "COOKINGSTUDIO" cooking classes at its Short Hills, NJ location.

In the 1980s, Kings was one of the last supermarket chains to offer traditional S&H Green Stamps.

Kings was acquired by the British firm Marks and Spencer plc in 1988 but achieved little in terms of expansion into new affluent markets. Marks and Spencer plc later made a number of attempts to sell the chain, putting its desire to further invest in the chain into doubt. New York-based Gristedes made a bid for Kings, but the chain was eventually sold in 2006 to a US investor group.

In 2009, King's acquired Balducci's.

In 2014, when Kings' wholesale distributor White Rose Foods went out of business and was sold to C&S Grocers, Kings switched wholesalers to Wakefern Food Corp of Elizabeth, NJ, parent company of ShopRite Supermarkets and wholesale distributor to various other chains including Gristedes and Food Bazaar, among others.