A&P, Waldbaum’s IP Assets Purchased by Private Equity Investment Firm

American Legacy Brands (ALB), a newly formed private equity investment company, has purchased the intellectual property assets of former grocery chains A&P and Waldbaum’s.

“We own the whole basket,” Steven Shamula, president of business development at Brooklyn, N.Y.-based ALB, told Progressive Grocer in a phone interview, “Logos, URLS, from A to Z – you name it.”

ALB was created by private investors with the aim of purchasing brands with “a great history” and reviving them, and A&P and Waldbaum’s represents the company’s first opportunity to do so, according to Shamula.

What this means specifically, he explained, was that ALB was searching for manufacturers or “the right retail partners” to relaunch the brands as private label lines. Noting that the company’s goal was not to open stores or to enter into the manufacturing side of the business, Shamula said that ALB’s focus was on licensing the iconic brand names to either retailers or manufacturers.

Currently, he added, the company was “exploring our options in this arena.”

To this end, ALB has created websites for each brand, detailing their respective histories: http://www.aptea.com/ and http://www.waldbaums.com/.

Back in June 2018, New York-based Hilco Streambank, which has acted as the exclusive broker to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. since its July 2015 bankruptcy, sold the defunct grocer's A&P and Waldbaum's IP assets to a then-undisclosed buyer, which has now been revealed as ALB.

Earlier, Staten Island, N.Y.-based Key Food Stores Co-operative Inc. acquired former A&P banners The Food Emporium and SuperFresh, as well as related IP; both are now operated as Key Food store banners. Additionally, Iselin, N.J.-based retailer cooperative Allegiance Retail Services LLC purchased the IP of former A&P division Pathmark, as well as that of the grocer's natural/organic GreenWay private label line.