Food 4 Less

Food 4 Less is the name of several grocery store chains, the largest of which is currently owned by Kroger. It is a no-frills grocery store where the customers bag their own groceries at the checkout. Kroger operates Food 4 Less stores in the Chicago metropolitan area (Illinois and Indiana) and in Southern California. Kroger operates their stores as Foods Co. in northern and central California, including Bakersfield and the Central Coast, because they do not have the rights to the Food 4 Less name in those areas. Other states, such as Nevada, formerly contained Kroger-owned Food 4 Less stores.

There are other stores scattered throughout the United States with the Food 4 Less name, part of franchise agreements with various wholesalers, including Unified Western Grocers and Associated Wholesale Grocers Midwest. These stores have particular penetration in central and northern California. The Food 4 Less name was previously used by Fleming Companies, Inc., but as Fleming exited various regions and ultimately collapsed, the rights to the name went to wholesalers who picked up some of Fleming's former customers. Fleming Companies announced in April 2003 that it had filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Food 4 Less name and logo was originally conceived in the 1930s by Lou Falley, who developed a chain of stores both in the Food 4 Less name (with the warehouse/no frills format) and the Falley's name. The Falley's stores were full service supermarkets, while the Food 4 Less stores were warehouse stores, where labor costs were cut by having the groceries stocked to the shelves in the original cases, rather than stacking individual items. These stores were located throughout eastern Kansas and parts of northwestern Missouri. Over the years, the number of Falley's stores diminished, and were replaced with Food 4 Less stores. Falley's also franchised Food 4 Less in states where it did not operate.

In 1987, Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies acquired Falley's in Topeka, Kansas. During a period of consolidation in the grocery store industry, Food 4 Less merged with Ralphs, which Fred Meyer had acquired from the Yucaipa Companies in 1998. The next year in 1999 Fred Meyer along with Food 4 Less were acquired by Kroger

In 2015, Food 4 Less exited the Nevada market entirely. Six of the stores were converted to sister store Smith's Food and Drug, a prominent grocery chain owned by Kroger in the Las Vegas area. The remaining eight stores were closed.

In 1998, Fred Meyer sold Falley's and the Midwestern Food 4 Less stores to Associated Wholesale Grocers of Kansas City. The warehouse type stores were slowly phased out in favor of full service Food 4 Less stores with a new logo and format.

In January 2006, the AWG-owned Falley's and Food 4 Less stores located in Kansas were combined with sister company Homeland Stores, based in Edmond, Oklahoma. The company changed the names of the Food 4 Less stores, which it can't use beyond Kansas and Missouri, to AWG brands such as Price Chopper.

Kroger uses the Foods Co name in Northern California, where it is bound by an agreement between Falley's and grocer Nugget Markets, Inc. One Food 4 Less store in Northern California is managed and operated by Nugget. Kroger does not have any administrative control over the single Nugget Food 4 Less store.