More Mergers

Groceries. To its 3,972 units, the Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. last week added the 193 Foltz Grocery and Baking stores, the family trade of many a Kentucky and Ohio housewife, and a large Foltz warehouse and bakery. The public was not invited. Money for the purchase came out of Kroger's treasury.

Milk. To lowans, Jens Jensen means milk and produce. Coon Rapids, Iowa, last fortnight sent despatches to say that Armour & Co. had bought out the Jens Jensen properties (40 units).

Mechanical Merchants. Humanitarian gizzards pulsated last week upon mention of a new $25,000,000 corporation to manufacture and distribute machines which--for a nickel, dime, quarter or slug dropped into a slot--will deliver any one of a thousand commodities, from candy to cathartics. Three drug store chains (Liggett, Owl, Walgreen), Happiness Candy Stores, United Cigar, Schulte, Union News, McCrory, Woolworth, Penney, Metropolitan and Grant stores will thus dispense part of their wares, and as smartly as their clerks the machines will cry out "Thank you" to the customers. They will also say "Corked tips protect the lips," or some such message appropriate to the merchandise delivered (TIME, April 16).

The name of the new corporation is Consolidated Merchandising Corp., and is a merging, through F. J. Lisman & Co. (investment bankers), of important vending machine manufacturers: Automatic Merchandising Corp. of America (United Cigar Stores has a large share in this one); Sanitary Postage Service Corp. (its machines sell one and two cent stamps in 30,000 drug stores, ten postoffices); General Vending Corp. (36,000 ubiquitous automatic weighing machines) ; Hoff Vending Corp. (Wrigley gums, Life Savers candies); Seher Mack Corp. of America; Remington Service Machines, Inc. Remington Arms Co. is to manufacture these mechanical merchants.