Albertson's Joins Meals.com Network; Nation's Second Largest Food-Drug Retailer to Add Recipes and Meal Planning Tools to Web Sites.

Business Editors

BELLEVUE, Wash. & BOISE, Idaho--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 15, 2001

Meals.com, a subsidiary of Coinstar (Nasdaq:CSTR) and Albertson's Inc. (NYSE:ABS) today announced an agreement to provide co-branded versions of Meal.com's online recipe content and meal planning tools to Albertson's Web sites.

Albertson's Inc. is the nation's second largest food-drug retailer operating under the Albertson's, Jewel, Jewel-Osco, Osco Drug, Sav-on drugs, Seessel's and ACME banners. Meals.com provides retailers the opportunity to personalize their interactions with consumers while they are planning meals and preparing to shop for food.

"Albertson's is pleased to offer this new online service to its customers," said Matt Muta, Albertson's vice president of e-commerce and Internet. "Meals.com's recipes and technology will provide new incentives for Albertson's customers to return to the Albertsons.com Web site."

Customers will not only have thousands of new meal ideas to choose from, but they can easily save and share recipes with family and friends, read reviews of recipes from other customers, and even submit their own recipes to be included on the site.

"Meals.com is a proven service Albertson's customers will enjoy and appreciate," said Russ Ruby, vice president of marketing and retail development for Meals.com. "Features such as the ability to scale recipes to exact family size and generate convenient grocery lists make cooking and shopping easier. The Meals.com experts will also help Albertson's customers stay on top of the newest cooking trends and nutritional advice."

Albertson's corporate Web site, www.albertsons.com, will implement the Meals.com content and functionality within the next two months. Features will include more than 10,000 recipes sorted by cooking method and cuisine, and tools such as My Meal Plans, My Grocery List and My Recipe Box, which help organize and simplify meal planning and grocery shopping. Albertson's Jewel-Osco, www.jewelosco.com, and Acme Markets, www.acmemarkets.com will also add the Meals.com content.

Meals.com supplies meal planning, recipe content and infrastructure for Web sites and has agreements or letters of intent to provide co-branded sites to supermarket retailers representing more than 7,000 stores with an estimated 40 million customers, as well as a growing list of portals and women's Web sites. Meals.com also powers in-store technologies, such as the Shopper, a Web access terminal that provides consumers with personalized offers and relevant information. Shopper is fully deployed in the Ukrop's chain of supermarkets in Virginia.

About Albertson's

Albertson's Inc. is one of the largest retail food and drug chains in the United States. Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, Albertson's currently operates more than 2,500 retail stores in 36 states across the country and employs 230,000 individuals. For more information on Albertson's, visit the company's Web site at www.albertsons.com.

About Meals.com

Meals.com Inc. connects consumers, grocery stores and manufacturers through online and in-store technologies that provide shoppers with relevant information and special offers based on their personal preferences. Meals.com is a subsidiary of Coinstar Inc., a coin counting and e-services company that has relationships with more than 8,500 U.S. supermarkets.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including Meals.com's future performance with respect to customer contracts. The words "believe", "expect", "intend", "anticipate", variations of such words, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. Actual results could differ materially from the results identified or implied in any forward-looking statement discussed herein. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, Meals.com's ability to execute on its contracts, the potential deconsolidation of Meals.com from Coinstar, Inc. and its ability to attract and retain retailers, as well as the risks that are more fully described under the caption "Risk Factors" included in the most recent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Coinstar Inc.