News article on lines in bay area Safeway

[storewanderer]

And tons of reader comments about similar conditions at other locations of Safeway.

When will this chain learn to staff its stores? The NorCal Division needs an enema in its management from the very top and as far down as has been allowing this to happen. This has been going on too long, upper management in Boise is fully aware of the situation and has been for months, there is no excuse any longer.

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/03/26 ... -breadline

[arizonaguy]

And tons of reader comments about similar conditions at other locations of Safeway.

When will this chain learn to staff its stores? The NorCal Division needs an enema in its management from the very top and as far down as has been allowing this to happen. This has been going on too long, upper management in Boise is fully aware of the situation and has been for months, there is no excuse any longer.

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/03/26 ... -breadline

I was actually at a Safeway in Phoenix today where they announced 3's a crowd over the PA and brought in some extra cashiers. I'd seen this sort of thing happen at Fry's before but never Safeway.

[storewanderer]

NorCal Division no longer advertises 3's a Crowd (it is still their policy and expectation) since so many customers were calling them out on lines stretching down the aisles with 3's a Crowd signs hanging up above the lines.

Supposedly, more labor is added to the stores. To me, it is the same as before. Some Safeways have control over checkout, and have moderate lines of 1-3 customers at any given time. Other Safeways just cannot get it together and 4-5 in line is common. It has been this way for a long time. The difference is the old Safeway did not make any sort of service commitment. Albertsons has made a service commitment and expectation (3's a Crowd) and it is not happening.

[klkla]

Safeway's issue in NorCal comes down to business ethics IMO. They don't have very much competition in the greater bay area where the barriers to entry are significant. So they don't see a reason to try hard because in reality the majority of their customers don't have any other better choices. They know what the problems are. They just don't care.

[storewanderer]

I feel like over time they will lose the bay area (but not to any one competitor) if they don't watch what they are doing. Competition keeps chipping away in the bay area. Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joe's, New Seasons... all keep opening stores, plus Asian formats like 99 Ranch, Seafood City... then outside the bay area you have ongoing, albeit slow, development of Wal Mart Supercenters and WinCo locations...

They have benefited on an ongoing basis for the past 10+ years from ongoing closures in the bay area of various other conventionals (Ralphs few stores, many Albertsons, a few Save Marts, and quite a few Raleys/Nob Hill locations) but those have also opened up space for all these "alternate" formats to open. I also think this may be a little harder in the future as I do not really know how many more stores we will see Raleys/Nob Hill close in the bay area (I feel like they've pretty much filtered out the poor performers or small stores) and as far as Save Mart/Lucky goes their volumes are so low that even if a few more of their stores do go away they may not really be very much of a lift to Safeway's sales.

[Alpha8472]

Safeway has so many stores in the San Francisco Bay Area that in many cities, there is no other choice but to go to Safeway. I can see why they want to buy Sprouts. The Sprouts in the area are so crowded that you cannot find parking. Safeway wants to kill its competitor.

There is one Nob Hill Foods in Walnut Creek that is near death. A new Safeway opened up practically across the street from it. The Safeway has long lines, but no one shops at Nob Hill. It is high priced and old.

[pseudo3d]

Safeway has so many stores in the San Francisco Bay Area that in many cities, there is no other choice but to go to Safeway. I can see why they want to buy Sprouts. The Sprouts in the area are so crowded that you cannot find parking. Safeway wants to kill its competitor.

This is the reason I'm really suspicious of Sprouts, Albertsons has shown willingness to build smaller stores (moreso than bigger stores), and the markets where Sprouts are already overlap with a lot strong markets (the Safeway acquisition had a lot of overlap but a lot of that was former SuperValu territory, and NorCal was new). If they buy Sprouts, I can imagine they'll keep the stock listing and swap the better locations, then "spin off" a privatized Sprouts.

I hope they can fix NorCal. With Houston now gone and absorbed into the South division, I also hope that South can flush out the poison that's been killing Randalls since 1999 and also turn the Louisiana Albertsons around.