Retail Watchers

A Safeway in far north Tucson is being replaced with a new store across the road. The store being replaced is a former Abco and one of the last non-lifestyle stores in Arizona.

The new store has an Albertsons layout rather than a Safeway layout (pharmacy in the front corner with a few little short aisles in front of it; frozen and dairy on that same side of the store; meat/seafood center back wall; bakery/deli on the opposite side wall and no wall space at all for produce.

Actually the layout is quite like a 1980's Albertsons. Not even like a modern one.

So much for Safeway's predictable store layouts.

storewanderer wrote: So much for Safeway's predictable store layouts.

The moment you start wheeling and dealing with acquisitions, creating "predictable store layouts" is like herding cats. Safeway has been dabbling with acquisitions and their associated problems with store layouts long before Albertsons came into their life, really.

EDIT: A former ABCO Foods, eh? It looks like (assuming we're talking the store near Mountain View High School) it was built as an ABCO under Fleming.

EDIT 2: Disregard. Looks like it was opened in the late 1990s or even the year 2000.

storewanderer wrote:A Safeway in far north Tucson is being replaced with a new store across the road. The store being replaced is a former Abco and one of the last non-lifestyle stores in Arizona.

The new store has an Albertsons layout rather than a Safeway layout (pharmacy in the front corner with a few little short aisles in front of it; frozen and dairy on that same side of the store; meat/seafood center back wall; bakery/deli on the opposite side wall and no wall space at all for produce.

Actually the layout is quite like a 1980's Albertsons. Not even like a modern one.

So much for Safeway's predictable store layouts.

This layout sounds almost exactly like the early 1990s Albertsons store that closed 2.5 years ago that is now being converted to a Safeway in Phoenix.

Most of the late 1980s / early 1990s "superstore" stores had (or have) this layout. In the later days of Albertsons Inc. ownership (before the breakup) they converted a few of these stores to have a pharmacy in the center of the store (the store at Cactus / 51st Ave in Glendale had this arrangement). However, under LLC ownership they've reverted to the traditional layout.

Safeway replaced an ex-ABCO (about the same age as the store you mention (Linda Vista and Thorneydale) at 39th Ave. and Pinnacle Peak Rd. in North Phoenix about 5-6 years ago with a new, quite large store 1 mile north at 39th Ave. and Happy Valley Rd. (one of their last new builds in the Phoenix area and one of their nicest stores). The Moon Valley store (7th St. and Thunderbird Rd.) is also an ex-ABCO.

In addition to the several ex-ABCOs in Tucson, Safeway also has an ex-Smith's at Broadway and Camino Seco.

pseudo3d wrote:

storewanderer wrote: So much for Safeway's predictable store layouts.

The moment you start wheeling and dealing with acquisitions, creating "predictable store layouts" is like herding cats. Safeway has been dabbling with acquisitions and their associated problems with store layouts long before Albertsons came into their life, really.

EDIT: A former ABCO Foods, eh? It looks like (assuming we're talking the store near Mountain View High School) it was built as an ABCO under Fleming.

EDIT 2: Disregard. Looks like it was opened in the late 1990s or even the year 2000.

ABCO built several stores of similar design in the late 1990s / early 2000s. They've ended up being too small for most traditional operators. Albertsons closed the only one that they ended up with and Safeway has already closed and replaced one of the handful that they bought.

That late 90s design was the "Desert Market" design that was ABCO's last gasp before going under.

Yeah, it was built after 1996 and sold to Safeway in March 2001. No wonder Fleming sold out, ~40k square feet for a suburban supermarket in the late 1990s is really dinky.