By the time I got there last night closer to 8 PM, there wasn't much in the way of staffing, nobody really on the sales floor. There were 3 checkouts open with pretty steady lines plus self checkouts had pretty steady lines. Meat, bakery, and pharmacy were closed entirely. Deli was open but in the process of wrapping up, same for Starbucks.bryceleinan wrote: ↑May 20th, 2021, 7:25 am
I agree - Raley’s is an early grand-opening gift to Safeway. One of the things I liked is how the pharmacy is right up front, and you can walk right into it from the outside doors on the left hand side. I haven’t been in a lot of the old Albertsons (now Save Mart stores in NorCal,) so it took a second to get used to the layout. but I agree this definitely didn’t feel like a Safeway to me.
I also happened to run into the district manager for Reno-Tahoe there too, and the entire management team was continually circulating through the store.
If it had a heavy management presence earlier in the day that explains why it still was in good shape last night, they must have been refreshing it all day. The store was in really good order last night. This is going to be a great store. I expect they will be very successful with the fresh departments in this location and the results will be very positive. This could even turn into one of the best performing stores for them in the entire NorCal Division which would be quite an achievement given how Safeway has done in Reno area over the past 20 years (not great).
Also it is good to have another pharmacy... current ones definitely have more customers than they know what to do with.
I too liked the layout after walking the entire store. It is an old layout but it actually works very well on the larger sized store with the warehouse ceilings.