Safeway closures

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Safeway closures

Post by storewanderer »

These were announced a few weeks ago:

Tacoma, WA: 6201 6th Ave.
Anchorage, AK: Northway Mall
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by Bluelightspecial »

Isn't the Anchorage store a Carrs? I could be wrong, but I thought all the Anchorage stores were converted to Carrs stores.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

The Carrs brand is solely used in the Anchorage metro, while the Safeway brand is used in the rest of Alaska.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by mbz321 »

Bluelightspecial wrote: September 9th, 2020, 10:10 pm Isn't the Anchorage store a Carrs? I could be wrong, but I thought all the Anchorage stores were converted to Carrs stores.
Either way, it is still a 'Safeway' unless you want to get nit-picky.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by Bluelightspecial »

mbz321 wrote: September 10th, 2020, 7:33 pm
Bluelightspecial wrote: September 9th, 2020, 10:10 pm Isn't the Anchorage store a Carrs? I could be wrong, but I thought all the Anchorage stores were converted to Carrs stores.
Either way, it is still a 'Safeway' unless you want to get nit-picky.
Don't want to be "nit-picky", but Safeway had a lot of banners..and Albertson's now has even more. It was a genuine question. I wasn't sure if Safeway converted all their stores in Anchorage to the "Carrs" banner. Unfortunately Safeway tried to make all their stores under all the banners look the same which was part of their downfall.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by storewanderer »

Bluelightspecial wrote: September 10th, 2020, 10:25 pm
mbz321 wrote: September 10th, 2020, 7:33 pm
Bluelightspecial wrote: September 9th, 2020, 10:10 pm Isn't the Anchorage store a Carrs? I could be wrong, but I thought all the Anchorage stores were converted to Carrs stores.
Either way, it is still a 'Safeway' unless you want to get nit-picky.
Don't want to be "nit-picky", but Safeway had a lot of banners..and Albertson's now has even more. It was a genuine question. I wasn't sure if Safeway converted all their stores in Anchorage to the "Carrs" banner. Unfortunately Safeway tried to make all their stores under all the banners look the same which was part of their downfall.
News article said Carrs Safeway... the store sure looks like a Safeway. The Lifestyle remodel must have accomplished that.

Most of the Anchroage area Safeways were sold during the Carrs merger due to FTC order to something involved with wholesaler Associated Seattle (I think it was them, or United Grocers, I forget which) and the stores were rebranded Alaska's Marketplace or something. They were out of business within a year or two of being divested.

There are still a few Safeway banner stores in Alaska.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by rwsandiego »

The pictures on Google Maps have a "Carrs" sign on the building. Here's a link.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by pseudo3d »

Certainly Albertsons seems to have gotten the yearly closures down to a just a few (though the Randalls stores were still hit hard), but I do wonder what's the bigger plan for Sankaran's Albertsons. He seems to talk about e-commerce a lot, but that's a dangerous road to go down when looking at how Kroger's gone weird because of that obsession.

Acquisitions always seem to be a popular choice for Albertsons historically, but they need to focus on price and merchandising if they aren't going to do that, including seeing if they could make some interesting new store experiments and concepts.
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: September 11th, 2020, 4:54 am Certainly Albertsons seems to have gotten the yearly closures down to a just a few (though the Randalls stores were still hit hard), but I do wonder what's the bigger plan for Sankaran's Albertsons. He seems to talk about e-commerce a lot, but that's a dangerous road to go down when looking at how Kroger's gone weird because of that obsession.

Acquisitions always seem to be a popular choice for Albertsons historically, but they need to focus on price and merchandising if they aren't going to do that, including seeing if they could make some interesting new store experiments and concepts.
They already have an interesting new store concept- those Boise Market Street format stores. The challenge is executing stores elsewhere at that level.

The e-commerce thing is what Wall Street wants to hear about... to be fair Safeway has had their .com operation for many years now and Albertsons had a platform and model to try and build off of. Kroger seemed to just start from scratch (even though King Soopers had an e-commerce operation that was the age of the Safeway one).
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Re: Safeway closures

Post by pseudo3d »

storewanderer wrote: September 11th, 2020, 11:28 pm
pseudo3d wrote: September 11th, 2020, 4:54 am Certainly Albertsons seems to have gotten the yearly closures down to a just a few (though the Randalls stores were still hit hard), but I do wonder what's the bigger plan for Sankaran's Albertsons. He seems to talk about e-commerce a lot, but that's a dangerous road to go down when looking at how Kroger's gone weird because of that obsession.

Acquisitions always seem to be a popular choice for Albertsons historically, but they need to focus on price and merchandising if they aren't going to do that, including seeing if they could make some interesting new store experiments and concepts.
They already have an interesting new store concept- those Boise Market Street format stores. The challenge is executing stores elsewhere at that level.

The e-commerce thing is what Wall Street wants to hear about... to be fair Safeway has had their .com operation for many years now and Albertsons had a platform and model to try and build off of. Kroger seemed to just start from scratch (even though King Soopers had an e-commerce operation that was the age of the Safeway one).
Well, the Market Street concept was born under the Miller administration. I was thinking of a format that would introduce more general merchandise options, like hardware or apparel (the latter being experimented by Hy-Vee). It's doubtful that they'll go anywhere close to the "Kroger Marketplace" model but they could always play around with concepts (on that note, Albertsons did keep Monte Mart, a mid-1970s acquisition, as a full-service operation for several years after acquisition, and by the time it was divested in '99, one of the old Monte Mart stores was their biggest stores at 100k+ square feet).

Or just focus on improving the weaker markets, like Colorado or Texas.
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