Safeway Goal: Eliminate ALL paper/plastic bags by 2015

[storewanderer]

http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/07/saf ... tal-goals/

Wow, Bob Miller and the Albertsons group cannot gain control of Safeway fast enough. There are some wacky ideas coming out of there lately.

[Alpha8472]

Safeway is going to face the wrath of thousands of angry customers. Alameda County in California eliminated plastic bags over a year and half ago. Since then, paper is the only bag available besides reusable bags. Most customers still buy ten cent paper bags, because they cannot be bothered to bring reusable bags with them everywhere they go.

In places where plastic bags are not banned, customers will be even less used to bringing reusable bags. If all paper and plastic bags are eliminated, customers will be more angry than ever. Buying a reusable bag every single time for $1 will push people over the edge. They will simply shop at another supermarket that gives away free plastic or paper bags. Safeway will become the supermarket chain to avoid. Is Safeway trying to put itself out of business?

Unless there is a disposable bag ban, there is no way that a supermarket chain can eliminate free bags and survive. Free bags costs money to a supermarket, but customers expect free bags. Safeway will lose customers, and this will kill the savings from stopping free bags.

[BillyGr]

Of course, they could start with an easier way to save money - teach the people bagging how to do that, so that buying 10 items doesn't require 6 bags. That could save quite a bit just in the bags not used.

Another thought - offer up boxes (those that the merchandise came in) - Aldi does this all the time (as well as selling bags, all part of their lower prices thing), and one of our local ShopRite stores has a bin of them in the front for you to grab (not sure why others in the area don't, as they are all the same ownership).
Those will hold a lot and are stronger than the bags as well.

[storewanderer]

I have noticed what I do in places with a bag ban, since I refuse to pay for bags, and typically do not have a reusable with me, is I use a shopping cart to take my items out of the store when I previously would have put the items into a couple of bags.

When I go to a store in a shopping center I often park "in between" the anchors so it is a bit of a walk, meaning, I am taking that cart a distance from where the majority of that store's customers park. Meaning, it is costing this store a lot more in labor to go collect my cart from the parking lot, than it would have to provide me with the two plastic bags that were previously provided free of charge.

I still do not think Safeway, who I believe is behind much of the political lobbying push for bag bans, based on their dominant position in the markets where bag bans are in place (most recently the Olympia, WA market, another where Safeway is a clear leader), is seeing the full picture here as to the costs of bag bans.

[Super S]

Safeway continues to forget that there are many small towns in the west where they are the only grocer, and as it is, they do not cater to the small towns. A good example is the store in Clatskanie, Oregon which has no service bakery, deli, or pharmacy. People go to these stores for staple items but do the majority of their shopping elsewhere.

No bags available isn't a big deal in larger cities where bag bans are already in place. But small towns are not necessarily going to go along with things that work in the big city, and especially in towns where many are employed by the paper industry.

Safeway still has many loyal customers in the area, and is actually perceived by many as a higher end grocer. But still, there will come a point where people tire of the games with prices, and the inconvenience of having to bring their own bags, especially when there are no-frills grocers like WinCo, and to some extent Walmart, continuing to expand their presence.

[pseudo3d]

That would've gone over poorly in areas without such bags, like their Texas division (but then again, the Texas Division would've been history by the end of 2014 in an alternate history). Worth noting that by the end of 2014 (after the merger announcement but before it actually happened), they were only using one paper bag design through ALL their divisions.