Safeway Admiral Way - West Seattle

[KrogerTexas]

I had been in this store several times before the Albertson's merger. I was visiting friends this past weekend and went into the store and was shocked at how a pretty well run and merchandise store had gone down hill so fast!

The vestibule had 3 or 4 shopping carts in it when I walked in, leaves, dirt and trash everywhere. The floor was filthy, the cut fruit/produce end cap had about 8 packages in it and was otherwise empty. The produce section looked pretty rough, in the past there was always a clerk or two on the floor but not today.

End caps were very hollow and had no merchandise on them. One of them had about 12 bottles of ketchup, 8 bottles of mustard and a few other items on the whole display. One freezer end cap had ice cream in it, one facing pulled up and the rest of the case was empty. Meat department was probably the best looking department at being full and the butcher/seafood case looked really nice. There were a lot of mark downs though, more than I ever remember seeing and the mark down was not as generous as in the past.

The bakery/deli was horrible. In the past the tables of cookies, cakes and bread were full, today the product barely filled up the first facing on the tables and there was no depth of product at all. The salad bar and olive bar had just the bottom of the pans filled with product. One good lettuce salad would have emptied out the lettuce on the salad bar. Fresh baked bread was low, buying a package made the table look even more empty.

I would have expected a shopped looked store late in the evening, but this was at 1 pm on Sunday afternoon. I had never seen this store looking like this in my two years of visiting Seattle.

I had always considered this a well run Safeway, a step above a lot of them I had been in, but not no more. No wonder why the QFC down the road was the busiest I had ever seen it.

[klkla]

I don't know why store conditions were so bad that day. But it's funny you mentioned this store because I went to school across the street when I was a kid at Lafayette Elementary School. I just looked at it on Google Maps and the school looks the exactly same. The Safeway was an old Marina-format store and I remember it being pretty run down at the time.

Evidently that old store was torn down and they built the newer store you are referring to:
http://www.safeway.com/ShopStores/AdmiralWay-About-Us

[storewanderer]

Sounds like the typical Safeway to me. But in my area the Safeways that were how you described are no longer like that. I saw a couple bad ones down in Phoenix over the weekend but quite a few more that looked good. My main concern at this point with Safeway is its pricing and staffing levels both of which need a lot of work.

[arizonaguy]

Sounds like the typical Safeway to me. But in my area the Safeways that were how you described are no longer like that. I saw a couple bad ones down in Phoenix over the weekend but quite a few more that looked good. My main concern at this point with Safeway is its pricing and staffing levels both of which need a lot of work.

Which Safeways did you see that looked bad in the Phoenix area?

Safeway is leaps and bounds better here than it was prior to the merger.

[KrogerTexas]

I had never seen the older store before it was rebuilt and not sure what year it was. On all my previous visits I was always impressed with this Safeway, stock levels and conditions were always better than what I would expect from Safeway. Prices always seemed high to me in Safeway, but since I only visit they seemed high in all stores as well compared to what I am used to shopping where I live. The store always reminded me of a "Flagship" or "Signature" store as it seemed a cut above the surrounding stores and a premium was placed on stock and staffing levels.

Staffing in the departments was definitely less this time than previous visits. What struck me the most was stock levels. Produce was always well culled and it was not this time. The cut fruit case being empty, bakery tables fronted instead of stocked full, low levels in salad and olive bar can be explained at trying to control shrink, but the store seemed to do more business than these levels would indicate. But to front one or two deep on most of the grocery and frozen displays and leave huge air space so it is very obvious is more of an indication that either volume has dropped significantly and/or hours have been greatly reduced at this location. It reminded me of a store going out of business. It did also not look like a store that had got slammed for some reason by heavy shopping as the aisles and displays did not show that.

As I mentioned I had also shopped at the QFC about a mile away and was surprised at the amount of customers it had. A line waiting for self check out and 4 registers open instead of the normal one (with lines at all the open registers) was a shocker to me, but after seeing how the Admiral Safeway looked I understand a lot better.

[storewanderer]

The Safeway on Chandler near the Home Depot looked poor, as it has always looked. Little on the perimeter, locked bathrooms, one checkout open, etc. I was in another one somewhere in Phoenix that wasn't looking great either but didn't capture the exact location since I left without buying anything. But the majority of the locations I went into looked great.