Who can afford to shop at Safeway? (real estate, broker)

[RotseCherut]

I sure miss Fred Meyer

Never liked Safeway.. They have less of everything that Fred Meyer has and equal items are usually about 20% more.. Their organic stuff is a joke and they charge even more than Whole Foods does for equal organic food products.. Whole Foods is actually much cheaper to shop at for natural and health food products.. For conventional stuff, well yeah, Wal-Mart is king, but I just hate shopping at Wal-Mart and always worry somebody is going to try to pull a knife or gun at me in the check out line. IN fact, one of the cashiers was stabbed in the throat with a pen one night at the Wal-Mart in Mount Vernon, WA where I use to shop.



Wal-Mart has some decent deals on Organic Grass Fed Beef and gets their beef from farms in the USA..

[DutchessCottonPuff]

Yes I have noticed a difference . They were an everyday supermarket competing with everyone else in Tx at the time in the 60's through maybe early 80's then I never saw one again until I moved to the west coast . I try to avoid that store unless I am just too tired to go anywhere else, or they have something in particular . The ones I have been in have been quite upscale with prices to match . Wasn't their store brand Park Lane ?

['M']

Interesting thread and posts. My big beef with Safeway is the quality of their stores - produce dept, inventory, etc. - varies immensely. Since I'm a big fresh producer shopper, I often don't save much with coupons, which irks me a bit. Really miss the Cherry Creek Safeway that recently closed...loved their roasted chickens. I had shopped at that store for more than 40 years. I live near MANY grocery stores, including Natural Grocers x 2, King Soopers x 3, Safeway x 1, Sprouts x 1, Whole Foods x 2. If I want to drive 5 miles, there are many others that are a bit farther, but not too bad. There is a small WF 5 blocks from me and I use it like a 7-11 when I don't feel like absorbing the frenetic energy and insane parking from the ultra large King Soopers nearest me. I can breeze in and out of WF, shop for produce and be out in minutes, and the parking is easy. I've learned over the years which WF items are reasonable, so I don't feel bad spending a few pennies more in order to avoid the insane parking and crowds elsewhere. I'll be honest, the large crowds, impossible parking configurations, and overfilled parking lots influence me more than prices a lot of the time. There are so many stores within 5 miles from me that I can stop at many of them as I go to-and-fro during my daily routine.

[pikabike]

A new wrinkle has arisen in my not-Front-Range Safeway.

They are stocking only CO products in their beer selection. I don’t know if this is a change since the new full-strength beer law, or not, since I have never bought any beer there OR at the local City Market. Maybe Safeway is angling for the “made in CO” buyer.

We now go to both markets, because City Market stopped selling the two brands of bread I really like. And when we go there, we do look around to see what else they have that we prefer to City Market’s selection.

It doesn’t hurt that the crowds—and especially the drunk or drugged bums—are absent at Safeway.

[DougStark]

once Walmart came along, Safeway's prices are not competitive. Ditto for King Soopers.

[Quietude]

Originally Posted by DougStark

once Walmart came along, Safeway's prices are not competitive. Ditto for King Soopers.

I don't find WMG prices all that competitive, either. About the same as KS, more expensive on a number of items, and very second-rate produce and questionable meat and poultry. Selection tends to be very limited.

A few things are cheap enough that I'll stop there about every two weeks. But for maybe a dollar total savings, it's not worth doing much of the shopping I do at KS.

About the only point in their favor is that they are one of the decreasing number of groceries that don't use a rewards/loyalty card system. Not a small point, that.

[Mike from back east]

One thing I've learned about my Safeway loyalty card is that if I do buy something at full price then within 2-3 days I get an email with a nice discount for that exact item, so I click on that icon and add it to my account.

I've learned to buy one item at full price and wait for the discount to show up in an email and then I go back in the store and buy multiples. It's walking distance and I drive by it every day so that's not a problem, but that's how it works for me.

Anyone else notice this?

[suzco]

In the Safeway v King Soopers battle in the meat dept, one point for Safeway - they still sell ground beef that they grind onsite in the meat department.

King Soopers only sells "tube" ground beef, coming to their store already ground; they only repackage it (or not). (Safeway of course also sells various varieties of the preground tube stuff, patties, etc as well)

[Quietude]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

One thing I've learned about my Safeway loyalty card is that if I do buy something at full price then within 2-3 days I get an email with a nice discount for that exact item, so I click on that icon and add it to my account.

I've learned to buy one item at full price and wait for the discount to show up in an email and then I go back in the store and buy multiples. It's walking distance and I drive by it every day so that's not a problem, but that's how it works for me.

Anyone else notice this?

Yes.

There's another general thread about "extreme couponing" and my contributions have been to note that the practice of bombing out mid- and high-value coupons has almost entirely ceased. Public coupons are a few loss-leaders, teasers and manufacturer roll-outs.

What's replaced it, to an increasing degree, are these targeted coupons - one of the results of the vast rise in consumer tracking, courtesy here of your "club/rewards/loyalty" card. This allows coupons to be tailored not just to what an individual buys, but exactly how much they are willing to pay for it. Before you join the old-school ranks of "I don't mind being tracked because it means they'll always have my brand of peanut butter in stock" and add "...and look, they even give me coupons for MY products!", follow Rule #2 and Look Closer:

I stock the 1-liter Arrowhead flavored seltzer as my usual all-day tipple (after coffee, and before beer). KS shelves it at $4.99 an eight-pack. It was frequently on sale from the time I arrived here until maybe six months ago; I'd stock up when it was priced at $2.99. There was a major reshelving of the seltzer aisle about the end of summer, and it's basically never been on sale since.

So I got a checkout coupon of 2 packs for $6. Snapped it up the next time I shopped. Which got me a coupon for 2 packs for $7.49. I think I used that one because I was dry and hadn't been anywhere else to stock up. And it got me a coupon for 3 packs for $12. See the progression, here? The algorithm is working to find my absolutely maximum price point... because the system now can. And will.

Expect shelf sales and public coupons of much real value to continue to diminish in favor of these very targeted, level-sensitive tactics. (Now augmented, at KS, with a new "digital coupon" system that will be same-for-evvabody for a while, then quietly stop announcing the actual discount in favor of making it variable and targeted to each customer's likely "maximum price point.")

And you thought it was a "courtesy" card, ya dummies.

[davebarnes]

We focus 100% on quality.
We pay very little attention to price. It is just not worth it to us.
For most people living in the USA, food (not dining out) costs are very low as a percentage of income.