So what do you think of the pending takeover of Safeway by the parent company of Albertson’s?
Moi, I think we can expect higher food bills.
Actually, around here the competition among grocery chains is pretty stiff. That has kept Phoenix consumers’ grocery costs pretty much under control. Though our taxes are quite high — almost 10% on all non-grocery items (higher, in some municipalities), and during the Great Recession we had a food tax that was only recently repealed — food prices in general are pretty reasonable compared to the rest of the nation.
That notwithstanding, the locals regard Safeway as a more expensive place to shop than Albertson’s — even though the Albertson’s in my neighborhood jacks ups its prices to take advantage of the un-automobiled poor folks who live in the tenements across the road, and so it’s simply not true that the Safeway five miles from here is higher than the Albertson’s within walking distance. Even if the Safeway were higher, though, it still would be a better place to shop: the parking lot is safer (management keeps the panhandlers off the store’s private property, which you may be sure Albertson’s does not), the meat is 10 times better, produce is infinitely better, and the wine selection is far, far superior.
I expect the Albertson’s management will cheapie down the Safeway where I’ve been shopping — and I don’t mean lowering the prices but lowering quality all across the board. That Safeway now faces competition from a brand-new Sprouts, from a brand-new Whole Foods, and from an established and much-loved Trader Joe’s. The last couple of times I’ve been in the Safeway, it was practically empty.
It’s too bad, because you can’t get all your shopping done at a Sprouts or a Trader’s. There are just some things you can’t buy at those specialty stores — cleaning products that actually work, for example, and your preferred personal products. If you don’t shop at the Safeway, you end up having to go to two or three stores during a shopping trip, a real pain in the tuchus.
What I expect they’ll do is get rid of the wonderful selection of wines in the $8 to $12 range, figuring they can’t compete with Trader Joe’s selection of rotguts. They’ll lower the quality of the meat (which ain’t great but is good enough). They’ll add a lot more gross processed foods, which must be far more profitable to sell than real food. And they’ll limit the selection and reduce the quality of the produce.
Truth to tell, though, I had pretty well stopped going to our Safeway. Costco has better meats for the same price. AJ’s (local gourmet grocer) has far better produce for…uhh…well, astronomical prices. Sprouts has comparable produce for less money. Whole Foods has awesome meats and fish for not much all that much more. Trader Joe sells neat things (like the packages of baby artichokes) that you can’t even get at Safeway, and most of its produce is cheaper.
Could be, I suppose, that these old standard stores are turning into dinosaurs. Huh. Wonder if we’re looking at the tyrannosaur eating the brontosaurus?
😀
I was somewhat surprised by the news that Albertsons was taking over Safeway since the last I had heard of Albertsons, they were fleeing Florida with their tails between their legs having failed miserably at making a profit here. That said, I don’t know where the nearest Safeway would be either…
It’s not the greatest chain of stores here, either. I wouldn’t buy their meat; their selection of wine is zip; and the produce department’s a joke.
I expect this will mean, though, that the only place to get those Campari tomatoes, which are the only commercially available tomatoes with a flavor, will now be Costco. Hope Costco doesn’t stop carrying the things. Safeway has had them; Albertson’s has no tomatoes. They have round cardboard-tasting things, but those things aren’t tomatoes.
Camparis are good; our Publix and Fresh Market both carry them. But also good, and significantly cheaper are our local UglyRipe tomatoes. Have those made their way out to AZ?
Have you ever thought about tomato plants in pots on your patio? My Pop did that for many years and got a harvest big enough for two with just a few plants. You might be able to get some heirloom varieties and significantly increase your tomato quality.
I’ve not seen anything called UglyRipe tomatoes here.
Yeah, I have tried potted tomatoes. In the past, when I was young and we lived in a slightly different microclimate, I had some success with growing cherry tomatoes in pots. And in the ground.
Of late, not so much. For one thing it’s much hotter here than it was when I was a young pup. And for another, it appears that tomatoes need to put down their roots…evidently there’s just not enough space in a big pot for a regular tomato plant. Also, if you don’t water them every, single morning first crack out of the box, they fricassee in their pots — their roots will simply bake on a 110-degree day.
My son does very well at tomatoes. But he really, REALLY pampers them along. My forte, I’m afraid, is the virtually indestructible chard patch…
Hmmmm….Our local Safeway doesn’t have a lot of traffic and their prices are much higher than the competition. Once upon a time Safeway’s meat department was their calling card…now …not so much. I agree there will be big changes at Safeway to “pay” for this takeover…in the form of less staff…cheaper offerings….and tired stores with long lines to check out. I did read that the head of this combined company wants the stores to be more like “neighborhood stores…like Trader Joe’s”…I’m a big fan of the folks that own Trader Joe’s as they own Aldi …a value grocer…I feel sorry for the long time employees at Safeway who used to have secure good paying jobs back in the day….now….not so much….
Yeah, here too for years and years your choices in the meat department were Safeway or an expensive independent butcher shop. Safeway’s meat wasn’t very good, but it was better than most other supermarkets’. We used to have a chain called Smitty’s that for a long time was the only store in town that had an actual butcher department — for some years, every grocery store carried nothing but plastic-wrapped meats of mediocre quality. Every week, I used to drive way to hell and gone across the city to go to Smitty’s.
Eventually Safeway got the message and hired some real butchers again, and the quality of their meats went up. Then Costco came in, and really, no one around here except a couple of specialty butchers can compete. Some of Safeway’s meats are probably comparable in quality, but most are not — when they do have a good piece of meat, they cut it into little thin slices that you can’t grill without overcooking it. And the last time I was in a Safeway and ASKED for a thicker cut, the butcher refused to do it.
In these parts, Trader Joe’s meat is neither plentiful nor especially good. I guess they figure most of their clientele are vegans.
Sprouts has some decent chicken, but it’s outrageously expensive. I’ve pretty much quit buying chicken — cruel farming practices, hormones and antibiotics, unsanitary butchering…ick! The only place to get decent chicken is Whole Foods, and it costs way too much there.
Safeway used to have relatively little turnover, but that’s not so anymore. Ever ask a Costco employee how he likes his job? No joke…after I got laid off, THREE of them on three different occasions suggested I apply there! Just a couple of days ago, the guy who dispenses propane at Costco bent my ear for a good six or eight minutes going on about how lucky he feels to be working there.
Do you have CVS in your area? Because they have weekly coupons through their loyalty program for 20 to 25% off of purchases I’ve pretty much stopped buying any cleaning products, paper goods, and personal care products anywhere else. I can’t recall the last time I bought toilet paper, facial tissues, laundry detergent, cleaning products, shampoo, etc. anywhere else. Some of the larger CVS stores even have some grocery items, so I’ve bought things like coffee filters and pasta there, too.
We don’t have Safeway here, although a local chain called Jewel was bought by Albertson’s a few years back. The hot grocery chain here in Chicago is a local one called Mariano’s. While I’m happy they opened a store only four blocks from my house making it possible to now get groceries with a short walk, most of their prepared foods aren’t up to my standards. That just means that I’m less tempted to buy a prepared dinner rather than cook one from scratch, though, so I guess that’s not all bad. Their prices are good, they have a bulk section that’s decent, and their produce and liquor selections are usually pretty good. Meats are OK there. I try to buy mostly pasture-raised meat these days, and they don’t have much of that besides some grass-fed ground beef. They can’t hold a candle to Whole Foods when it comes to fish, though. Most of their fish is farmed, as far as I can tell.
Hm. That’s interesting. I’d think in the Midwest some pretty good meats would be available.
Do they harvest and sell fish from the Great Lakes, or is the water too polluted for that purpose?
Hereabouts, fresh fish used to be a great rarity. It had to be flown in, and only one or two sellers carried it — at phenomenal cost. Now that the Greater Phoenix Metro Area has morphed into a city, though, we do have access to pretty good fish, much of it allegedly wild. I got some awesome sea bass at Whole Foods a few weeks ago!! Ohhhhhhhhhh nirvana. Also Costco does carry flash-frozen wild varieties, which are more than good enough for government work.
Some people here are buying shares of cows that people in the outlying (and fast-fading) farmland raise organically. My friend KJG, who lives halfway to Yuma(!), gets grass-fed beef from a neighbor. She shared a little once — it really is marvelous.
FaM, I think the *availability* of certain meats and fish factors less into a store’s offerings than whether they project that the demographic they are targeting will buy it. I want wild caught and sustainable fish, but I think most of this store’s clientele doesn’t think that way. Similarly, I want pastured and humanely raised meat, so I have to buy it at Whole Foods, a farmers market (in season), or through some other means. Last year I bought a humanely-raised small pig from a farmer I know and drove 75 miles one way to pick it up from the butcher. Buying beef this way is tempting and I know others who do it, but I can’t always store that much meat.
Absolutely. Around here, you can tell the difference among the chain stores by what part of town they’re in.
The white upper-middle-class has pretty much moved out of our part of town. Sometimes I’ll drive all the way out to Scottsdale to shop in a store that can be relied upon to have the products I want.
Even Costco…you’d think those things would be carbon copies, but they’re not. Outlets in North Phoenix and Scottsdale do carry products that we don’t see in the ghetto store near us.
On the other hand…even Costco will sometimes carry more ethnicoid foods in the central city. And we have a great Mexican market (also recently acquired, unfortunately, after a bankruptcy). And our Costco has the lowest gas prices around — consistently underprices the other outlets.
I think we got the new Whole Foods and Sprouts because some in-town areas are beginning to re-gentrify, now that the economy’s improving. Some districts are still going downhill, but several 1950s – 1970s neighborhoods have been rediscovered by the Upwardly Mobile Young, most of whom crave fancier fare and even whole foods.
I’m worried about the takeover – Albertson’s isn’t known for their quality around here. Safeway is my main store – and if they go downhill, the next store is Raley’s/Nob Hill – which is *significantly* more expensive, without going into the Whole Foods territory.
Safeway has the nicest stores to shop in in my area – except for the parking lots. I hate the parking lot at my local Safeway – it’s designed to confuse people and cause accidents, I swear!
Sometimes ya wonder about shopping center owners. The parking lot outside the Sprouts is like that…several restaurants share space in that strip mall, and so at lunchtime especially the place is just jammed, with aisles that seem to go in the wrong direction no matter which way you turn. Everyone is always confused and always cranky.
This would have been way cool for us if another grocery chain + walmart hadn’t driven both albertsons in town out of business. Safeway has good bread! (And for those worried, Safeway made Dominick’s better when it took over that chain.)
I have always been a fan of Safeway, but when I go to the States my personal favorite is TJ’s. I live close enough to the border that I can visit quite frequently and grab some supplies. I am not sure if the takeover will have a huge impact on the company, but it will be interesting to see!
Eesh, I’m not thrilled about this. Our Safeway options have been pretty good here so it’s a great supplement to Trader Joe’s (who for all their good stuff cannot sell us a bottle of milk that doesn’t sour in 4 days to save their business).
Like Linda, I don’t have the storage to do this now but if I could split a humanely raised, pasture fed beef or pork share with enough people, that’d be my preferred way to go, even at the higher prices. We don’t eat that much meat so it would last us a good while and I’m ok (philosophically anyway) with paying the extra for great quality.