Talk:Safeway

When Safeway left Idaho?

At some point Safeway closed all its stores in southern Idaho. I recall the company wanted to build a new store in Boise, ID but the city denied the request. Not long afterwards, Boise allowed a new Albertsons to be built on that site. I think the denial to Safeway was something about it being too close to a school. Shortly after, Safeway was gone from Boise and the rest of southern Idaho. Today there are only 4 Idaho Safeway locations, Sandpoint, Moscow, and 2 in Couer d'Alene. If anyone knows the whole story behind that, I think it would be a good addition to this article. Bizzybody (talk) 02:50, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Employee Edits of Wiki Article

It should be noted that employees give great insight into how a business is run, and as such, it is my opinion that employees of Safeway (whether current or former) shall be allowed to insert their own personal knowledge of the company, as long as it falls within Wikipedia's 5 Pillars and is relevant to the context of the article. External sources should be provided whenever possible, but of course, there are instances where unique corporate details that others may be interested in knowing are not known externally. Please consider the flow of the entire article when making edits to the page. Dpro34 (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Lead is incorrect, per article body

The lead states

Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho.

But the body of the article says

By 1926, he had opened 428 Skaggs stores in 10 states. M.B. almost doubled the size of his business that year when he merged his company with 322 Sam Seelig Company stores and incorporated as Safeway, Inc., because he thought that a chain that would outlive him should not carry his name.

If the body is correct, then Safeway wasn’t created in 1915 but 1926. An interesting tidbit about the name Safeway suggests Skaggs came up with the name:

The Skaggs family saw the negative effects that credit was having in their Idaho community. S. M. Skaggs believed the system made customers overly reliant on grocers. He even claimed that this system was “the growing evil of installment purchasing.” Skaggs implemented a “cash and carry” rule in his stores which meant that customers could only pay for goods with cash.
 
This philosophy is memorialized in the name that M. B. Skaggs chose for his growing grocery empire: Safeway. The name represented the family’s no-credit policy by suggesting to shoppers that purchasing goods with cash was the “safe way” to shop.

However, this source says Seelig came up with the Safeway name before Skaggs acquired/merged Seelig’s stores with his own. I propose we change the article crediting Seelig with “founding” Safeway and then Skaggs with the merger. I know this is a big change, but I believe the sources do support this. Thoughts? MasNuisance (talk) 22:57, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Btw, this encyclopedia.com article says Seelig started his business in 1914. Specifically about the name:

In 1926 Charles Merrill, one of the founders of Merrill Lynch, was looking to expand his investment firm's involvement in the retail chain store business. Seeing a huge potential for growth in the West, he purchased Safeway Stores, Inc., a chain of some 240 stores founded by Sam Seelig in 1914 that covered most of the West Coast. Merrill had the capital and the stores to do business; all he needed was experienced management. Merrill asked the president of Safeway, James Weldon, who the best man to run the new venture was.

Weldon named M. B. Skaggs as his only choice, and soon Skaggs had been persuaded to add his chain of 428 stores to Safeway's 240. The newly expanded venture kept the Safeway name and Skaggs was made president of Safeway's operating subsidiaries in California and Nevada in addition to retaining control over his own stores. MasNuisance (talk) 23:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Another source

https://wrightrealtors.com/stockton//safeway.htm MasNuisance (talk) 22:20, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

There are better sources out there

I noticed half the history section was missing, and at first I was going to ask what are you are doing with such massive deletions. Then I checked and there appear to be better sources out there, like this one, that also credit Seelig as the original founder and Skaggs as the man who was brought in to bolt his his chain onto Safeway and then take charge and supercharge its operations. I don't have the time to go through those sources right now, though. Coolcaesar (talk) 00:05, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Safeway has an exclusive zip code before they were invented?

There's a confusing paragraph where Safeway headquarters is moved to Oakland in the 1920s, and then it mentions having a zip code to themselves until they moved in 1996.

There were no 5-digit zip codes in the 1920s and 1930s.

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98.97.61.217 (talk) 07:48, 24 December 2024 (UTC)