Safeway Grand Opening

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My husband was in KTA tonight getting dog food and said it was a veritable ghost town. KTA and Sack N Save are both going to have to up their game if they want to hang onto market share, although once you get past the WOW factor a lot of Safeway's prices are still very high. Their deals are good, but you can lose those savings right back to the store if you end up picking up some of their non-sale items while there. $5 a pound for organic potatoes is absurd, also kabocha squash was $4 a lb. while every other store has it for around $1.38 per pound, TP, paper towels, and plastic bags were all much higher than other stores too.

There was a chain of smaller grocery stores in Oregon called Price chopper, they were a lot like a cross between Sack 'n Save and Cost U Less, until the founder retired and his son in law took over with a really different vision. They became PC-Market of Choice and added all the frills: olive bar with 20 different kinds of olives, coffee shop, gourmet bakery, and a killer hot food and deli section with wood fired pizza ovens. They were what Safeway is trying to be, yet their prices were very competitive. They combined the Price Chopper eye on low prices with a gourmet natural food store sensibility and have been very successful, in fact they put at least one Safeway out of business.

Carol