Safeway, Inc.
Ingredients for life
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Safeway headquarters in Pleasanton
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Retail / Grocery |
| Founded | April 1915 American Falls, Idaho, U.S. |
| Founder | Marion Barton Skaggs |
| Headquarters | Pleasanton, California, U.S. |
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Number of locations
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1,308 |
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Key people
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Robert G. Miller (Chairman & CEO) Bob Gordon (EVP & General Counsel) |
| Products | Bakery, dairy, delicatessen, dry cleaning, frozen foods, fuel, grocery, lottery, pharmacy, photographic processing, produce, meats, snack food, liquor, flowers, and Western Union |
| Services | Supermarket |
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Number of employees
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 Over 250,000 (2015, including Albertsons) |
| Parent | Albertsons (2015–present) |
| Website | www |
Safeway, Inc. is an American supermarket chain founded in 1915. It is a subsidiary of Albertsons, having been acquired by private equity investors led by Cerberus Capital Management in January 2015. Safeway's primary base of operations is in the western and central United States, with some stores located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern Seaboard. The subsidiary is headquartered in Pleasanton, California with parent company headquarters in Boise, Idaho.
In April 1915, Marion Barton Skaggs purchased his father's 576-square-foot (53.5 m2) grocery store in American Falls, Idaho, for $1,089. The chain, which operated as two separate businesses, Skaggs Cash Stores and Skaggs United Stores, grew quickly, and Skaggs enlisted the help of his five brothers to help grow the network of stores. M.B.'s business strategy, to give his customers value and to expand by keeping a narrow profit margin, proved spectacularly successful. 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 Safeway stores and incorporated as Safeway, Inc.
The original slogan was "an admonition and an invitation" to "Drive the Safeway; buy the Safeway". The point of the name was that the grocery operated on a cash-and-carry basis — it did not offer credit, as grocers traditionally had done. It was the "safe way" to buy because a family could not get into debt via its grocery bill (as many families did at the time, especially during the Great Depression).
In 1926, Charles E. Merrill, the founder of the Merrill Lynch brokerage firm, saw an opportunity to consolidate the West Coast grocery industry. Towards this end, he purchased the 322-store Safeway chain of W.R.H. Weldon, who wished to exit retailing and concentrate on wholesale. Then, in June 1926, Merrill offered Skaggs either $7 million outright or $1.5 million plus 30,000 shares in the merged firm. Skaggs took the latter. On July 1, 1926, Safeway merged with the 673 stores from Skaggs United Stores of Idaho and Skaggs Cash Stores of California. On completion of the Skaggs/Safeway merger, M. B. Skaggs became the Chief Executive of the business. Two years later, M.B. listed Safeway on the New York Stock Exchange. In the 1930s, Safeway introduced produce pricing by the pound, adding "sell by" dates on perishables, nutritional labeling, and some of the first parking lots.
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Wikipedia