Safeway (Canada)

Safeway

The 2005–present logo
Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail
Founded	1929
Headquarters	Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Key people	Jason Potter, President, Operations, Western Canada
Owner	Empire Company
Parent	Safeway Inc. (1929–2013) Sobeys (2013–present)
Website	safeway.ca

Safeway (also referred to as Canada Safeway) is a Canadian supermarket chain of 183 full service supermarket stores in Western Canada.

It began as a subsidiary of the American Safeway Inc., before being sold in 2013 to Canada's second-largest supermarket chain, Sobeys, a division of the conglomerate Empire Company. It is now independent from the American division as a result.

Safeway Inc. established its Canadian operation as Canada Safeway Limited with nine stores in 1929. In 1935, it acquired the 179 Canadian Piggly Wiggly stores. In 1969, Safeway entered the Toronto market by opening new stores, rather than by acquisition. The firm ultimately failed against entrenched competition in this market.

Canada Safeway dominated the grocery store landscape in Western Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. The company controlled 80 percent of the grocery market in Alberta in the 1970s causing the government to accuse Safeway of having a monopoly on the supermarket business, resulting in unnecessarily high food prices. A judicial inquiry restricted the number of stores Safeway could open, and forced the company to close or sell some locations to competitors like IGA. Some IGA stores housed in former Safeway buildings have operated successfully for decades, others ceased operation in recent years.

In October 1986, the Canadian Press reported that Safeway Canada took an $8 million loss by closing a prime store at West Edmonton Mall, which, at that time, was the world's largest shopping centre. It was the fifth store Safeway had closed in west Edmonton.

Those former stores included one location at Centennial Village Mall, now Mayfield Common. The structure was vacant for several years, before briefly housing Edmonton's first, but temporary Save-On-Foods in the early 1990s, as a much larger, permanent Save-On-Foods was under construction across the parking lot; another former Safeway location in west Edmonton now houses a Rexall Pharmacy.

Safeway also opened other supermarkets under the Food Barn and Food for Less names in Alberta; and the Safeway Superstore name in British Columbia. Food Barn was similar to Safeway in terms of selection and prices, but the decor resembled a warehouse the size of an average Safeway store. In the mid-1980s, the company launched Food for Less in the Alberta cities of Edmonton and Calgary, as a big-box, discount food store chain meant to compete with the Loblaws-owned Real Canadian Superstore, which had expanded to western Canada. Most Food for Less and Real Canadian Superstore locations were constructed within blocks of each other. Upon the Real Canadian Superstore's opening, Loblaws produced television commercials with an aggressive tone, taking direct aim at Safeway's higher prices. One ad featured a man holding a rolled-up Safeway newspaper flyer, while promising viewers they would find lower prices at the Real Canadian Superstore. While prices at Food for Less were meant to compete with those of Real Canadian Superstore, and be lower than Safeway, this was not always true.