Safeway Early History in Seattle

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tkaye
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Safeway Early History in Seattle

Post by tkaye »

Brian Lutz wrote:I haven't really put together the complete history of the chains in this area, but none of the big chains really arrived in this area until after World War 2. I believe Safeway and A&P were the first to arrive after the war, and QFC was actually founded here in 1956, but only had about six stores in 1969.
Safeway and A&P were both well-established in the Seattle-Tacoma area before the war. In their Tacoma stores, Safeway usually boasts that they've been "Serving Tacoma Since 1930." (I forget where I seen it but I remember seeing a 1927 in some other town, too.) They started by buying existing markets and then got into building their own stores after they had a foothold in the community.

Here is an example of a larger store built in 1938 by Safeway at Sixth and Proctor in Tacoma. The other (and more common) prewar variety of construction were the "Streamline" stores that went up all over the place from about 1940 to 1942, like this one in the Manette neighborhood of Bremerton.

Piggly Wiggly is another name that seemed to surface in the Puget Sound area during the '30s, but I tend to think it was more of a loose federation of independents like IGA at the time.
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Re: "What I. G. A. Means to the Consumer" (1933)

Post by Groceteria »

tkaye wrote:Safeway and A&P were both well-established in the Seattle-Tacoma area before the war.
I show locations as early as 1929 -- and probably earlier -- in Seattle proper, Tacoma, and assorted outlying towns. I think I may be able to find a date when A&P arrived as well, but I don't think that's going to happen today, alas...
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Re: "What I. G. A. Means to the Consumer" (1933)

Post by Brian Lutz »

I haven't seen a whole lot in the way of history in Seattle and Tacoma, so I'm thinking more in terms of the Eastside. The area was, with the exception of Kirkland, which had the Lake Washington Shipyard and some declining coal mining operations in Issaquah, basically rural until after World War 2 (the first Lake Washington Bridge was opened in 1940, but before then there was basically no easy way to get across the lake.) I know there was an A&P in Bellevue by 1948 when Bellevue Square was established, and that the first Safeway in Redmond was established in 1954, but I haven't really established for certain when Safeway, Albertson's or Mayfair (which seemed to be the major chain players in the area for some time) arrived here. I'd guess Albertson's and Mayfair may not have opened up on this side of the lake much before the mid Sixties or so. I don't believe A&P ever had more than the one store at Bellevue Square over here.
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Brian Lutz
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Re: "What I. G. A. Means to the Consumer" (1933)

Post by Brian Lutz »

I went back and double-checked the date in the East Side Journal index available at the Kirkland Heritage Society's website (http://www.kirklandheritage.org) and verified that this particular ad ran in the August 24, 1933 edition of the Journal.

Also, it turns out from a bit of further searching that Safeway did already exist in this area at this time, in the form of a number of Pay'n Takit stores (although I'm not sure when the one in Kirkland opened, the stores were renamed to Safeway in 1935.) I'm not sure if the one in Kirkland predated the chain's 1928 merger with Safeway or not though; I guess I'll have to dig a bit more on that one.
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Re: "What I. G. A. Means to the Consumer" (1933)

Post by bigbubby »

Brian Lutz wrote:I went back and double-checked the date in the East Side Journal index available at the Kirkland Heritage Society's website (http://www.kirklandheritage.org) and verified that this particular ad ran in the August 24, 1933 edition of the Journal.

Also, it turns out from a bit of further searching that Safeway did already exist in this area at this time, in the form of a number of Pay'n Takit stores (although I'm not sure when the one in Kirkland opened, the stores were renamed to Safeway in 1935.) I'm not sure if the one in Kirkland predated the chain's 1928 merger with Safeway or not though; I guess I'll have to dig a bit more on that one.

The 1927 phone directory on the same website lists a Skaggs-Safeway store on Kirkland Avenue. On the cover, there is a Skaggs-Safeway ad on the top, featuring their "Distribution without Waste" slogan.
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Re: "What I. G. A. Means to the Consumer" (1933)

Post by Brian Lutz »

Thanks, I missed that one. I guess I still need to sort this out. I'm guessing there was probably a Skaggs store there before the Safeway merger in 1926 that became a Skaggs-Safeway, and that there was a separate Pay'n Takit store. Oddly enough, the 1944 phonebook on the site makes no mention of any Safeway store, even though there was clearly still one in town.

Here's what I know so far:

-There was a Skaggs-Safeway store in Kirkland in 1928 (I can find no earlier mention of it than 1928, but I would presume that it was a pre-merger Skaggs store, since that merger happened in 1926.)
-There was a Pay'n Takit store in Kirkland that was converted to a Safeway in 1935, although I don't know how long it was around for prior to that.
-There are articles on new Safeway stores opened in Kirkland in 1939 and 1951, and another article discusses a remodeling of a Safeway store in 1942. I'm not sure if the 1951 store was replacing an older one though, although the trend toward larger stores might indicate this to be the case.

There's actually a building in downtown Kirkland that I suspect might be a possible candidate for a former pylon Safeway (but I've never bothered trying to determine this for sure.) There is actually even a visible shadow of a pylon in the 1964 image on HistoricAerials too, but it's gone by 1968. It turns out that a new Safeway store was built in Kirkland in 1967 (possibly on the site of the current Rose Hill store a couple miles to the East of here, although that particular store looks to be of 90s vintage. Edit: Never mind, that site was a vacant lot on the 1990 image.) so this is entirely plausible that it could have replaced this store. The store is now an antique shop in the middle of downtown Kirkland where you can barely put up an espresso stand without someone suing to block it, so it might actually be around for a while still.

Image


I'll take another look at this one when I get a chance. In the meantime, this digression on the original thread can probably go to the Northwest board.
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Brian Lutz
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Re: Safeway Early History in Seattle

Post by Brian Lutz »

OK, I've managed to do a bit more digging on this, and I found out that there was a Skaggs United Store in Kirkland that appears to have opened sometime in 1925 (I haven't been able to determine exactly when) which is presumably what became the Safeway-Skaggs in 1928 following the merger. The ads for this store are interesting, because they contain fairly lengthy articles discussing a number of topics related to the founding of Skaggs, their distribution model, and the virtues of chain supermarkets (which, given the anti-chain sentiment of the time discussed above, makes perfect sense.) I tried to get some images, but my good camera broke yesterday and I'm having to revert back to my old 4 megapixel camera (which doesn't do so great with photos off the microfilm) until it gets fixed. The miages I got of those ones didn't come out, so I'll have to try again when I get my regular camera back.

It's interesting to note that at least one of the independent grocers in town fired back at this with ads of their own. Here's an example from the November 5th 1925 East Side Journal:

Image

Yum, the lard, little pig sausage and "boiling beef" sure sound delicious. And it's good to know the reindeer only costs a trifle more, I was getting worried for a minute.

Image

And here's a detail of the text in the ad, since the stuff above is hard to read.

More on this later as I find it. I still haven't determined if the Pay'n Takit store existed before or after the Safeway merger, but there's no sign of it in 1925.
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