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Guam- Safeway

Posted: 23 Jun 2019 14:59
by storewanderer
Doing some other research, I stumbled across that Safeway once had a store in Guam. It was in the mall there and was sold to Payless Food in 1994.

I wonder which division this store was under.

I assume it was sold because it was one very remote store.

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 23 Jun 2019 15:08
by Groceteria
Wasn't Hawaii under the San Francisco/Northern California division? Maybe this was too...

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 23 Jun 2019 15:11
by storewanderer
Groceteria wrote: 23 Jun 2019 15:08 Wasn't Hawaii under the San Francisco/Northern California division? Maybe this was too...
That was my first thought too. Hawaii has always been NorCal Division. And wasn't 1994 about when NorCal division got out of Fresno? Maybe that was some final pruning.

Looking at some photos of Payless Foods, they appear to be supplied from Unified Seattle (now Supervalu) based on the presence of Dairigold Dairy and Franz Bread in their stores. I never would have thought stores in Guam would be supplied from Seattle/Tacoma but I guess once the barge is out in the water the distance is pretty similar to that from California.

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 24 Jun 2019 01:52
by storewanderer
More research: it appears someone was operating as "Safeway" in Saipan who was not affiliated with the US Chain at all. They seem to have started in the 70's as a joint venture with a Japanese group, then sold to a Japanese group at some point, then re-purchased from the Japanese group in 2005, then closed in 2008.

So I wonder if the Guam Safeway was possibly affiliated with that outfit and not the US Chain...

Based on the age of the mall in Guam it appears the mall opened in 1988 and the "Safeway" there was sold to Payless in 1994. Not open very long... and that date would give it the red/gray or Marketplace interior. There are no real signs in that Payless Store that it could have opened as a Safeway in 1988 though there is some sort of wood spanning the perimeter; if there were two such pieces of wood then it would be consistent with Safeway interiors of that era where the department signs would do between the two...

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 07 May 2022 13:45
by Jason B.
I believe that the Jones Act, in effect from the 1920s to present, applies to ocean shipping between any port in the United States (the 50 states) and Guam. So some U.S.-flagged ocean liner likely supplies Guam from Hawai'i or the mainland U.S. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Matson, APL (American President Line) or Sea Land Service possibly were the U.S.-flagged ocean container carriers that likely supplied Guam. Matson was the big Hawai'i container carrier back then. Most of its Hawai'i-bound cargo originated in Los Angeles and Oakland, but maybe 10-20 percent originated from Seattle/Tacoma. So it's possible that "Unified Seattle" (Supervalu) would supply Guam. It's also possible that the U.S.-based Safeway could have supplied a store in Guam back in the 1980s/90s.

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 21 Jun 2022 08:24
by rich
Probably supplied by whomever was supplying the military PXes on Guam. That would have been the likeliest way to make it viable. There probably were more than enough Americans w/o PX privileges, such as people at the University or at Continental Airlines (which had a regional hub there ), to justify an "American" supermarket. Safeway may even have been recruited by the wholesaler to give it a recognizable name.

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 07 Aug 2022 03:22
by storewanderer
rich wrote: 21 Jun 2022 08:24 Probably supplied by whomever was supplying the military PXes on Guam. That would have been the likeliest way to make it viable. There probably were more than enough Americans w/o PX privileges, such as people at the University or at Continental Airlines (which had a regional hub there ), to justify an "American" supermarket. Safeway may even have been recruited by the wholesaler to give it a recognizable name.
Safeway is well versed in operating/supplying these remote type of stores via barge logistics, spanning many decades. They have some very remote stores in Alaska as well. Unalaska is the most remote at present, but they at one time had a store on the base in Adak. Cannot find evidence of the base store in Adak (unlike the abandoned McDonalds...).

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 15 Aug 2022 07:56
by rich
Guam is a duty free port which would make sourcing from Asia competitive with sourcing from the US, if not cheaper. Manila is less than half the distance to Guam from Hawaii, let alone from the west coast. Very different from supplying Nome or Unalaska and the population base is big enough that you'd need to supply fairly rapid turnover. Regardless of whether the store was part of the US chain, the most likely scenario would have been sourcing from Manila where Wetterau (and later SuperValu) had a base that, among other things, supplied military and embassy PXs in SE Asia, This outlasted the US presence in the Philippines.

Re: Guam- Safeway

Posted: 20 Aug 2022 04:34
by storewanderer
rich wrote: 15 Aug 2022 07:56 Guam is a duty free port which would make sourcing from Asia competitive with sourcing from the US, if not cheaper. Manila is less than half the distance to Guam from Hawaii, let alone from the west coast. Very different from supplying Nome or Unalaska and the population base is big enough that you'd need to supply fairly rapid turnover. Regardless of whether the store was part of the US chain, the most likely scenario would have been sourcing from Manila where Wetterau (and later SuperValu) had a base that, among other things, supplied military and embassy PXs in SE Asia, This outlasted the US presence in the Philippines.
What is strange is the grocers currently on Guam, seem to be getting supplied primarily from Seattle. They are selling Franz bread and Darigold Milk. Those are Pacific Northwest brands. I see some Best Yet too, that would come from California C&S most likely. I do see a lot of items that are obviously imports from Asia as well, I think there are local distributors on Guam who make arrangements for those items.

Is that site in Manila still run by Supervalu/UNFI? It could be they get stuff from WA, then ship it out to Manila, then Manila to Guam (not so efficient..).