The Start Up
In 1915, M.B. Skaggs, purchased a tiny grocery store from his father. M.B.'s business strategy, was to give his customers value and to expand by keeping a narrow profit margin.
By 1926, he had opened 428 Skaggs stores in 10 states, and almost doubled the size of his business that year when he merged his company with 322 Safeway (formerly Selig) stores and incorporated as Safeway, Inc.
In the 1930s Safeway introduced produce pricing by the pound, added “sell by” dates on perishables to assure freshness, nutritional labeling, and even some of the first parking lots.
Today
M.B. Skagg’s value and vision still drives Safeway, though on a dramatically larger scale. In January 2015, our parent company, AB Acquisition LLC, and Safeway completed a merger that created one of the largest food and drug retailers in the country. With over 2,200 stores in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and employing approximately 265,000 people, Safeway teams are proud to carry on the tradition that M.B. Skaggs began nearly 100 years ago.
All of our stores were founded around the philosophy of offering customers the products they wanted to buy at a fair price, with lots of tender loving care. We still open our doors every day today with that in mind, and because of it, we run really great stores.