Safeway in the UK
Safeway opened supermarkets in the UK in 1962 and expanded until by the mid-eighties they occupied an important position in the UK groceries market. The stores had a reputation for quality, albeit at a slightly higher expense than the competitors. They had an ambience which made them a pleasant place to shop.
In 1987 the US owners sold their entire UK operation to a company which at the time operated Presto, an inferior supermarket chain. A rebranding exercise began, which by 1996 had completed with all of the former Presto stores renamed to Safeway. The UK company then changed its own name to Safeway.
Today, Safeway is struggling to maintain a poor fourth place, behind Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda in the UK supermarket league table. Stock Market analysts do not seem to think that the outlook for the company is particularly good. Shoppers are angered and confused by a pricing policy which rotates weekly special offers every Wednesday, but also varies the prices of everything else from week to week in such a way that it is impossible to guarantee that the regular shopping bill will ever be predictable.