Is Safeway Sucking Your Soul?

[SHRED]

Morford knocks another one out of the park!
Just more reasons why I shop at Jimbos and Henry's(SoCal). Although Henry's is kinda halfway into the "soul sucking". I look at Henry's a "bridge" market. Anybody who has shopped for food at organic based co-ops like People's Market(OB, CA) or places like Jimbo's, knows exactly what this article is about. And I thought it was just me who thought about these things:
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Is Safeway Sucking Your Soul?
Are overlit, heavily toxic supermarkets making you ill and eating your brain? Why, yes
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 15, 2005

It's like a goddamn circus in there.

It really is. It's like some bizarrely overlit funhouse, a massive chaotic attack on all your senses and an outright assault on your optic nerves, and that's well before you've even made it past the towering display of Bud Light and well before the huge end-cap cases of Ruffles Sour Cream and Strychnine and about a mile away from the chemical-blasted, hormone-injected, meat-like slabs in the butcher's section that seem to look at you as you amble by, and hiss.

This is what it feels like to walk into any giant chain supermarket these days, from Safeway to Albertsons to Ralphs to Vons to you name it, and I have hereby come to the slightly snarky conclusion that it's a true wonder that more people don't walk out of these places suffering something akin to full-body spasms and devolving into semi-catatonic mumblings about loudly colored boxes of S'Mores cereal and giant bags of neon-orange Doritos attacking them from above.

In fact, actually, some people do. Some people pick up on these nasty agents of vibrational doom far more than others. Maybe that someone is you. And maybe you don't even realize just how bad it is. Yet.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/04/15/notes041505.DTL&feed=rss.morford

[NMDemDist2]

1. Henry's son has opened a chain here in AZ

www.sprouts.com

I love the place!

[City Lights]

11. Sprouts rules!

Their quality is superior to the big chains and their prices are much cheaper.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Well, yeah, I hate them too, but...

for a lot of stuff there isn't much of an alternative, even here. Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Wegman's... All of them good, but not for everything.

I just prefer not to buy the bullshit they are trying to sell me when I grab the sales on the stuff I want at Pathmark, ShopRite, and Stop&Shop.

[bertha katzenengel]

3. New store (Safeway) by my house is different.

Very low lighting in most aisles. Very few huge displays of anything. I go out of my way to shop there. If I go to the Safeway nearest my house, I have to wear my sunglasses inside.

[Moochy]

6. O Safeway... How I hate thee

Yeah I've seen a store like that right near corporate IT HQ for safeway in Concord CA. It's all yuppy-fied.. Which is better than the industrial kill-floor look of most Safeway stores.

My guess is, knowing what I know about the workings of Safeway, that they'll strategicly add these stores where existing high-end markets are at, and compete directly with them.

The Safeway near my neighborhood is old, rundown and overstocked with all the things Mark Morford so accurately describes.

The other thing I find interesting is that Wells Fargo bank, wont open a bank in this neighborhood, but they will open a bank inside safeway.. The place is packed with people who live around here, but dont have access to a real bank. the line is always super long.

Heres a clue.. poor people need banks, and less frankenfood!

[CountAllVotes]

12. Safeway is far from "cheap" anyway

I rarely go to the Safeway. Been boycotting them ever since they had the petition gatherers out in front to get Ahnuld elected as governator. :puke:

Their food sucks, especially their gross meats.

and yeah, a lot of it IS Frankenfood too! :puke:

:kick:

[derby378]

4. I'm a sucker for Lucerne chocolate milk

We used to have Safeway stores in Dallas when I was a kid. I grew up on Lucerne milk. Then the local employees started talking about unionization, and Safeway decided to pick up its marbles and pull out of Texas. Not cool.

But now Safeway owns all of the Tom Thumb and Randall's markets, which means that Lucerne milk has returned once again to Dallas. I can't help myself.

Just don't pester me to use that "Reward" card every time I make a purchase at your store, guys. You're tracking enough of my purchases as it is.

[bperci108]

7. You are missing out on a great opportunity.

Those "reward" cards can be a fun way to screw with the marketing research drones.

For instance:

I have several, all with fake addresses, phone numbers for public instiutions (or the very same store's main office) and fake names like Jim Nasium, Phil McCrevis, Oliver Kloshoff, Hugh G. Rexion, etc. and I use each ramdomly.

Buy weird things together like tampons and motor oil, or rat poison and baby food. (you get the idea...)

Have a good time making them scratch their heads. :evilgrin:

[derby378]

19. Y'know, I like the way you think

I gotta keep that idea in mind - use their own corporate strategy against them!!

[carnie_sf]

5. One good thing about Safeway

is that they're a union shop. Anyway they're the only grocery store within a mile of my apartment, and since I don't have a car I end up shopping there quite a bit.

[bkcc]

8. I just moved to SoCal, so this is good info. Thanks.

Also, I'm pretty sure that another chain of grocery stores (Von's) is also owned by Safeway. When you go to vons.com, it redirects to a site that says safeway.

[bertha katzenengel]

14. Vons -- Pavilions, too = Safeway. But avoid Pavilions, unless you like

to ignite $100 just to see them burn. At Pavilions they'll charge $3 for a can of beans just because people will pay it. :eyes:

[Warpy]

9. I know what he's talking about

We used to caution families of head injured and stroke patients to save that first trip to the supermarket as one of the last outings they'd do when they were getting them back to normal. People with any sort of an insult to the brain overload their circuits really quickly, and supermarkets are the WORST. Only county fairs provide more sensory overload.

Whole food stores used to be a little more mellow, but even they are getting choked with packaged kiddie cereals and nerve jangling display items.

[Moochy]

10. Alternatives to Shopping at Safeway

Most Safeway won't stock organic dairy next to their own in-house dairy products. They place them away in a seperate area.

Here's a good alternative if you live in their delivery area:

Planet Organics:

http://www.planetorganics.com

I use their delivery service and get a big green crate of fresh organic vegetables each week.

You can also buy grocery items and have them delivered with your veggies.

plus you get exposed to some odd vegetables.. like
Romanesco:



Dont stare at the fractals too long :)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. Wait a minute...

...you're telling me that this vegetable has NO psychoactive properties? Damn, good thing I don't believe in God.

[Moochy]

17. Cosmic broccoli

http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/

Fractal forms--complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors, are everywhere in nature. From the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation to the coastlines of continents, courses of rivers, clouds in the sky, branches of plants and veins in their leaves, blood vessels in the lung, and the shape of seashells and snowflakes, these fractal or self-similar patterns abound. The self-similarity of most of these patterns is defined only in a statistical sense: while the general "roughness" is about the same at different scales, you can't extract a segment, blow it up, and find a larger scale segment which it matches precisely.

[eleny]

26. Fibonacci Numbers in nature is a fascinating related study

Taking advantage of sunlight by a frugal use of space. http://ccins.camosun.bc.ca/~jbritton/fibslide/jbfibslide.htm

[JVS]

13. You said "sucking"

huh huh huh

[Nikia]

16. I never noticed that

I am not a very visual person. My brain only seems to take in dangers and what I choose to see. Everything else is background. I don't feel sensory overload from going into a grocery store where they are selling many different types of food and have bright colored displays. Persoanlly, I don't mind better lighting because it is always darker than outside during the day anyway.
I do tend to get anxiety in any really busy places. That's a different issue though.
I realize that I am differnt than most people, being an introvert and primarily audio in how I perceive the world. I had no idea that the busy with different products and bright displays was stressful for many people.

[tjdee]

18. What a tool that guy is!

This is one of the "I'm better than you" types who doesn't realize that yes, soy milk costs *more* than cow milk, and that a bag of grapes can cost ten bucks while Oreos cost three.

People who want to get all bitchy about other people's eating choices should come up with ways that a person living in the ghetto is supposed to find an "organic food store" or find the one good pear in a heap of damaged pears...

Man, bullshit on that guy.

[nonconformist]

20. Safeway is unionized.

They have their issues, that's for sure, but boycott at your own detriment.

[ellie]

21. I prefer the term "clusterfuck"

as in, "Safeway is a clusterfuck. Enter at your own risk."

[kineneb]

22. not too many alternatives here

Out in the wilds of Northern California, just having a grocery store is amazing. We have Safeway, Foods, Etc. and Rays. Foods is locally owned, has the best prices and is low key, so I shop there. Safeway only gets my business if I don't want to drive too much, and yes, that is where the local Wells Fungus branch is located. But going there beats driving 45 min to our old BofA branch/ATM.

Safeway here does not impress me. It is quite overpriced, even if I use their "card." And their meat is very pricy.

[thebaghwan]

23. I often go into sensory overload when I go to get a book or some music.

It is like you are confronted with so many options and choices.

[Goathead]

24. I never thought about like that, but you are right.

It is so fucking bright in there so that they can make sure that you damn well see their products. They don't want you to miss anything. You are being marketed to almost every moment of your life and you are only aware of about %90 of the time.

[Anthropologist]

25. I work at Safeway...

OK I sort of work at Safeway.

Actually I work at Genuardi's, which Safeway chewed up and swallowed whole in 2001 (in other words they monopolized). Unfortunately we are not unionized, but a few of the Genuard's stores outside of Pennsylvania ARE unionized which pisses me off beyond belief. I find the company (Safeway) a little too repressive and have my fair share of issues in regards to some of their programs (which I will not bring up here). But like most companies/corporations it's only out for the almighty dollar. :mad:

Funny, my parents hardly ever shop where I work, it's the same with the majority of my co-workers as well. My family shops at Acme, which treats it's employee's pretty well. :D

Anyhow I'm going away to college next year so I'm trying not to get all worried and pissed off about it.