Safeway Rewards Healthy Shoppers

JULIE GALLAGHER

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway here is offering a $10 incentive for “Living Well. Feeling Great.”

Every time shoppers spend $30 on particpating products during the chain's monthlong promotion, they are rewarded with a $10 discount redeemable on their next visit.

Purchases made with a Safeway Club Card during a single transaction are eligible. The discount is automatically loaded onto and redeemed with the card.

Safeway is identifying the thousands of participating national-brand and private-label products with specially marked tags. Each of the items falls into one of four categories; Enjoy Life; Look and Feel Amazing; Nourish Your Active Lifestyle; and Healthy Home.

M&M 100-calorie packs, Progresso Soup, Coppertone sunscreen, Enviga Green Tea and O Organics Baby products are among the eligible items. Printable lists are available online. The promotion runs through April 29.

Although Safeway did not return SN's request for comment, it seems that promotions like its “Living Well. Feeling Great.” initiative may soon be few and far between.

The savings come just weeks after Safeway Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Burd announced the chain's intention to favor an everyday-low-price strategy moving forward.

“Over the next two years, we will be less promotional and provide better everyday value, which is what our cost reduction and process improvement programs are designed to accomplish,” Burd told attendees at a recent Bank of America Consumer Conference. “Promotions do bring in traffic, but we think, longer-term, we want to be less promotional and have a better everyday value, which has been our stated objective since we launched the lifestyle strategy in 2003, so you will see us increasingly invest in everyday price.”

In the meantime, Safeway seems to be working to build the base of consumers to which it can offer targeted discounts online, observed Frank Dell, president of Dellmart & Co.

Its effort is part of an online component of the “Living Well. Feeling Great.” promotion whereby shoppers who purchase at least $150 worth of groceries and five participating products online receive free delivery (eight items were required during the first week of the promotion). These shoppers are also eligible for the $10 discount, but to earn it they must subscribe to receive Safeway emails. The savings rewards are distributed to online shoppers via an email within two weeks of their purchase.

“The future is all about targeting the individual consumer, and this is a great way to get additional email addresses,” said Dell.