Safeway Readies Second Small-Format Store

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway here is reportedly scheduled to open its second small-format store Thursday in downtown San Jose, in Northern California.

At a reported 22,300 square feet, the store will be almost twice as large as the 12,000-square-foot store Safeway opened in Long Beach, in Southern California, in May 2008.

The San Jose store will operate under the banner, “The Market, Safeway,” company officials told SN in January. It will be a new location — in contrast with the remodeled Vons location for the first store — and will be situated on the ground floor of a 22-store condominium.

Asked last fall what the company had learned from operating the small format store, Steve Burd, chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, “It’s proven we can make money off a small store, and we’ve learned a lot that we might be able to use in our conventional stores, particularly about a smaller SKU count. “We’ve reduced the center-store variety for the smaller store by more than 50%, which required radical thinking, yet we’ve still increased sales over the store that had previously operated there.”

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